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interviewer: today isfebruary 2, 2012. i'm larry gallagher and today iam talking with walter lewin as part of the mit150 infinitehistory project. walter lewin was born and raisedin the netherlands. he came to mit in 1966 as apostdoctoral associate in the department of physics and wasinvited to join the faculty as an assistant professor. professor lewin is a highlyaccomplished astrophysicist and a pioneer in x-rayastronomy.

in addition to hisgroundbreaking scientific work, lewin taught the threephysics core classes at mit for more than 40 years. his lucid and engaging lectureswere hugely popular, and introduced thousandsof students to the beauty of physics. lewin's lectures are still amongthe most popular items on mit's opencourseware, anditunes u, and are viewed by about 5,000 people daily fromall over the world.

professor lewin retired frommit in 2009, and is now a professor of physics,emeritus. welcome, walter, and thank youfor taking the time to talk with us today. lewin: my pleasure, larry. interviewer: walter, as noted inyour introduction, you are an accomplished researcherand a renowned teacher. how did you balance the demandsrequired to become so accomplished in both areas?

lewin: that's an excellentquestion. there were times that i didresearch and there were times that i lectured. and when i lectured, my graduatestudents didn't see much of me, because when ilectured for the freshmen, for 600 people, i put in 85to 100 hours a week. and my graduate studentsknew that. but there was so much momentumin my research that i could afford doing that one term,provided i did it only, say,

once every two years. and so--- interviewer: so did you dothings kind-- you did things in phases, then. you'd have a research phasewhere you'd put most of your energy there, and thena teaching phase. lewin: that's right. i also negotiated most of thetime if i would take on a major lecturing responsibility,for 500, 600

students, that i wouldget one term off, which was always granted. so surely during the six monthsor during the three months that i would lecture, iwould still be involved in the research, but very remote. at a distance. whereas all the other time iwould work on that i was bringing home all my research,including summers. interviewer: you grew up inthe netherlands during the

horrors of world war ii. lewin: that's correct. interviewer: would you care totalk about those experiences and how they have shaped theperson you are today? lewin: larry, that cannot beanswered in three hours. my grandparents were gassedin auschwitz. half my family was murderedby the nazis. i went through the hunger winterin the hague in 1944 when we ate bark off trees.

we ate tulip bulbs, and youget paralyzed when you eat tulip bulbs. there was no electricity. there was no transportation. my father was a jew, buthe went underground. and thank goodness theynever found him. the rules, the laws, how theychanged because of the nazis, was like water comingslowly up. in other words, the first thingwas that my father could

not walk in parks. well, but my father would say,how often do i go to parks? then my father was no longerallowed to go to restaurants. and my father would say, well,how often do i go to restaurants? then my father was no longerallowed to use public transportation. then my father would say,well, how often do i use public transportation?

then my father was no longerallowed to walk on the street after eight o'clock. and my father would say, well,how often do i walk on the street at eight o'clock? and so very slowly, i've seenthis water coming here, and higher-- rising andrising and rising. and i've still nightmaresabout it. i occasionally dream that iwitnessed my own execution. i occasionally dream thatthe gestapo executes me.

interviewer: despite thesehorrors, i read in your book that you said that after thewar, in your words, you had more or less a normalchildhood. how did things shiftso quickly? lewin: well, i do not knowwhat "quickly" means. when the war was ended,i was nine. my father was back home. he survived the war. of course, we had to digest atthat time the fact that we

were pretty much sure of, butnever 100 percent, that my grandparents were gassedand that my uncle and my aunt were murdered. but life goes on and soi say within a year or so, by 1946, yeah. my father's business got goingagain, because obviously as a jew he was not allowedto have any business. in fact, he wasn't even home. so i would say after 1946, yeah,my life became again

quite normal. and not much different fromother people, other than the scars of the war. but everyone had scarsin some way. but because of the fact thati was half jewish, and my father's family was jewish, myscars are probably a little bit more severe. and are still there today. there is not a single day,larry, not a single day that

the world war ii isnot on my plate. i can almost say nota single hour. interviewer: when was it thatyou first realized you had a special love of science? lewin: oh, it was very late. yeah, that was maybethe last one or two years of high school. interviewer: wasthere an "aha"? was there an epiphany?

