Science Dreaming Well

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Science Dreaming Well

by M. D. Sheppeard

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Preface

Although the names have been altered, this is the true story of my life in 2009. Inaccuracies in the

narrative are due to errors of memory and are not intentional. Character aspersions, on the other

hand, are fully intentional and no undue apologies are pending. The reader is of course free to feel

whatever he or she may do for my unrelenting and old fashioned feminism. Perhaps a writer should

engage the circumstances of the reader. If this is so, I can only do so in the negative sense of

conveying the isolation that I feel from the reader's world, and in remarking that my situation is not

at all unusual for women of my generation, who have tried against all odds, for decades, to pursue

careers in the sciences.

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Chapter 1

If this story has a beginning, I do not know where it is. The essence of what happens is not in the

causes of the year to year, or in the details of pivotal days, but in what I and the world have become.

I, too, have my precious delusions, without which my world would not exist, but delusions are

sometimes stripped away from the outside, and there is no return to innocence. Yet, what I battle is

not delusion. I may fight the image that others have of me, yes, but who are they to trust their casual

thoughts over my decades of painful deliberation.

I was a child of the antipodes, used to watching the August winter sun move right to left across the

sky. The sky was still a vivid blue here in the countryside, except when dust storms in the Australian

deserts threw a red tinge into the high westerly winds.

The plains near Christchurch had long ago been settled by the Waitaha people, the first Maoriarrivals, for the hills of the port area mark the southern limit of kumara cultivation. Europeans had

settled in the antipodes from the 18th century, but the future city was only named in 1848, in

England, at a meeting involving an ex student of the college of Christ Church in Oxford. This

student, John Godley, sailed to New Zealand with his family for the express purpose of founding the

new colony of Canterbury.

The University of Canterbury in Christchurch was founded as a college in 1873. This proud institute

of learning was heavily modelled on academic life at Oxford, down to the beautiful stone buildings

in the centre of the city. Unsurprisingly, pioneering women wanted a piece of this action, and the

first woman in the British Empire to obtain a masters degree did so here in 1881.

The prominence of Physics at Canterbury was firmly established, at least in the eyes of the

physicists, by the early experiments of Lord Ernest Rutherford, who set up a basement laboratory in

Christchurch while still a student. Today, several departments share the modern eight storey

Rutherford Building on the new campus to the west of the city. On a clear, smog free day the

western side of the building looks out past the cooling stack, clear across the wide plains to the

foothills of the alps.

For five years I worked at the University of Canterbury towards my PhD in Theoretical Physics,

which I finally obtained in 2007 at the age of forty. I had found myself here in Christchurch after

several years of wandering in the mountains to the south, where I had survived by working as a

waitress, or on the skifields and vineyards, or as a volunteer caretaker for the popular hiking huts in

the national parks.

When you choose to continue living, yet again, you inadvertently promise to honour the

fundamental tenets of the present, rather than those of the still mythical future in which all are given

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equal opportunities. A mere smile can be a compromise.

As a well fed Sydney schoolgirl, in the days before the information revolution, I had hoped that a

mythical future would be a reality in my lifetime. The Principal of the girls' high school in Sydney

was a great advocate of careers for women, so although the home science classes were still

compulsory for girls my age, the sewing teacher would conveniently fail to notice my vindictive

lack of cooperation. My mother was somewhat less encouraging.

A complex society cannot guarantee you a job to your liking, because such fairness would not

permit its roles to be filled in the proper measure. When society does not approve of one's choice of

vocation, as is generally the case for a woman in Physics, a chance of success exists only for those

with a titanic persistence. One may also require a complete, potentially lifelong, unrelenting

indifference towards daily suggestions that you choose a more sensible path, better suited to your

meagre talents.I should have been even more unrelenting. Most of the time I was a good and gentle girl, with a

sweet smile. People loved to tell me what to do, confident that I would nod meekly and do their

bidding. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to most, I had decided on a career in Theoretical Physics

while studying Einstein's Special Relativity, as a very capable and talented fifteen year old. The

combination of an outward meek nod and an inner disgust became an essential habit, at a time when

greasy old men were still permitted to pinch shapely young ladies.

In the same school year I took on my first job as a shop assistant. This job had been foisted upon me

by my reasonably affluent but traditionally educated mother, who was mindful that I should learn to

support myself, at least until I found a husband, and fulfil my duties to society. In those days,

European Australia was a strangely classless society, so my mother had no concern that hard work

would lower my excellent marriage prospects. As far as I knew, all mothers looked after their own

large homes. No good housewife would want to admit needing assistance, except from her dutiful

daughters, and so I learned at a young age that housekeeping was real work.

The nagging was unending and futile, for I never stopped protesting. With tireless encouragement,

my mother would teach my sister and me to bake cakes, entertain guests, make ourselves

presentable, keep a tidy house, iron shirts and polish shoes. She proudly sent us to lessons in ballet,

ballroom dancing and music, while my father often took us all boating, fishing or hiking. We

travelled about the western deserts and went skiing in the Australian Alps. On hot days in summer

we would walk to the nearby beach for a swim or a wander along the harbour rocks, where a clean

environment was not yet lost.

In spite of this paradise, my favourite pastime was slouching in a chair to read. My parents did not

really read proper books, preferring lightweight novelettes and magazines, but they let me join the

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small local library when I was about eight years old. Mostly I would read adventures, mysteries and

fantasy stories, losing myself in alien worlds and thoroughly ignoring everyone around me. When I

could, I read about one book a day.

A common sentiment of my generation, amongst antipodeans of an intellectual bent, was a deep

sense of remoteness from the wonderful things that we learned about at school. I longed desperately

to visit the museums of Europe, the great ruins of Asia and the Middle East, and the ski resorts of

picturesque Switzerland. Then, suddenly, the age of cheap air travel was upon us, bringing all such

dreams within our grasp. Eager to leave, in 1985 I spent my final year at high school as an exchange

student in Denmark, where I began to see the far away sights of the world.

My parents were not overly surprised by my teenage decision to study physics, having suffered

years of excellent reports from the science teachers at the girls' school. A long time ago in New

Zealand my mother had skipped a year or two ahead at school, but this was not permitted in mygeneration. Boredom and petulance had bred in me a determined laziness. I would read novels

during mathematics classes, but somehow I still failed to achieve a ranking lower than first. When

the mathematics teacher accidentally mentioned imaginary numbers, I pleaded with her to tell me

what they were, which she reluctantly did. The library was not well stocked, and there was no

internet.

Some time in 1986, when I received my first university test results, I discovered that out of

hundreds of male peers nobody was more proficient at solving problems in Newtonian mechanics

than I was. What was this? Everyone said that girls were no good at technical problems, and the

boys had studied more technical subjects at school.

At that time all tertiary education in Australia was free, and students were accepted only on the

basis of academic merit. Standards were high, and I had been secretly expecting to make average

grades, balancing the deficiency of my gender with a little above average natural talent. But on

enrollment day an enlightened physics professor, to whom I am eternally grateful, had argued with

me about my selection of mathematics courses, forcing me to enrol at the highest level.

Having spent the first six months at university studying hard, and completing all the assignments, I

returned to my former casual habits. If there were students throwing paper aeroplanes from the back

of the lecture hall, chances are that I was amongst them, even if I was also diligently taking precise

hand written notes. I got into trouble for reading my computer science textbooks a little too closely

and figuring out how to spam people on the fledgling internet. After the first year I would often

throw away 10% of the course mark by neglecting to hand in homework, but I never failed a course.

I listened attentively to the lessons, and the other students would often frown in consternation as I

corrected the lecturer's mistakes.

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I was the first person in my family to study at university and deeply confused to find that a science

degree was so easy to obtain. Most students focused on their studies at home, but I had to support

myself by working part time, because my parent's situation disqualified me from the student

allowance. It was clear to me that my family would never support my crazy aspirations.

But then in the final years, when the chance came to do real experiments in the laboratory, I would

often work late into the night, engrossed in the problem at hand. On weekends, the holidays and

some evenings during the week, I would work at a local ice cream shop near the beach. Dressed in a

frilly red pinafore, with sweat pouring down my face, I baked or served ice cream cones.

