Edward Frenkel

So I was instantly converted.

You have to learn what are groups, what is group SU3, what are representations of SU3.

There was a coherent and beautiful, I could appreciate the beauty even though I could not understand

heads and tails of it.

Well, in retrospect, I think what I was really craving was a deeper understanding.

And up to that point, the deepest that I could see was for those diagrams, but for that story that a proton consists of three quarks and the neutron consists of three quarks and they're called up and down and so on.

But I didn't know that there was actually beneath the surface, there was this mathematical theory.

Now I am looking back.

So whatever I say about Edward at 15 is colored by...

all my experiences that happen in the meantime, my current views and so on.

He's probably still here now, yes.

I think it was a joy of discovery and the joy of going deeper into the root, to the deepest structures of the universe, the secrets.

And we may not discover all of them, we may not be able to understand, but we're going to try and go as far and as deep as we can.

I think that's what was the motivating factor in this.

It's interesting.

I don't think there are so few, to be honest, because I find a lot of people are actually interested.

If you talk to people you wouldn't expect to be interested in this, from all walks of life, from people of...

all kinds of professions.

I tell them I'm a mathematician, and they, a mathematician, okay, so that's a separate story.

A lot of people, I think, have been traumatized by their experience in their math classes.