what was it? lewin: so many people haveasked me that question. it wasn't from oneday to the next. there was a friend of ours athome who sometimes helped me with my homework, believe it ornot-- with my algebra, with my physics, whichmy chemistry. he was a chemist himself. and i slowly began to realizethat, when you come to think of it, it's actuallyquite easy.

science is there to makedifficult things easy. the man on the street thinks theother way around, but it's completely wrong. they think that physics is thereto make it easy things difficult, because when theythink of physics, they think of the equations. i don't think of equations wheni think of physics, i think of concepts. and the amazing thing withphysics is, and i'm sure that

holds for many other scientists,that the most incredibly difficult thingscan be understood and calculated in seconds. whereas without that background,without that mathematical structure,there would be no way. interviewer: when did youfirst start looking at rainbows, for example, andsaying, i wonder how rainbows are formed? lewin: that was duringmy students years.

there's a book written by a veryfamous professor in the netherlands, [inaudible],and he wrote a book. in dutch, it's called[inaudible]. it is translated in english. i have the english version alsoin my office, although i really cherish thedutch version. but he discusses allkinds of events-- events is not the thing. all kinds of phenomena that yousee in nature, including

the waves on canals, whatconclusions you can draw from that. and glories, when you flyover clouds and you see beautiful colors. and, of course, he alsodiscusses rainbows. interviewer: and when did youfirst read that book? lewin: i would think that thiswas presumably in my freshman year or my sophomore year. interviewer: in high school?

lewin: no, no. no, no. university. interviewer: oh, university. okay. lewin: not high school. interviewer: oh, interesting. lewin: so i was already13, 14 years old. interviewer: and how and whendid you first develop your

love, your passionfor teaching? lewin: i think thatcame very early. it appealed to me somehow. it's, in a way, part ofmy personality, i think, to teach people. and so when i got my master'sdegree, and i wanted to continue for my phd, i wasgiven the option by the government to teach five yearsfull time at a high school, at least 20 contact hours a week.

if i did that, then i was notgoing to be drafted in the army, which was in thosedays 18 months for every dutch person. it would've been a totaldisaster for me to get into the army. i would be scrubbing toiletsevery day, believe me, because i can't stand authority. and so i would clash withthem every day. in addition, i had afellowship from the

government. and every year that you wouldteach physics, because there was a shortage of physicsprofessors, they would reduce your debt by 20 percent. so after five years,no more debt. and then during those fiveyears, i got my ph.d. so needless to say that iworked day and night. interviewer: you also write thatyour parents ran a school out of your house.

so that must have influencedyou as well. lewin: no, i don't thinkthat has anything to do with my teaching. that was for adultsin the evening. i was a teacher there ontypewriting and shorthand for a while when i was a student. and i made some money that way,so my father hired me instead of teachers. no, i don't think that thatwas particularly--

no, i wouldn't call that thestarting point for my desire, or my love-- love is a better word,love for teaching. that really came when i wasfive years in rotterdam at that school which is calledlibanon lyceum. and i still, nowadays-- remember how long this is ago,they started in 1960-- i still nowadays sometimes getletters from people who thank me for the way that i have madethem see the world in a

different way. and at the time then,i was not aware that i was doing that. now i know. that's my goal. my goal now is and has beenfor the past 30 years, 40 years at mit, to make peoplesee the world in a new way. in a way that theynever would. but i already did that at thelibanon lyceum apparently.

interviewer: and that was withstudents that were only a few years younger than you were? they were only a fewyears younger. some became friends later. interviewer: and havethey followed-- they had you in the classroomthen and then they're able to see you on the internet now. do you hear from them? lewin: oh, yeah.

i get emails from them. they see me at internet. yeah, of course. and i was recently on dutch tv,which was viewed by 1.5 million people. and boy, the number of reactionsthat i got from my old students was enormous. and i gave a lecture in delft,my university, two days later, after the tv performance.

and there were many peoplefrom the libanon lyceum. and of course, i didn'trecognize them. it was almost halfa century ago. so some people said, don't yourecognize me, professor lewin? it was 50 years ago,not a clue. you don't even remember names,except a handful that always remained in contact with me. in fact, there are somewith whom i still exchange email weekly.

