Avi Loeb

We considered last year as a student in the astronomy department at Harvard.

I knew about this person because I communicated with him and extremely talented, brilliant.

But I realized he doesn't come from a privileged background.

He doesn't have the education.

He had to provide for his family.

So it took a lot of his time.

So I said, I wrote a letter of recommendation for him.

And I said to the committee members, I said, we should admit this guy because I recognize parts of myself in him.

And the chair of the committee said, no, that's too risky.

We will not do that.

What's the risk?

Well, that he might falter, might not succeed, and that would be a waste of a position.

And then this person went elsewhere, and now he's being considered for a faculty position.

As a student, when he finishes his PhD, he will become a faculty already very quickly.

And so he's brilliant, no doubt about it, but it shows you how things happen right now in academia often.

I wouldn't let it be that way if I was chair of that committee.

But what John did to me early on was gamble.

And that's what allowed me to come to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, where I knew nothing about astrophysics.

I was really devastated that nobody pays attention to me because I don't know the fundamental concepts that they're working on.

So it took me a while to learn the vocabulary.