The reason for my final average marks, in the honours year of the BSc, was not laziness, which did

not come as naturally to me as some might have thought. I was quite determined to work hard that

year, in order to obtain a PhD scholarship. Unfortunately, this resolve was crushed by my parents'

move interstate at the start of the year, soon after my younger brother completed school and enteredthe workforce.

Dire financial circumstances forced me to share a small, noisy one bedroom flat with my cruel

brother and his obnoxious girlfriend. Having given up the lucrative ice cream job, I was now living

off the money I earned tutoring school children in physics and mathematics, only a few hours a

week. There was a three hour commute to university each day.

For several days each week I would go hungry, eating only a little chocolate, filling myself up

whenever I was paid. My brother's filthy dishes would pile up in the kitchen, until the slothful

girlfriend screamed at me to clean up. Naturally my brother had never been expected to help with

the housework. Finally, in September, with my parent's aid I was permitted to move into another flat

with university friends. But the damage was done. There was no point trying to obtain a PhD

scholarship.

I was employed as an experimental physicist in a university engineering laboratory, so at least I had

found a way to remain in science. It was a real research job, with responsibilities to manage the

apparatus, collect and analyse data. I stuck with it for over a year, but it was not fundamental

physics and my heart was not in it. Not knowing what to do next, I travelled for a few months.

Returning from overseas in late 1991, once again I told everybody that I wished to return to

university to study further, knowing that they had not listened to the message the first ten billion

times. Despite my insistence, they advised me strongly to be sensible and find a job.

Eventually convinced that a return to starvation would result from further protestation, I found work

as a financial analyst at an investment bank. This would supposedly enable me to assist the

boyfriend in paying off the mortgage on his large house in an exclusive Sydney street, a house that I

had no real desire to live in. There I would host occasional dinner parties, vaguely attempting to

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find inspiration in cleaning the kitchen, the spacious floors, the wide staircases, the bathrooms, the

spare bedrooms, the music collection and the library bookshelves. This boyfriend was an early IT

industry winner. For a little while I contributed to his business by programming and helping with

small scale electronics manufacture.

According to the rules that most people play by, my life's cards had already been dealt. I was young,

but I had made my choices. I held a position that many women would envy, with the means to live

extravagantly, but each day I would leave work at ten seconds after five and arrive home in tears.

My whole life had been a protest to which nobody had ever listened.

But now in the wider world, although I could not yet sense it, a ghost was awakening. Behind the

clamour of the backlash against feminism, the shadows of the ghost stirred in countless little

enlightenments. Not every one lacked the courage to dream of better worlds.

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Chapter 2

A renewed dedication to the ever awaiting vocation, and a purposeful willingness to starve if

necessary, did not reappear until late 1993. I finally found a way to study physics again by

demanding financial support from the boyfriend, who also continued taking me to fine restaurants,

the opera, and on expensive skiing holidays in Europe, North America and Asia.

That was the year I began studying advanced mathematics. In my undergraduate physics courses,

only traditional mathematical methods had been taught. Even now in the new millenium, the

discipline of physics utilises these traditional methods, and the current conceptual crisis in physics

is compounded by the mathematical ignorance of many practitioners.

The difficulty stems from the profound success of the 20th century's standard picture of particle

physics, which has remained unaltered, at least until very recently, since the days of the experimentsthat confirmed it in the 1970s. Modern mathematics has put pieces of this grand theoretical

framework on a solid footing, but the full physical picture remains heuristic and non rigorous. In

other words, nobody understands it at all and the natural language of particle physics is almost

certainly something entirely new.

Meanwhile, the accumulation of decades of interesting experimental results indicates that the

discipline needs a revolution. Unfortunately, to a trained scientist any mention of revolution is a

serious faux pas, and most will commit to conservative investigations with a weary inevitability.

Until now, that is. Nowadays the mainstream stridently claims revolutionary thought for itself,

while continuing to be strangely critical of the slightest sign of individuality in outcasts. The

professional literature today is full of every conceivable crazy idea, except perhaps the right one.

But here I was, back in 1994, listening to mathematical physics lectures, in Australia and overseas,

by some of the world's brightest scientists. Suddenly I was studying the theory of quantum groups,

all about partial differential equations and solitons, various forms of analysis, and the sophisticated

subjects of algebraic topology and geometry. In Sydney, I took formal mathematics courses instead

of working on my thesis, which was supposed to be on standard particle physics.

One of the better lecturers was an Australian algebraic topologist. He made an impression on me by

telling the story of his family, and how they had forced him to abandon his beloved English

literature for a more manly career. This man's formal approach to his subject led me to discover a

whole new kind of mathematics, beyond geometry and algebra, which almost nobody had yet

thought to apply to fundamental physics.

This was the way forward that I had never seen. This, Field X, would be my field of research. I had

always loved the most abstract mathematics, but in my lonely ignorance had not known that there

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were people who tried to apply it to physics. This was what I was meant to do. Now I would allow

no one, not even myself, to dissuade me.

For four years I freely studied the current research papers in mathematical physics. I did not expect

to learn everything quickly, but I was still too young to realise how impossible it was to know

everything anyway. At the end of these four years, having done no work on a thesis, I would be

forced to give up my university position.

There were always plenty of people telling me to give it up, some staring at my boobs to remind me

that my talents lay elsewhere. There was a suggestion that I transfer to mathematics, but I could not

write a physics thesis in Sydney on a subject of my choosing. Nobody was willing to supervise such

a dangerous undertaking. This was the wrong city for me to study in, but I had no means to go

elsewhere.

The boyfriend finally suggested that we might move elsewhere, but by then he no longer interestedme. I had no choice but to plunge myself into poverty by giving him up, along with my extravagant

home, all hope of future support, and all hope of returning as a professional to a difficult field of

research. As soon as I had committed my life to Field X, I was forced to abandon it. For one year I

sat at home alone doing almost nothing, except reading ancient classics.

Deciding nonetheless to go on living, I moved to the Southern Alps of New Zealand, my mother's

homeland. If I could not be a professional physicist I would have to pursue mountaineering, the

only other thing I could think of that I quite enjoyed. But the true vocation would come calling

again one day, soon enough. Society would make its usual mistake, believing that continual

punishment would eventually teach the lessons they thought needed to be learned, instead of driving

the perpetrator ever further away.

I was working for a living again, as a single woman in an alien world. On a typical morning an

ordinary man, with money but no taste, would sit awkwardly in the cafe chair, with his large belly

against the table. Snapping his fingers, he would sneer at me over his cake and coffee. My wife

said her latte should be really hot. Make it again, would you?

I was a professional waitress and there was never a hint of annoyance in my response to a customer,

unless I knew them personally. Often I felt like shaking them awake, explaining to them that they

were wasting their lives, but they would only have laughed, for anyone could see that I was the fool.

Occasionally I would attempt an alternative career, without much enthusiasm. Going hungry once

again, I wrote a dreadful book of poetry and foisted it upon the few friends that I had. I never once

failed to pay my rent, for if the money ran out I would give notice and leave. For many weeks at a

time I would count out every cent and carefully deliberate the respective advantages of a loaf of

bread or two cans of beans. I knew which mountaineering huts had stockpiles of free food and

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would walk there alone across the glaciers, sometimes hitching a ride on a skiplane or helicopter.

Finally, in 2002, there was an opportunity to housesit for three months, to look after a family dog.

These days people had the internet at home, so the dog grew fatter as I spent day after day browsing

new research on the online archive. I applied to the local council for private funding, but they said if

I was any good that a university would take me. So I enrolled at the University of Canterbury.

Initially, I agreed to write a sensible thesis under the supervision of a cosmologist. After a few

months, however, both the cosmologist and I had lost interest in the dead end field.