interviewer: what was thatlecture that you gave at-- lewin: oh, the lecture i gave inthe netherlands on october 26, 2011 was about rainbows. rainbows and blue skiesand white clouds. why are the clouds white, andwhy is the sky blue, and why are rainbows the way they are? and my first question thati always ask is-- i ask the class, i askmy audience, i ask the people in delft--

have many of youseen rainbows? and then, oh, they'veall seen rainbows. and my reaction is, no,you've never seen one. you've looked at rainbows, butyou've never seen them. just like art. you've looked at art, but youmay never have seen it. and after this lecture onrainbows will be the first time in your life that youactually have seen a rainbow. and it will change yourlife forever.

you know that i get daily atleast five rainbow pictures from people all overthe world. i don't even know whatto do with them. and sometimes i don'teven look at them. i get too many. interviewer: let's go backto your years in college. for your phd thesis, you studiedradioactive decay at delft universityof technology. please tell us about that.

lewin: well, yeah. there was a theory at the timethat certainly decays form-- either the product is a gammaray or the product is an electron, if i try tosimplify the matter. and the fraction gamma raysthrough deflection of electrons was theoreticallypredicted. and there were indications thatthe theory was wrong. and one of the things that i didin a few cases-- four or five, i remember--

to demonstrate to an enormousdegree of accuracy that the theory was correct. see, the whole idea was physicsis the degree of accuracy is what counts. if someone comes up with anumber that is 10 percent accurate, that is nowherenearly as interesting as someone who comes up withanother number which is one percent accurate. and so for me, the greataccomplishment was that in

order to prove that theexperiment which claimed that the theory wasn't working,i had to decrease the uncertainty in my measurementsto show them that they were wrong. and i succeeded. interviewer: precisionis a very important part of your teaching. you talk a great deal aboutthe importance of precise measurement.

you proclaim in your firstlecture, in mit physics 801, classical mechanics, quote, "anymeasurement that you make without knowledge of itsuncertainty is meaningless," close quote. lewin: i said it three timesduring that lecture, because a number without the uncertaintyof the number is totally meaningless. what does it mean when i saythis table is 76 inches long? does it mean thatit could be 77?

could it be 78? maybe it's 72. but if someone says, this tableis 76 plus or minus 0.2 inches long, now that's ahell of a lot better. and so in my first lecture,i bring something to test. and they will neverforget that. my grandmother told me when youlie down, you're taller than when you stand up. now, how do you prove that?

if i measure a person stand upand having the person lie down, and i measurethat distance in inches, that means nothing. i have to know the uncertaintyin each measurement. only then can i make the case. so what do i do? i have an aluminum rod, whichis about six feet long. i measure the aluminum rodvertically and i measure the aluminum rod horizontally.

and i show them that i canactually measure the length of that rod to an accuracy of onemillimeter in both cases. and so even though the twonumbers are not the same-- it never is because there's anuncertainty in everything you do, they were within onemillimeter the same. so i demonstrated to my class,what i'm going to do with a student now has an accuracyof one millimeter. then i put a studentvertically. i measured him.

then i put the studenthorizontally. and i measured him. and the difference was 3/4 of aninch with an uncertainty of one millimeter. so i have absolutely,conclusively, beyond a shadow of any doubt, demonstrated thatindeed, you're taller when you're lying down. and now you see how importantuncertainty is because it's only meaningful, the statementthat you're taller, if you can

demonstrate it by making youruncertainty that small. so now you see my statement thatany measurement that you make without knowledge ofuncertainty is meaningless. interviewer: and it's so nice tobe able to capture some of the passion of your teaching inthis interview, as you've just demonstrated. let's go back and-- can you talk about how youhappened to come to mit, and what enticed you to stay?

how did your mit experiencediffer from your time at delft? lewin: apples and coconuts. the difference betweenhell and heaven. that's a little bit ofan exaggeration. in the netherlands in thosedays, as a graduate student in physics, you were treated in away that was almost inhuman. there was no way you would geta key to the front door. oh no.

you get a key to the basement. so you had to go in throughthe basement, to make you really feel that youwere nothing. i worked with radioactiveisotopes. that means i often-- almost always-- had to workthrough the night, because radioactive isotopes decay. and when they decay, they getfainter and fainter, weaker and weaker, and thenultimately, i

have to stop measuring. so i sometimes work60 hours straight. they demanded that every daybefore 4 o'clock, i had to submit an applicationto work that night. they did everything to makemy life miserable. there were parking places forthree professors in front of the building. i had a car. i was not supposedto park there.

