HARVARD SCIENCE BOOK TALKS

If you were to present the feats of modern science to someone from the past, those feats would surely be considered magic. Theoretical physicist Felix Flicker proves that they are indeed magic—just familiar magic. The name for this magic is “condensed matter physics.” Most people haven’t heard of the field, yet more than a third of physicists identify as condensed matter researchers, making it the most active area in the subject—with good reason. Condensed matter is the solids, liquids, and gasses that surround us—and the more exotic matters—which dictate every aspect of our present existence, and hold the keys to a brighter future, from quantum computing to real-life invisibility cloaks.

Flicker teases out the magical threads that run through our daily lives. Condensed matter physics allows you to create anything abiding by the laws of reality—and often, we find that those laws can be bent. Flicker explains how to create new particles which never existed before, how to make crystals shoot out such intense light they can cut through metal, how to separate the poles of a magnet. And more.

The book’s endearing conceit is that you, the reader, are an aspiring wizard whose ability to cast spells (i.e. to do science) is dependent on your grasp of the fundamentals of our universe. This book contains no equations or charts—instead, it’s full of owls and mountains and infinite libraries, and staffs and wands, and martial arts and mythical islands ruled by sage knot-makers. Part of the book’s magic is that, for all these fanciful trappings, it still feels practical and applicable. The Magick of Physics will open your eyes to the miracles that surround us.

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Felix Flicker is a lecturer at Cardiff University in its School of Physics and Astronomy. He holds an MPhys in physics from St Catherine’s College, Oxford, and received his PhD in theoretical condensed matter physics from the University of Bristol in 2015. He won The Neville Robinson Prize for Best Academic Performance in the Final Honours School in his third and fourth years. He has published in both Nature and Science, and has delivered talks at the Royal Institution. Felix has also delivered talks on the mathematics, physics, magic, and superstition of knots.

Norman Y. Yao earned both his undergraduate degree (2009) and his Ph.D. (2014) from Harvard. Following a Miller postdoctoral fellowship, he joined the UC Berkeley physics faculty in 2017 and Harvard in 2022. He says he is excited to be returning to Harvard as a professor of physics.