In mathematical physics, only a few names stood out in my chosen Field X. On the more physical

side there were only one or two, in particular the name of Leonard Cotton. In the first of a

remarkable string of coincidences, it turned out that Leonard had once shared an office with the

Canterbury cosmologist and I would become his student for the year of 2003, following him

through Canada and Europe. In order to fund this, the University of Canterbury had given me ascholarship.

In that year I discovered that even the daunting playground of known names was capable of

resolving itself into a boring loungeroom full of hard working, but sometimes shallow and spoiled,

men. In the same year I also experienced two very serious mountain accidents, the post traumatic

stress of the first leading to an argument with Leonard for which it appears that he, or his wife, will

never forgive me.

On the free fall into the presumably bottomless, wide Swiss crevasse I had mused that dying would

certainly prevent me from working in Field X. On the unexpected landing and survival, some

seconds later, I mused briefly with joy that the likely injuries would land me a disability pension, on

which I could happily continue working indefinitely. Alas, although the injuries were numerous, I

was roughly intact.

It was a special year despite many other difficulties. In the end, Leonard was my only proper PhD

supervisor, in the sense that he took time to get to know me and was generous in his support. This

support was essential, since I was trying to live in Europe and North America on a Kiwi student's

income. As we shall see, hungry and still unable to walk, I returned to New Zealand at the end of

the year.

The ghost of the times had not yet seeped into Physics at Canterbury, where I shared an office with

three young men who were also working towards PhDs in theoretical physics, using conventional

methods in cosmology. There were quite a few women studying Astronomy, and a few in other

areas of Physics, but I was the only one in the theory group.

A successful career in science today hinges on one's publication record. In the distant past I had

produced good work, but there were no formal publications during my PhD years. This was partly

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because I was continually bullied into working on research problems other than my own, partly

because I worked in what was then still a controversial area for a physicist, and partly because I was

deeply traumatised. None of these problems were considered. As usual, I was the one at fault.

Physicists did not directly accuse Field X of being controversial, since they actually knew almost

nothing about it. The term they preferred, when it was necessary to express an opinion, was

esoteric. This meant that it was all right for some people to beaver away at it, so long as they made

no claims to be doing real physics. Real physics, as everyone knew, was General Relativity and the

Standard Model of particle physics, written in their original languages. Field X would soon sneak

through the back door of the quantum computer industry, but real theorists knew that quantum

computers were described by ordinary quantum mechanics, mere kindergarten stuff.

There was one fast and poorly written paper that I attempted to post on the online archive, only to

be forced to withdraw it soon thereafter. Then I was still remarkably nave and uneducated, a factthat many took every opportunity to remind me, as if I couldn't figure that out myself.

Another of the papers that I wrote in those years is now fairly well known in the field, but remains

unpublished. Yet another, horrific piece of garbage, written by one of my many supervisors, was

submitted for publication against my explicit wishes, with my name on it. This supervisor was

younger than me and had almost no experience in research, having finished his PhD at Canterbury

only a few years earlier. He also lacked the required international experience. He was certain,

however, that I had a lot to learn from him about the correct way to do science. After all, he was

pals with the right people from Australia. Fortunately, I was quite capable of talking to the right

people myself, so when one of them admitted to being a reviewer for this piece of garbage with my

name on it, I agreed with him that, ideally, this paper would not assist my career in any way.

One day, one of my young office mates learned the concept of Least Publishable Unit, and he was

in fits of laughter about it. The idea is to have as many papers as possible on your publication list,

and one way to achieve this is to publish every tiny result in a separate paper. Paper number is the

accepted measure of a scientist's productivity. The young man was also taught to reference high

profile papers he had never read, because searches in the field would then be more likely to turn up

his paper, possibly earning it more official citations. Hiring committees, it turns out, are also quite

interested in a candidate's citation index. This makes it expedient to belong to a club, where

everybody is careful to cite the other members.

The international job situation in fundamental physics is such that most PhD candidates will fail to

obtain a postdoctoral position. In New Zealand there are approximately zero jobs in fundamental

physics. For women, the essential weeding out process must be especially thorough, because it

would not do to encourage them in any way, except by suggesting to them that they start thinking

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like men.

For particularly independent women, who are strangely loathe to being patronised, this may be

achieved by the appointment of patronising supervisors, who are highly skilled in the advanced

methods of emotional torture. They are certainly not there to offer any helpful guidance, because

they are supposedly testing you on your ability to do independent research, even if you are not

actually allowed to do independent research.

Directives included statements like, Pretend you are eighteen years old, and put your head down.

At no point did anyone admit that I would never get a job after the PhD, so I put up with the torture

naively thinking that I would find a job, somehow.

Those who fail to be discouraged by this process usually end up working on a sensible problem,

specified by their supervisors. In Physics, only the most stupidly persistent attempt to follow their

own convictions, and this choice usually guarantees a participation of yet more academics intraditional torture rituals. But I could not help working on Field X, having dedicated so many years

to it already, and having already witnessed its growing success.

It was easy to develop a reputation as a nutter. This reputation was moderated initially by the

presence of a sizable group of researchers, mostly students, who were also interested in the same

new branch of mathematics, and by the distant respectability of Professor Cotton. Although there

was already one man at Canterbury working in Field X, it was I who had the broader knowledge,

and I who organised regular seminars on the subject, making the University of Canterbury one of

the first places in the world with a research group who took Field X seriously. Six years on this field

is florishing in many places.

During the first four years at Canterbury I was constantly pressured into working on something that

made no sense to me, and that I strongly suspected was a complete waste of the tax payer's money.

Since I had not yet published journal papers in the new field, it followed that I still had a lot to

learn. Theoretical Physics was still a boy's club and the senior boys, no matter their qualifications,

dictated which ideas were worth pursuing.

I was permitted to stick with Field X physics only because of another coincidence, that the head of

the department had developed an interest in it some years earlier, when a very bright student had

introduced him to it. These academics, who all had wives looking after them at home, had never

studied Field X seriously, or any modern mathematics at all. Essentially, in directing me they were

telling me that I had wasted most of my life, and learned nothing. Rather than making sure that I

had enough to eat, which is the only kind of support I was really hoping for, they would constantly

criticise my poor scientific method, without offering any constructive advice. It is true that my

methodology was poor, but given that most people would be dead if they tried to follow in my

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footsteps, I considered that my stress levels were a significant factor that should have been taken

into account. I had not come this far because I was much smarter than other women, because I was

not really. I was here because I had great resilience, probably inherited from some long forgotten

convict or explorer.

My office was always noisy. The confident, London educated male commandeered all the

whiteboard space for his own laborious and archaic calculations in General Relativity. This guy was

supported by his girlfriend, who cleaned up after him at home and earned a good living playing for

the city orchestra, while supposedly working towards her own PhD in physics.

By late 2006, having suffered in the previous three years three hospitalisations, frequent house

moves and perpetual poverty, it was quite clear that I would never earn any sympathy or

understanding from my Canterbury peers.

In 2004, a few of them had attended the spectacular mountain Air Force helicopter rescue where I,and one other woman, were plucked from a cliffside ledge. We had been trapped without shelter for

eight days of bad weather, after my bad decision to take a difficult route in order to bypass some ice

in the valley. This incident hit the news worldwide, for few people survive under such

circumstances. For weeks afterwards, alone in the house, I writhed in agony with receding trench

foot, where the burnt skin falls away and the nerves in the feet grow back.

It was a solitary existence. In the antipodes, there are no formal classes for graduate students. The

thing that gave me life in 2006, when it seemed the thesis would have no end, was the invention of

blogging. I began regular physics discussions online and met a range of fascinating and valuable

new colleagues, a few of whom I have worked with ever since. This activity finally cemented my

reputation as an annoying crackpot, a reputation soon confirmed by my musings about an

alternative cosmology.

Whatever happened next, the ghost of the times told me that blogging was here to stay. And thanks

to Google Almighty, blogging was free. There were a growing number of good physics blogs. There

were also feminist science blogs, where one could talk openly about the situation for women in

physics without any risk whatsoever of being read by one's colleagues. There were others like me,

dissatisfied with both the rampant sexism and the state of science. It really wasn't all my fault after

all. The invention of the printing press never gave a poor woman this power to publish freely, and

even the printing press had changed the world forever.