but my own supervisorwas a wonderful man. he wasn't like that at all. he wasn't a bureaucrat at all. only came on tuesdays. so i said to him-- hisname was [inaudible]. i said [inaudible], since you'reonly here on tuesday, do you mind if i useyour parking place during the other days? he said, of course.

you can use it anytime you want to. so i park my car there. over the intercom-- walter lewin, remove immediatelyyour car. it was terrible. and so i had the feeling thateverything was done there to hold you down. and i was a little biteccentric, and maybe also at times therefore a littlebit obnoxious.

i collided with the system. and here i come to mit. interviewer: and how did mitcome across your radar screen? lewin: okay. very good question. my supervisor [inaudible], whowas nuclear physicist, was given an offer to becomeprofessor in utrecht-- we were in delft together,with [inaudible] to become a professor in utrechtin a new area, which

was space research. the netherlands had doneno space research. you're talking nowabout 1965, '66. and he asked me whether iwould want to become his second man-- sort of like vice chairman, vicepresident, whatever you want to call that, ofthat institute. and that appealed to me, becausei did see, really, the end of the kind of work i wasdoing as a nuclear physicist.

i saw that. it was low-energy nuclearphysics, it was not the particle physics. and so i said to [inaudible],i said, look, it's fine. but you know nothing aboutspace research. i know nothing aboutspace research. so i think i should go for oneyear to the united states and see what they do inspace research. and so he wrote a letter tobruno rossi, whom he happened

to know, and he wrote a letterto john simpson at chicago. and they offered me botha postdoctoral position for one year. i even signed papers with thenetherlands that i would come back after one year. there was even a penalty, afinancial penalty, if i decided not to come back. i came here on january11, 1966. i know the date so well becausewe were supposed to go

on january 4, but one of my kidsgot the mumps, and then the airlines won't fly you. and then my doctor said, yoursecond kid is going to get it too, but there is a small windowin which you're not contagious. and so we went on january 11. and indeed, three days later,my other kid got the mumps. so we arrived on january 11. half a year later i was offeredhere a professorship.

so i told the netherlandsto go to hell. i stayed here. interviewer: so given therestrictiveness of the ways things were at delft and therelative freedom and openness of mit, how long into that sixmonths did you know you weren't going back? lewin: i knew i hadto go back. it was only until aprofessorship was offered that all of a sudden mit was willingto change my j visa,

which was only good for oneyear, into a green card visa. that's a long process. but once mit makes the case,right or wrong i do not know, that they say-- because i worked with nasai had grant funding-- walter lewin is indispensablefor the country. his special knowledge isimportant for nasa. they can make the case, so iknow that i could stay here, but for the first six months,i just assumed

that i had to go back. interviewer: and when were youfirst struck by how different things were betweenthe two places? lewin: what? interviewer: how were youfirst struck with how different things were betweenthe way mit does things and the way-- lewin: day one. totally different atmosphere.

interviewer: explain. lewin: i got a key to allthe whole building. i could open every doorin the building. it was building 26. i could literally open the doorof everyone's building. what an amazing trustthey give you. i could work day and night. i could come in at threeo'clock in the morning. i didn't have to fillout any forms.

i could do anything i wanted. i could work sundays. i could work saturdays. it was a whole differentworld. there's one thing, however,i want to stress. i owe the dutch system a lot. and the best way to express thatis that my grandfather on my mother's side could neitherread nor write. two generations later,i became a full

professor at mit. that was only possiblebecause of the dutch educational system. socialism. without socialism, that wouldnever have happened. i'm a democrat for105 percent. i've really seen what socialismcan do for people. i've also seen the negativeparts later in my life. but i really owe the dutchin that sense a lot.

but boy, did i leaveat the right time. interviewer: in fact, you statethat when you came to mit, quote, you were "exactlyat the right place at the right the time." lewin: yeah. lewin: pure luck. well, okay-- by the way, so howdid i make the decision between john simpson, chicago,and mit, bruno rossi? a lot of my work that i had donefor my nuclear physics

was with electrons. and i had done a lot ofwork with x-rays. now, the problem with electronsis electrons move around in magnetic fields. x-rays don't do that. they go straight through. so i decided, if i'm going todo space research, and i'm going to measure electrons, idon't have a clue where the hell they were coming from.

