Professor develops theory and rapport

By: Kenny Ryan

Posted: 10/25/07

Christopher Pope is a distinguished professor at Texas A&M who uses his position as a teacher and researcher to attempt to solve one of the great fundamental mysteries of physics: the unification of gravity and quantum theory.

The theory Pope is working on is called String Theory, and he compares its potential to that of James Clerk Maxwell's equations, which unified the sciences of electricity and magnetism. Maxwell's discovery in the 1860's is one of the foundations of modern physics and plays an integral part in the technology of the 21st century.

Pope has taught at A&M for nearly 20 years. He received his doctorate from England's University of Cambridge in 1980, where he studied as a graduate student with famed physicist Stephen Hawking. Pope spent seven more years in England before moving to the United States to pursue a career that he refers to as a great adventure.

"Back in the 1980s, I was looking for a job in England," Pope said. "The market was dire so I looked in the states. I got a job at [the University of Southern California], but didn't like all the freeway driving. I got a chance to move here after a year and have been here nearly 20 years since."

In the previous 19 years, Pope has accrued the respect and compassion of his colleagues and students.

"I was his grad student in [the 1990s]," said Hong Lu, now a research fellow and Pope's colleague in the Physics Department. "He's a great advisor; all the grad students like him. One important quality is that he is sympathetic to students. We go [to his class] for his dry English humor."

Pope has been recognized by both his students and his department with awards for his teaching skills.

"The grad students have an award for professors," Lu said. "Pope was the first person to get the prize, and he has gotten it several times afterwards. He also was given a teaching award by the College of Science."

Lewis Ford, the associate head of the physics department, said, "[Pope] is by far one of the favorite [professors], and an excellent teacher."

In addition to his role as a professor, Pope is also the director of the George and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy. Pope has used this position to reach out to his alma mater, and A&M and Cambridge have worked together as a result of Pope's efforts.

"With George Mitchell's very generous help, matched by Texas A&M University, we established a collaboration in theoretical cosmology between Cambridge and A&M," Pope said. "We host workshops and conferences, and faculty and student exchange visits."

"He's a magnet that attracts people," said Ford. "There's a big collaboration between A&M and Cambridge. We have had several well attended conferences; [Stephen] Hawking has come twice. We have lots of high profile people that help connect A&M with the rest of the world."

"My motivation is the puzzle of gravity and quantum theory," Pope said. "[They are] the two great cornerstones of modern physics, but they don't want to match up. String Theory is the only realistic prospect for a unified theory. It's a subject in its infancy which is very exciting because it's a matter of constant exploration and has been very rewarding, generating lots of new ideas in math and science."

Pope said he doesn't expect the mystery to be solved soon, but he continues to adamantly work towards a solution.

"It was 100 years between Maxwell's unification of electricity and magnetism, and the next landmark in unification by Salam and Weinberg [who won a Nobel Prize for taking Maxwell's work one step further] in the 1960s," Pope said. "I think the problem of unifying gravity and quantum theory is much more complex, but it's all a great adventure and we learn a lot along the way."

Pope said there are many reasons to research String Theory.

"Quantum gravity is the great unsolved problem in fundamental physics," Pope said. "[For someone] to go into it, they need a love of intellectual problems for their own sake and an enthusiasm for understanding how the world works. It's a very interesting time: new observations and discoveries in astronomy are opening windows not opened before. I think we will see a marriage of cosmology and string theory into a very fruitful and fertile era of development."