We were doing a good job of driving young people away from science, discouraging them with

countless horror stories. But the ones who really care will stick with it anyway. It is better to inform

them of the difficulties ahead, not leave them in the dark. Over the last few years, it seems that the

situation has improved a little. Many institutions now have mentoring programs and compulsory

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anti discrimination education for academics. Women have now succeeded at the highest levels in all

but a few fields.

Despite being considered a gifted child, I had not begun life believing that I was especially talented,

unlike the countless young men that surround me. It had been expected that a good education would

find me a stable husband, and that I would devote myself to raising children in a comfortable home.

I am fortunate to come from a lucky country, far from famine and war, but we cannot help but

compare ourselves to those around us.

There was no job for me, and an insufficient number of reasonable references, when I finished at

the University of Canterbury. The London boy found contacts in Europe who would fund a position

for him. That was the way it really worked. The other two young men in the office had succumbed

to the long term torture, and left science. Somewhat alarmed by the discovery that my external

examiner actually liked my thesis, my colleagues reluctantly approved my degree in late 2007.On graduation day I marched in the traditional parade through the city, past the restaurant where I

now worked as a waitress, where I was grateful for the soup that we were given for lunch each day.

I had once worked, under constant protest, as a financial analyst, and knew that such alternative

career options were out of the question for me. Besides, at 40, my colourful curriculum vitae made

me the epitomy of unemployable. I had sent my CV to hundreds of employers without receiving a

single job offer.

Waitressing was the logical choice. It would keep me fit, without demanding any mental exertion

outside working hours. In principle, this allowed me to spend all my spare time thinking about

physics.

In Christchurch the winters bring spells of icy rain from the southern oceans. Students often cannot

afford to heat their houses, so one gets used to the mould on the walls and the ice in the bathroom.

For years I had been forced to share houses with other students, but at the start of the winter in 2008

I was living alone in a single room, waitressing four days a week. This left three quiet days for

research and blogging. The blogging was my focus on the mythical future, although I never wrote a

lot.

It was the best arrangement that I could manage, and for a change my landlords were friendly.

However, the prospect of another cold, damp winter spurred my resolve to head south into the dry

mountains again, although I knew that my continued dedication to physics might suffer for the

move. So I took on another part time waitressing job at the cafe attached to the University's Mt John

astronomical observatory, overlooking the glacial Lake Tekapo.

Tekapo is a few hours from Christchurch. As a former member of the Canterbury Physics and

Astronomy department I was entitled to discounted rates on a room in the observers' bunker like

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dormitory on top of the hill. It would have been a secluded spot, but for the growing number of

tourists who made their way up the tar sealed road. This good road had been built by the Americans,

who ran a satellite tracking station here in the 1970s.

I left my few belongings in a Christchurch garage, taking only a suitcase to Tekapo. My hard earned

waitressing wages had saved me enough to buy a laptop. Once a week, I would walk down the hill

into the village to buy groceries, my budget allowing me to lunch at the pleasant lakeside Japanese

restaurant, which catered to both the passing tourists and the resident Japanese population. There

were also hot pools at the base of the hill, especially enjoyable in winter when snow often fell. It

was a luxury having a kitchen to use once again. Occasionally the observatory superindentents,

Alex and Pat, would drive to the nearest coastal town to go shopping and I would be invited to join

them.

All in all, Tekapo turned out to be a wonderful, quiet place in which to live and work. With fewastronomers on the hill, the internet connection was good and I could continue blogging, with some

improvement in style due to my unexpected positive change of circumstances. The cafe was unique,

with a significant number of visitors who had never seen the Milky Way before.

But this was not a permanent arrangement. The dormitory was sometimes fully booked, and I could

not stay here forever. As usual, I did not know where I would be living in a few months time.

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Chapter 3

As the snow from one heavy fall receded from Mt John, the trail through the forest turned to solid

ice. I laughed as I slipped here and there, on my way to the hot pools. The pools were almost

deserted on weekday mornings, so I could sit there alone and look out across the rocky shore of the

lake. I was not proceeding far with any real research, but the blogging was keeping me amused.

One winter's day a new commenter, named Brent, turned up on my blog. It was immediately clear

that Brent was well informed about Field X, unlike other contributors. His obvious interest in my

unusual combination of two distinct mathematical ideas soon identified him as a particular

researcher at the University of Oxford, which had a large group working in Field X. For years I had

known about this group, and seen their conferences advertised online. Their research focus was

quite unlike my own, but Field X Physics had still made little headway outside mathematics and Iwas aware of all such existing groups.

Shortly Brent asked whether or not I would be interested in visiting Oxford for a few months, to do

research. Given my circumstances, this was an astounding question. Could this be the support that I

had always dreamed of? Who knew what a few months in Oxford could mean to a poor country

waitress.

It did not surprise me in the least that the University of Oxford employed enlightened bloggers, but

I was rightly dubious that the full visa application process would work out. It turns out that as an

antipodean of many generations, under the new work visa rules for the UK I was not entitled to

simply visit England and sleep on someone's couch. The University of Oxford would have to

officially employ me.

I began email exchanges with administrators in Brent's department. Eventually, a suitable job

description was posted on the Oxford University website, relieving me of the impression that this

was all a fantasy created by email hackers. As is common practice today, the UK required all

academic jobs to be advertised, but everybody knew that the best universities carefully tailored the

job description to the person that they wanted. They could hardly remain the best otherwise. So in

October, it appeared that I had simply to wait a few more weeks for the Oxford sponsorship to be

obtained from the Home Office in the UK.

Oxford seemed very far away, as I looked west across the plains to the mountain snows. Cafe work

was tiring and, although it provided more spare time than other jobs, it was difficult to get any

research done. It was the same old problem. I was too alone.

The Tekapo company that I was working for had earned exclusive rights to tourism operations at the

observatory by funding the dome for a new survey telescope, which was currently being used by

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Japanese astronomers to hunt for planets. Once winter had passed, and the tourist crowds began to

grow, the company experimented with a new type of tour for the astronomically challenged. This

twilight tour would take advantage of the stunning 360 degree views from the summit cafe and

impose only a short observing session after the consumption of local food and wine, to be enjoyed

whilst watching the sun set over the mountains.

One day in October we were told that a physics professor from Oxford would be visiting Mt John,

staying in the dormitory for a couple of nights. A photo of the handsome professor had appeared in

the local newspaper with an article about one of his University of Canterbury lectures on particle

physics. This event inspired a renewed admiration amongst some Tekapo people for the mysterious

industry of academics at Canterbury. As a member of staff, I was invited on the evening's twilight

tour but, now keen to meet the visiting professor and learn what I could about Oxford, I returned to

the dormitory directly after work.Sadly, he had still not appeared when my early retiring hour arrived, and the rising astronomers had

seen no sign of him either. The next morning I dressed for work, quickly ate breakfast and sat in the

lounge waiting, as usual, for the dreaded minute that I had to leave for the cafe. Each day I would

sit there on the old sofa, my shoulders hunched, staring out the window, without seeing the dry

grass blowing in the wind.

Finally the Oxford professor, who was about my age, appeared through the door from the dormitory

corridor. He paused by the dining table, brushing a hand absent mindedly through his hair, taking a

backwards step of mock surprise when he saw me sitting there quietly. It turned out that he had

been enjoying the venison and salmon on the twilight tour himself, soon after arriving the previous

evening. This was on the invitation of an astronomy guide, who no doubt felt that the presence of an

Oxford professor would improve the quality of the tour.

Today the professor planned to head to nearby Aoraki for a day walk and he asked me for a trail

recommendation. I've been around, he said with a worldly air, to indicate that he was not just

another tourist. I've climbed Kilimanjaro, he added, looking right at me to make sure that he had

made an impression.

I nodded casually. I was trying my best, given the tight black T-shirt emblazoned with a barista's

emblem, to look suitably unimpressed, since I had climbed far more difficult mountains myself. I

rattled off an approximate altitude for Kilimanjaro, thereby instantly demonstrating some general

knowledge of mountains, but it seemed that his thoughts were already elsewhere.

