The Life Scientific: Hiranya Peiris
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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K-Rauta.
Auttaa alkuun ja eteenpäin. Heksaplan.
What is the Legacy Survey of Space and Time?
Työtilojesi pelastaja. Last summer, filming began on a movie that promises to tell perhaps the greatest story of all time. But it's a movie with a difference. There's no director, no script, and it won't be on at your local cinema. This is the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, and it's one of the most ambitious projects in the world of astronomy, with a mission to create a decade-long time-lapse movie of the visible universe. to answer fundamental questions about its origin, evolution and ultimately its fate. My guest today is playing a starring role.
How did Hiranya Peiris' childhood influence her career in science?
Hiranya Pieris is Professor of Astrophysics 1909, the prestigious chair at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University. Over her career, she's been one of the pioneers of a revolution in astronomy, bridging fundamental physics with the observational data coming back from space to transform the field from the wild west of physics to the modern era of precision cosmology. And ever keen to inspire women to take up careers in science, if this interview were a live show, she'd have reserved the front row for schoolgirls. Professor Hiranya Pierre is welcome to The Life Scientific.
Thank you so much, Jim. It's really nice to be here.
Now, I mentioned that passion you have to inspire schoolgirls to take up science. Where does that come from?
What sparked Hiranya Peiris' interest in the universe?
It comes from being a young girl myself and falling in love with science through, for example, books, where the people who are writing the books were very inspirational, but they did not look like me. And I want young girls to see role models that look like themselves and doing the things that they can aspire to. And that's what drives my passion for having those young girls in the front row, not in the back row, and sometimes not even in the room.
And for you as a young girl, you're developing this love for science, being part of the scientific enterprise. Why do you think that is?
When I'm doing science, I feel that we are on a search for truth as humanity. And I really connect to that idea. For me, it is a safe place. It is a place where things make sense. When you state a fact, it is an objective truth about reality rather than something someone made up.
I mentioned in the introduction that you are Professor of Astrophysics 1909. What's the 1909?
This marks a time when astrophysics, as distinct from astronomy, became a subject of study.
What challenges did Hiranya face as a young girl in science?
So astronomy can be thought of as mapping the universe, but astrophysics is turning the data or the observations we have made into understanding and connecting it to fundamental physics. And that started around the time of 1909. Right.
Well, Hiranya Pieris, you were born in Sri Lanka, in Colombo, in the mid-70s, to parents who are both civil engineers, I understand.
That's right. So my mother was a bridge engineer. She designed bridges. She was one of Sri Lanka's first female civil engineers. And my father worked on big hydroelectric projects.
And your mother in particular was your role model.
Yeah, she's so good at so many different things, but she's very humble about it. And that is a quality that I really aspire to. I have a particular image in my mind of accompanying my mother when I was a small child to a building site where she was supervising a very large team of men constructing a bridge that she had designed. And she was very elegantly dressed in a sari and she was very dignified. She was clearly in charge, but she wasn't shouting. She wasn't projecting dominance.
How did Hiranya's education shape her career path?
It was a different kind of leadership. And I really connected with that image.
And you'd been about, I guess, seven years old when Carl Sagan's documentary series aired. And that sparked your interest in the cosmos itself, in the universe.
That's right. I remember just being completely transfixed by these really vast horizons that he opened up, both space and time, how the universe connected to us as people. And that really was magical.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:37
2
What is the Legacy Survey of Space and Time?
0:37–1:32
3
How did Hiranya Peiris' childhood influence her career in science?
1:32–2:16
4
What sparked Hiranya Peiris' interest in the universe?
2:16–3:29
5
What challenges did Hiranya face as a young girl in science?
3:29–4:39
6
How did Hiranya's education shape her career path?
4:39–7:17
7
What significant discoveries did Hiranya make during her PhD?
7:17–9:31
8
What is the importance of the cosmic microwave background?
9:31–28:11