The activities of Robbert Dijkgraaf are often at the bridge between science and society. As a leading mathematical physicist he made significant contributions to string theory. Currently Dijkgraaf is director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.

We are all scientists in some way, Dijkgraaf says. You could say we all study in the University of Google. We want to know how things work, we are sceptical and want to see things with our own eyes. Science wasn’t taken seriously from the beginning. Samuel Pepys, one of the first ‘bloggers’, famous for his eyewitness story about the great fire in London, once wrote mockingly about those strange fellows who tried to measure the weight of air. Now we would admiringly say that they were the early scientists, trying to unriddle the laws of nature.

Actually, science is nothing more or nothing less than organised scepticism. Sometimes scepticism is even used as a weapon, for example by the tobacco industry. A confidential report came out that even said: “Doubt is our product”. Also politicians tend to use science for their own advantage.

Dijkgraaf’s point is: it is important to trust in science. He loves showing that by holding a lighter under a little plastic bag filled with water. Preferably above someone’s head. It won’t burst. Once he did that on TV and explained the reason. The next day a physician emailed him: he explained the experiment the wrong way. Dijkgraaf felt very bad that he didn’t give the right reason for the little bag didn’t burst. But his colleague comforted him: “You did it because you trusted in science. And that’s the only right reason.”

Blog by: Lydia van Aert