The professor was an odd mixture of honesty and polished charm, with what I supposed was the

winning mask of a successful Englishman, at the top of the academic ladder. I liked him anyway.

There was hope that Oxford would be good to me.

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I mentioned that I might be heading to Oxford for a postdoc and so he asked about the subject of

my thesis, incorrectly assuming that I was only now finishing it. Without much thought, I said a

little about Field X. Many months later he would confess to having been flabbergasted by my

mention of an obscure piece of particle physics, which he sometimes discussed with a friend who

worked in the field and whose name I knew.

It was tempting to abandon duty and find a sudden urge to go on a walk near Aoraki that day

myself, but that was not my conditioned way. I headed instead to work at the cafe. I was not being

paid for the frequent days of bad spring weather, when the cafe was forced to close due to the

significant risk of people being blown off the hill.

The professor, whose name was Herbert, suggested that we might catch up again that evening, but I

was in my room, already trying hopelessly to sleep, when he returned very late. He came to visit me

while I was working in the cafe, just before he left the next morning, for further hiking advice. Itwas difficult to take his hiking ambitions seriously, seeing him browsing a common guidebook, and

his time in the south was quite limited, so I recommended a popular scenic hike near Mt Aspiring,

which would at least force him to drive down the beautiful Matukituki valley. I made no mention of

mountaineering.

The pumpkin soup had not turned out well that day and I had been working with a friendly, but

particularly inconsiderate young man. I was not in the best of moods. Herbert wondered whether he

had offended me somehow, which of course impressed me greatly, because I'm sure he's the first

man I have known who ever pretended to worry about such a thing. He was beginning to

demonstrate a remarkable ability to misunderstand me.

I made my dreadful workmate serve customers on his own for half an hour while I sat and chatted

with Herbert, who said that if I made it to Oxford that I must have dinner at his college. Then

suddenly I found myself having to work again and he was off, remembering to shake my hand as

one professional to another. I turned back to the cafe sink, shrugging at the thought that I would

probably never see him again.

My Oxford sponsorship was finally authorised by the Home Office in late November, but this

meant that I now had to apply for a work visa under the new points system. I left the job in Tekapo

and headed for Christchurch, which was the closest place where the UK government could collect

my biometric data. The application was comprehensive, but I saw no difficulty in meeting the

requirements, since I had the required PhD certificate on hand and I had scored the maximum

possible number of points, with a letter of financial support from Brent's department at Oxford. I

also had an invitation to speak at Imperial College in London in early January. Foolishly believing

that the work visa was now a formality, I headed to a friend's place with the idea that the visa would

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be issued around Christmas, which meant that I actually spent Christmas day in a fairly traditional

fashion rather than sitting alone in a remote mountain hut as I usually did. With my remaining

money, I bought myself a ticket to the opera in London, for March.

As it happens, the Wellington British were not keen on adapting their visa processing system to the

new rules imposed by their Home Office. It seems that they simply shelved all work visa

applications until their Home Office got so annoyed with them that the New Zealand applications

were all handed to Canberra. I made countless, pointless phone calls, trying to glean some minimal

information about my application, but to no avail. Paranoia is best avoided by ruthlessly assuming

incompetence, but the level of some people's incompetence constantly begs belief. Clearly, one is

not supposed to apply for work visas as a wandering, penniless waitress.

I was depressed and helpless, listening carefully each day for a courier van that never came. Out of

money once again, I found a little casual work, such as dishwashing in bars and hotels. I wasrelying on the hospitality of Christchurch friends, but eventually I would give up on the British and

move back to the southern mountain town of Wanaka, at the end of January.

There I went to stay with another old friend, Kathryn. I had met Kathryn many years earlier, when

she picked me up from a lonely spot on the highway. She had been very generous over the years,

and we had enjoyed a few great trips together in the mountains. Now she had a house of her own

and was married to a good man.

My weariness grew, as I saw that I would never see Oxford. Having never thought of visiting

Oxford in the past, and having never dreamed of applying for a job there, naturally I now felt that

all I needed in the world was to see it. I moped about Kathryn's house, working only a little at the

local vineyards, weeding and pruning.

A few weeks before the pinot grapes ripen, heavy pruning serves the double function of funnelling

water into the best fruit and exposing these bunches to the sun. I was like a deformed bunch of

grapes, allowed to live to maturity and then ruthlessly cut down.

Later I was told that Brent had been livid at his plans being thus foiled by the British government,

but Brent never mentioned this to me himself. It seemed that once Brent realised that I had not

properly published any of my work in years, he regretted having given me a job. My curriculum

vitae had always listed the necessary facts but Brent was not, by his own admission, a great reader.

He could never understand how little opportunity I had ever had to publish papers. Starting with the

female name at the top, my CV was something to read between the lines.

In early March, when I had given up hope that I would ever see Oxford, a work visa was finally

issued, with an expiry date in April. I would be too late for the opera in London, but in a state of

shock I found myself in Kathryn's car early one morning heading to the airport in Christchurch,

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which was six hours away. There was one expensive bus service to Christchurch, but the timetable

would have delayed me a couple of days. I was determined to make my flight, and get out of

Kathryn's way.

At the airport Kathryn and I met up with another mountain woman, who was working nearby. The

three of us sat drinking coffee in the terminal, all rather stunned to find that my suitcase had

disappeared down the conveyor belt and that real boarding passes had been put into my hands. I

now had enough money in my pocket for the bus fare from Heathrow to Oxford, plus four New

Zealand dollars.

Well, that's enough for an ice cream, Kathryn said, with her usual deadpan wit.

I hope so, I mused, although things are expensive over there.

I drained the last dregs of coffee, hugged my two friends and headed through customs. Fortunately

no mysterious extra taxes materialised as I passed through Auckland, Hong Kong and Heathrow.The UK customs officer glanced at my Oxford University sponsorship number and let me into

England, almost penniless.

Only vaguely awake, but full of enthusiasm, I pulled a warm jacket from my case and marched

expertly past the other travellers with my heavy trolley. On arrival at the Heathrow bus station, I

casually handed my only twenty pound note to the Oxford bus driver, asking him to let me off near

Oriel College. This was where the administrator for Brent's group, Judie, had arranged for me to

stay. The future was uncertain, but it would pass through Oxford.

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Chapter 4

Oxford is known as the city of dreaming spires. The site was already settled in Neolithic times, but

became important only with the construction of a Saxon abbey by the celebate princess St

Frideswide, who died in 727. It is said that St Frideswide cured the blindness of a rejected suitor

with water from a magical well, which formed when she hit the ground with her staff. This well still

exists in the grounds of a small church just outside Oxford. It is the well supposedly taken by Alice

on her journey into Wonderland.

Legend has it that the University was founded by Alfred the Great, who successfully defended

towns against Viking invaders. Alfred officially created the city of Oxford in 911. Over the next few

centuries, the University slowly evolved from a murky past.

In 1167 King Henry II had to ban the English from studying in Paris, forcing many of them to settlein Oxford, in a loose collection of study centres. One of the oldest existing colleges was officially

founded in 1260 by John Balliol and his royal wife Devorguilla, with the support of a bishop.

Balliol College took in a few poor students, giving them each a living allowance, providing a model

for other colleges to follow.

Merton College was founded in 1264 by another bishop, and University College, with a history

going back to 1249, eventually moved to its current site in 1332. Exeter College was founded in

1314 under Edward II, whose funds also founded Oriel College. New College, dating from 1379,

was built partly in order to replace clergymen who had died in the Black Death. These colleges, and

others, all lie at the heart of modern Oxford. Today there are 38 autonomous colleges at Oxford,

which has spread far beyond the ancient city walls.

In about 1400 the University created its coat of arms, with the words Dominus Illuminatio Mea: The

Lord is my Light, an ancient sentiment from a time when illumination was not an exchange of

billiard ball photons, but something that was created within. I, the observer, would seek truth within

this space.

The first impression one gets of a strange country is often through its public transport. The airport

bus from Heathrow was clean and comfortable, and my anti social temperament relieved to see that

there were few other passengers. A lengthy radio conversation between the driver and his base

established that Oriel College was close to a central bus stop on High St. How fortunate I was, I

thought, to understand the language here.

In far less time than I had anticipated we passed the outer suburbs and moved into a narrow road

lined with elaborate stone buildings, many topped with gargoyles and decorative spires. This was

High St and the bus put me down. Bleary eyed, I jumped out onto the footpath and looked up at the

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old stone wall before me, my eye catching a plaque dedicated to the chemist Boyle, who had

worked here centuries before. As I pulled up on the handle of my old suitcase it snapped off,

rendering the crooked wheels almost useless, so I clumsily dragged the case, and my other heavy

bag, along the street and down the nearest cobblestoned side lane. People offered to help and I felt

that Oxford was a friendly city.

Oriel College was the last college at Oxford to admit only male students, which it did until 1985. Its

original buildings no longer exist, but the current architecture goes back to 1620. It was not far to

Oriel College from the bus stop.

My antipodean jaw dropped with wonder and happiness when I glimpsed the first beautiful, historic

courtyard, with its pristine lawn. I stood at the lodge desk, waiting for the porters to confirm that I

belonged there. They were not exactly expecting me, so I was handed a rough map and sent across

the college grounds to the bursar's office, suitcase in tow.In the farthest alcove, behind a solid timber door, was a dusty office. An industrious Canadian

woman greeted me, and after phone conversations with Judie it was agreed that the department

would forward me a month's accommodation fees for a student room, in a new wing of the college

on the edge of town. The room would be ready tomorrow.

It remained to pay for a single room in the central college for that night. I confessed that I did not

have the money, and tentatively waved a worthless credit card under her nose as some vague form

of security. It was still morning, but the days old sweat and clouded eyes were very noticeable.

Suddenly the kind woman took pity on me, handing me the keys to an astoundingly small, but

comfortable room, arranging with Judie again to get the money tomorrow.

When I finally managed to find the room, suitcase roughly intact, I laughed with joy at the

momentary realisation that I was really there. The tiny English bathroom became an amusing

puzzle, as I tried to shower without spraying water everywhere.

The full reality would take a long while to sink in, making Oxford a place of the world in my mind.

This was a special city, I thought, and everyone here would be thoughtful and kind. How could it be

otherwise? I rested and arranged with Brent via email to meet him in the department later that

afternoon, just to say hello.

Following a basic map, I wandered across High St, past the elegant University Church and

landmark Radcliffe Camera, past museums and colleges, along Parks Rd to the science area of the

University where the department was situated. My instructions were to yell in the direction of a

certain second floor window from the carpark, bringing Brent downstairs to let me in. My tired

voice was weak and hoarse, but eventually a man appeared and motioned impatiently for me to

follow him into the building.

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Typically an impatient person myself, I gathered that I had arrived in the Paradise of The Impatient,

so I didn't mind the lack of fanfare. Brent raced me around the labyrinthine corridors, introducing

me to Judie and about ten members of the group, before taking me to the office that I would use.

Judie was the friendly administrator that I had expected, only a little older than me and dressed in a

casual but feminine fashion that would not have her mistaken for an academic.

My office contained six small desks, most of which were being used by PhD students, naturally all

male. This office was my first heartfelt disappointment, but I said nothing. After all, space at Oxford

was presumably valuable. At least the room was clean and adequately furnished. I chose the empty

desk in the corner behind the door. This office was right opposite Brent's office.

I spent my small change on a snack for dinner, too exhausted to worry about being hungry once

again. The next morning I left my bag with the porters at Oriel and went to see the department

administrator, Mark. I had been warned that Mark was a difficult person, constantly doing things toscrew up the group's plans. I found this to be quite untrue. Mark efficiently took me through all the

forms that I needed to sign, waived the key deposit and arranged for part of my first month's salary

to be forwarded to Oriel College. There would also be a little money for food, but unfortunately this

would take over a week to reach my hands. In the end, I would be forced to borrow a little money

from both Judie and Brent, which I could not fully pay back until June.

After officially settling into the office by unloading a pile of papers onto my desk, I returned to

Oriel and constructed a handle for my suitcase from an old belt. I then wheeled the case, with the

other heavy bag across my shoulders, all the way down High St and up Cowley Rd to the new hall

of the college, which was an ordinary set of modern dormitory buildings. I was met by the hall

caretaker, who was suitably impressed with my mobility. He showed me my comfortable room with

its own miniscule bathroom, a luxury that I had not been expecting.

There were no bedsheets and I had no money to buy any, even second hand, but the heating was

overly generous by antipodean standards, so I spent my first month in Oxford trying to sleep on a

small bare bed. The shared kitchen was always a filthy mess and my room faced busy Cowley Rd,

where young people prowled at night, making an awful noise at 3 am each day. But at least I had a

large desk, and some food on my shelf, and was pleased to discover a cheap supermarket nearby.

I smiled all the way to the office on the second morning. There was still a little administrative paper

work to do and organisation of a computer account. The group members typically arrived at a late

hour, but eventually I found Brent in his office. Brent was a plain, western European man, about my

age, with bright dark eyes and a healthy Oxford complexion. He was happy to chat for a while, and

I mentioned my genuine eagerness to work through some of his recent work.

Brent claimed to have suffered in his early years as a physicist, working on non mainstream ideas.

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He had obviously made the most of his move to the alternative discipline of the department. He was

recommending that I also leave the physicists for dead, but this I could never do. I had been fighting

this battle my entire life. Alternative disciplines within the physical sciences were just one more

way of giving in.

At first I was impressed by Brent's thoughtfulness and goodwill. After the group went out to a

seminar lunch, and I did not order anything for myself, he offered to lend me some money without

me even having to ask. I thought he must be genuinely concerned about my situation. We could chat

easily and laugh. It was not yet known that I did not understand The System, whatever monstrous

form it took. Neither did I have any desire to participate in The Game, at least by any of the usual

rules.

I agreed to give a couple of introductory lectures on standard particle physics, for which I spent

some time refreshing my memory. They went off vaguely acceptably, although I would much ratherhave spoken about my own work. Not realising that this was not my work, a guy in the audience

made some very critical remarks. This guy turned out to be absolutely brilliant, and I did not mind

at all that he expressed his opinions tersely. Brent, however, felt it was necessary to come to my

office afterwards and apologise for his colleague's rudeness.

Brent offered me a further four months employment. The money supposedly came from the grant

that paid Etienne, another postdoc in the group. This extra time would give me some real peace of

mind over the summer, and I could not believe my good fortune. Now the department could send

my passport off to the bowels of the Home Office for the required visa extension.

This all happened long before I realised how much influence Brent had over who was employed in

the group, and for how long. Postdoctoral positions usually run for one to three years. It was highly

unusual for someone to be employed on such a short term contract, but I was not considered good

enough for a proper job here. All science postdocs are used to moving from country to country,

never properly settling down, but to me even a single year in one job would have meant an ocean of

stability. Seven months would have to do.

Steven was the senior professor who had originally employed Brent as a postdoc, back in the 90s.

Steven and Brent had published a famous paper describing quantum mechanics in the language of

Field X, so their prestige was secure and their names forever tied together. Steven had originally

obtained a PhD in Philosophy, but his talents soon found him in the sciences. He was a subtle

thinker, friendly and sharp.

Steven was clearly pleased enough with Brent's high productivity to give him free rein on running

the research team, although they shared the supervision of the students. This gave Steven more time

to focus on his own research. He participated in group talks, conferences, departmental seminars

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and special lunches, but otherwise we saw little of him, whereas Brent would often pop into offices

to check on small details.

It is perhaps a pity that I did not spend more time talking to Steven, but our backgrounds are so

different that it would have been difficult to find a precise research topic in common. Although the

group focused on physical theory, I was one of few fully qualified physicists currently in the group,

and the only one with any background in particle physics.

Everyone in the group understood that a revolution in particle physics was on the cards. We were

also quite convinced that this revolution would employ the methods of our beloved Field X.

However, because the known researchers in Field X had not yet developed these methods, the

Oxford men were fairly convinced that nobody else had made much progress.

In reality a great deal of progress had been made in rewriting particle physics, in particular in two

subjects outside Field X. One, known as twistor theory, had its roots in an old attempt to describeGeneral Relativity using an alternative geometry. In recent years, this geometry had come to replace

the standard one in certain calculations of scattering amplitudes in particle physics, to the point

where the sophisticated graphical rules of particle physics could be replaced by alternative rules.

The second subject is known as noncommutative geometry, and its methods are linked to the

modern understanding of renormalisation, which is the process by which one rescales the seething

quantum vacuum to obtain physical results about a few particles. These were both large, very

mathematical subjects.

There was one young postdoc, Julian, who seemed to appreciate the situation. When in good spirits,

Brent would allow Julian to chide him about his mathematical ignorance, and Brent would even

joke about it himself.

Field X was becoming important. Twistor theory and noncommutative geometry were based on

standard 20th century set theory, the axioms of which underlie all established physical theory. The

majority of physicists were convinced that this classical mathematics was good enough for quantum

gravity, but Field X was slowly proving them wrong.

A noncommutative formulation of standard particle physics had been used to predict the mass of the

so called God particle, the Higgs boson, but this prediction was now concretely ruled out by the

accelerator experiments at Fermilab, in the States. Field X was suggesting that the God particle

might not exist at all.

Many physicists had suggested alternatives to the Higgs boson, but a satisfactory explanation could

only lie beyond standard physics, because the Higgs mechanism is responsible for particle rest

masses. In the established framework, the observed particle zoo arises from local symmetry

principles, based on classical spacetime. There is a special symmetry for each of the known forces:

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electromagnetism, the weak and strong nuclear forces. Rest masses, however, are the domain of

gravity, for which no quantum theory yet exists.

Anyway, there was a conflict between the real advances in the twistor approach and results in

noncommutative geometry, which tended to assume traditional forms for physical expressions. The

correct theory, whatever it was, would have to resolve such tensions, but these subjects were so

sophisticated that it was like bashing one's head against a brick wall.

Meanwhile, the popular science magazines were promoting the most dreadful garbage, still trapped

in the dark ages of String Theory. Field X had once made the front page ofNew Scientist, but few

journalists would bother to write about something so obtuse. The public understood that change was

coming to physics, but they were being terribly misled about its true state of affairs.

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Chapter 5

The walk to the office from the Cowley Rd hall passed many central Oxford landmarks. At first it

felt foreign like any other old European city, as I stumbled on the unfamiliar cobblestones. There

was a grotty liquor outlet just before the Cherwell bridge, across which Magdalen College, which I

had never heard of before, showed a proud face to High St. Some days I then took the Queen's lane,

which wound its way beneath the high gargoyled walls of New College, and under the bridge of

sighs. Other days I carried on further down High St, turning right at the University Church.

In a schedule utterly unlike my colleagues, I would rise at 5.30am to appreciate the morning peace

and quiet. Arranging an internet connection at the hall proved to involve English complications, but

there was an online computer near the entrance for residents to check their email.

There were three other regular users of my office in the department. The two young European PhDstudents, Robert and Rafael, were obviously talented, but had a slightly annoying liking for inane

chatter. They were reasonable boys and I liked them. Rafael was a social success at his college, and

many a day was spent perfecting a college website or facebook photo. Robert, who had studied

Field X in London, was in danger of toying with too many research ideas at once, much as I had

done.

There was also an American PhD student, John the dude, whom one could not help suspecting of

graduating from Harvard as much with the help of his family's money as with innate talent,

although he had some of that. I was pleased to see that John had a real physics background. He

seemed friendly enough at first, and in my simple mindedness I was determined to like anyone who

was friendly, despite the warnings I was given about his dubious character.

Instinctively, I was a little disturbed by the ease with which Brent complained about the weaknesses

of other members of the group. As a cold hearted, cynical woman, I realised that he would soon be

doing the same with me, no matter what I did, but I put these thoughts out of my mind. In a strange

land one focuses on the needs of the present, prepared for all eventualities.

After the first few days I spoke to Brent only occasionally, as I was given the impression that he just

wanted me to get to work. Happily, I would return quietly to my desk. There was plenty to think

about. I immediately began studying Brent's latest papers, honestly determined to make a valuable

contribution to the group's research, but knowing that it would take a month or two to settle into a

completely new routine, not to mention a reasonable diet. I was surprised to find that I could even

ignore the noise around me, motivated by my new found hope.

I browsed the Oxford website, delighted to find so many seminars of interest to attend, mostly in

other departments nearby. Brent told me not to waste time going to seminars, but such a warning is

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a bit like telling a starving, caged dog not to run when it is finally released into a rabbit infested

field. I had never worked in a place with so many seminar opportunities, and I was almost always

alone.

There was no question of my dedication to the research, but I had almost no background in the main

discipline of this department. Brent hinted that I should make an effort to learn some of the jargon.

There were two conferences early on, which would provide a perfect opportunity for this. These

conferences turned out to be a good opportunity to meet Brent's regular gang of friends, who went

to the same conferences as each other, year after year. A few of the characters were interesting, and

doing good research.

The new jargon was too much for me. I was already an avid reader of many academic subjects, and

it was simply impossible for me to add too many more. If I could publish in physics or

mathematics, there would be no good reason for me to write conference papers in Brent's peculiarstyle. Brent told me that it was all about having a community, but this community was not mine.

There were numerous other graduate students in the group, all supervised by Brent and Steven. My

favourite was young Anton, a confident, well built mathematician with a heavy Russian accent and

a very beautiful wife. Anton had a mathematics background and was in the process of steering the

group in a more promising direction. He was writing an interesting report, but for one of those

mysterious silent reasons I never saw a copy of it.

The gentlest and kindest student was Pablo, who had a more philosophical bent. Judie liked to laugh

at Pablo about his fixation with obtaining quality deli goods, which were often sent to him from

Europe. Then there was Brad, an English lad, who trained hard in the university parks and liked to

dabble in mountaineering. He was finishing up his thesis, and considering a career in the military.

Brent's favourite was probably Adam, a talented and diligent American with a gentle southern

drawl, who had earned himself a nice office on a higher floor, which he shared with the absentee

Rex, a Scottish postdoc. There were two other Englishmen and another Scot, but I hardly ever saw

them. It was rumoured that one occasionally appeared in the corridors late at night. Another had a

desk in my office, but must have worked elsewhere. Callum, the Scot, was a good natured lad with

a refreshingly worldly background, and we usually saw him at group seminars. There were also a

few masters students who were thinking of working in Field X. This was Brent's army. Apparently,

Brent could find no talented young women in the field.

After a few days my university staff card was issued, giving me in particular free entry to all the

colleges. At first, I could only think of the opportunity I now had to do some work, so I didn't

wander around very much. There was plenty of time for that. I disliked the crowds of tourists, the

beggars and the visitors that always filled the narrow streets. In contrast to the Southern Alps,

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everywhere was crowded and noisy. Robert, a Londoner, could not understand how Oxford could be

perceived as anything but quiet. I soon saw that Oxford was not utopia. It was a city of social

contrasts, difficult for a simple minded stranger to fathom.

Eventually I discovered the countryside west of the city. The fertile fields beside the Thames have

been grazed for a very long time. The founder of Oxford, King Alfred, gave the low lying pasture

near the river to the Freemen of Oxford, whose right to use the land is written in the Domesday

book of 1086. Preserved for so many centuries, these meadows hold important archaeological

remains, such as Bronze Age burial mounds. They are only a short walk from the city centre. I liked

to take the path across the centre of the meadows, carrying on over the rough ground after the path

petered out.

A little further north, on the other side of the river, lie the ruins of Godstow abbey, destroyed by

Henry VIII. The abbey was built after the land was bequeathed to Benedictine nuns in 1133. It waslater extended by King Henry II, whose mistress the Fair Rosamund was there briefly before and

after her death. The locals admired Rosamund, who was far more English than Queen Eleanor.

King Richard I, the Lionheart, and King John were the younger sons of Henry II and Eleanor, the

independent Duchess of Aquitaine. They were both born in the palace in Oxford, the site of which is

marked by a small plaque at a busy roundabout. Richard the Lionheart, who reached the Holy Land

in 1191, attempted a bizarre truce with the Moslems by proposing an impossible marriage between

Saladin's nephew and his own widowed Christian sister Joanna, Queen of Sicily, a devotee of the

murdered St Thomas Becket. Henry VIII would later order the destruction of all images of St

Thomas in England, but a stained glass image from 1320 survives in the cathedral at Christ Church

College.

King Richard was accomplished at losing English money, but later monarchs did better. For an

unbroken thousand years, English plunder has held up the walls of Oxford. Even when the mighty

British Empire died, the remaining spoils of centuries kept clean these stones.

But today, the ghost whispered that this time was ending. Who would hold up these crumbling walls

for the future? This was no longer an English city, but a monument for the world, where the

confident day trippers argued with the porters at Christ Church to let them in after hours. The

English had a class instinct and would obey their new masters, whoever they were, though the

commands might not be welcome. Where else could they go? These were the people who had

stayed for the thousand years, watching countless generations leave for distant shores. Like a few of

my ancestors, I too would be forced to leave this place, sadly knowing that everything has an end.

After I was issued with an Oxford email address, I received an invitation from Herbert to visit his

college, one of the central old colleges, established centuries ago and with its own personal part in

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British history. He was rather busy, so we agreed on lunch, which started promptly at 1pm each day

during term.

I was extremely nervous as I stood waiting for him at the porters' lodge. I had put on weight since

giving up waitressing all those months ago, and my current low budget diet was not conducive to a

healthy complexion. That is, I looked ten years older than I had a year before, but I was trying very

hard not to care.

Of course I was immediately disappointed with Herbert, who seemed far more distant than he had

in Tekapo. Perhaps he had been informed, somewhere along the way, about my sorry character. I

would never know the things that people never said. Wearing the habitual, conditioned manners of

an unintimidating antipodean lady, I became polite and vacuous, knowing that this would only

further encourage the men's limitless ability to underestimate me.

Herbert was very apologetic about the construction work in progress at the college, as he led methrough the old corridors to the modern lunch room. Busy academics were helping themselves to a

simple but generous buffet lunch.

The venison is probably not up to New Zealand standards, I'm afraid, Herbert remarked, with his

deliberate gentlemanly air. He was right about that, but I really didn't mind. Perhaps I was supposed

to be impressed, but nobody seriously expected English food to be competitive.

With an expert eye I observed that the catering was well managed and heavily serviced, which is to

say expensive. I was quickly introduced to about ten other local academics, also fellows of the

college, but it seemed that many were in a rush to finish lunch and return to work. Herbert was

determined to do his duty, playing the good host, but I was making it a little difficult with my

laconic nervousness. We sat beside another experimental physicist.

Perhaps I imagined it, but for a brief moment Herbert seemed unconsciously indifferent, like any

other condescending man. I was annoyed, not least because I did not feel at all out of place, having

spent my youth with people who could eat ten Herberts for breakfast.

After racing through two or three courses one typically retires to the warmly furnished senior

common room, to finish lunch with an espresso coffee and biscuit. There Herbert was kind enough

to introduce me to the other fellows as a Real Theoretical Physicist, prompting a fashionable

historian to remark, So not one of those string theorists, then.

I cheered up when Herbert showed me the main hall on the way out, with its dark panelling, the

ubiquitous high table and the stunning portraits, two of such general historical importance that I

instantly recognised them. I would visit this college again on a number of occasions, but I never sat

at the high table in this hall.

Later on I did enjoy dinner at high table in another old college in the centre of Oxford. In one of

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many departments of interest to me I ran into an elderly Oxford professor, Kenneth, whom I had

previously met at conferences in Australia. He had an Australian graduate student, a woman. I was

quite interested in his line of research, although his discipline was different to mine. We chatted

easily about a range of topics over lunch at his college one day. In the competitive world of

intercollege rivalry, Kenneth's college was doing fairly well.

Although autonomous, most colleges follow the same system for the encouragement of academic

discussion. Amongst the priveleges of a college fellow are places for guests at meals. In general, the

more senior the fellow, or the wealthier the college, the more guest meals will be available to them.

Guests are supposed to be interesting people, able to join the, in principle at least, fascinating

discussions that give the college its fine reputation. Sometimes they are simply the wives and

husbands of the fellows. Unfortunately, in these times of academic specialisation there is little cross

disciplinary talk. The conversation at the street kebab carts was often just as interesting.Kenneth was sufficiently advanced in years to hold a senior position at his college, which meant

that he presided over dinner at high table. The guests initally meet in the common room, just before

dinner, where they are introduced to the other fellows and guests over a glass of sherry. I was overly

conscious that my new second hand jacket smelled a little musty, but I had dressed appropriately

enough in a simple black dress with some ornamentation and a brand new pair of shiny black shoes,

with heels higher than I had worn in decades. The friendliness of the crowd helped me to relax. As

is often the case in life, the more prestigious the venue, the less snobbish the crowd.

There were a number of medical people and a few other scientists. The seating arrangement for

dinner was printed out and shown to everyone in the common room, addressed formally by their

proper names: doctors, professors, sirs and so on. Punctually at seven, we filed into the hall in the

correct order, the fellows wearing their academic gowns. Kenneth sat at the head of the table, and I

to his right.

Nobody took any notice whatsoever of the students, quickly eating their basic meals in the hall

below us. It took us a few hours to work through the savoury courses. Kenneth told me some of the

college's colourful history, stretching back a good part of a millenium. The food at this college was

quite good, and my wine glasses were continuously refilled by the very professional waiters.

The high table group always moves downstairs for dessert, where we all sat at another long, heavy

table, laden with platters of fruit, turkish delights and other goodies. Decanters of spirits and dessert

wine were continually passed, strictly clockwise, around the table. It was quite late when we finally

moved upstairs to the now familiar common room for coffee. Kenneth was a true gentleman from a

generation that insists on walking ladies home, and he showed no impatience as I hobbled slowly

along the cobblestones in the wobbly heels.

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Chapter 6

For many years there were two major approaches to the fundamental problem of constructing a

quantum theory for gravity. The first was String Theory, a grand edifice of classical geometry,

which was taken as gospel until recently by the majority of mathematical theorists. Its origins lay in

an extension of 20th century point particle physics to stringy objects. In contrast, a second packaged

set of ideas was based on principles from classical General Relativity, combined with basic

concepts from quantum physics.

Both of these failed approaches had a very serious and obvious flaw. A quantum theory of gravity

requires new physics, and new physics has never come from the application of wishful thinking to

long established methods. Unfortunately, the use of established methods makes publishing papers

easier. Many bright young string theorists are currently moving into other, genuinely interestingresearch areas, with the assistance of their older colleagues. Meanwhile, the people who had been

correctly critical of these approaches for decades are still mostly ignored.

The one mathematical subject that has made notable headway in physics in the past ten years,

independently of any given theoretical bias, is Field X. There are now academics in a few Physics

departments who teach some aspects of Field X in their courses. However, there are as yet almost

no specialists in Field X employed by Physics departments, where the majority insist on employing

traditional methods, and funding commitees have no idea what Field X is about.

Brent and Steven lead one of few established groups worldwide who concentrate on the physical

aspects of Field X. Brent maintains his interest in physical applications, but he does this without

being a true member of the Physics community, having sacrificed his place as a physicist in order to

work in another discipline.

In April, Brent headed to a physics institute in Canada for a three month visit. This independent

institute had been aware of Field X since its foundation about ten years ago, but was only now

reluctantly admitting a need to promote it. Brent and I would not have a chance to work together

after all.

While he was awa

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