they may come from thisdirection, but who knows what they have done onthe way to me. whereas an x-ray, if i canposition in the sky where the x-ray comes from, thatis line of sight. that's straight. so i decided, it's much betterto take x-ray astronomy. it could not have been a betterchoice, because x-ray astronomy was discoveredin 1962. bruno rossi had this insight ofgiving it a try, and it was

brilliantly worked out byricardo giacconi, for which he later received the nobel prize--and deserved, in my book, the nobel prize. and i came here injanuary '66. and their paper, their firstpaper, was december '62. so three years in between. so i came in there whenthe field was absolutely at its start. and then george clark invited meto come part of his group.

he was very, verygenerous to me. and so anything that we didin the early days, almost anything was pure gold becausenothing was done. i was the first one to flyballoons at very high altitudes in the southernhemisphere. boom, boom, boom. one discovery after another,because no one has ever done it. so that was an unbelievablestroke of luck, really luck.

the right person at the righttime at the right place. ten years later, i wouldn'thave had that impact. ten years earlier, x-rayastronomy did not exist. so yeah, you need sometimesluck in your life. interviewer: well, we're goingto talk a little bit about your research, but ijust want to ask you one simple question. and not very simple, but whyis it that physicists love astronomy so much?

lewin: oh, i think everyoneloves astronomy, because it's so visual. you see the moon, yousee the stars. you see planets. occasionally you see a cometand occasionally you see meteors in the sky. so everyone, i think, deepin his heart, has a feeling for astronomy. and i notice that.

i'm on facebook and i-- i'm on facebook not for physicsreasons, but for art, because art is oneof my real love. i always say physics is mylife, but art is my love. and all these artists with whomi work on facebook, they have an enormous appealfor astronomy somehow. here's a rover on mars whichruns around, take pictures of pebbles which are this small. that's an incredible thing.

yeah, perhaps physicists alittle bit more than the non-physicist, becausewe have the background, we have the knowledge. but it's incredibly fascinating,astronomy. astronomy is physics. let's face it. interviewer: let's talk a littlebit about some of your key scientific accomplishments,starting with x-ray ballooning.

lewin: yeah, that's whereit started with. when i arrived at mit, most ofthe experiments that were done were done by rockets. they flied rockets above theearth atmosphere, because the earth atmosphereabsorbs x-rays. if you're completely wayoutside the earth's atmosphere-- you're completelyoutside, you have to be more than 80 kilometers up-- then the atmosphere has noeffect anymore on absorption.

but the rockets were only upthere for a few minutes. you'd fly them up and thenthey're going to free fall and they return back to earth. so they only had a five minuteview of the sky. and what we didn't know at thetime, what we know now, that most of the spectra from x-raysources have an enormous abundance of low-energyx-rays and almost no high-energy x-rays. so these rockets were onlysensitive to low energy

because they were only fiveminutes up in the sky. so then it was george clarkin 1964 who flew the first balloon at a veryhigh altitude of about 140,000 feet. there's still a little bit ofatmosphere above you, so you cannot see the low-energyx-rays, but you can only see the high-energy x-rays. so in that sense, the rocketswere never in competition with the balloons becausethe balloons could

stay up 10, 20 hours. and they, therefore, coulddetect, and did detect, the high-energy x-rays. and so i joined george'sgroup. and then he turned the entiregroup over to me after a few years, and so i was the firstto go to the southern hemisphere with thoseballoons. and so, without competing withrocket people, we discovered many x-ray sources which hadnever been seen by rockets.

but not only that, which iconsider way more important-- often forgotten nowadays,but it's so long ago-- in five minutes, you lookto as many sources in the sky as you can. we had 20, 30 hours. we could look at onesource for hours. and we discovered that thosesources vary their intensity. we discovered that. if you tell that now to agraduate student, they sort of

smile because theyknow that every source in the sky varies. but they forget thatwe discovered that. and so not only were we are ableto measure a part of the spectrum, the high-energy partof the x-ray spectrum which the rockets couldn't, but weeven were able to demonstrate that the energy, the poweroutput, varies by enormous factors, factors of 10,over a time scale of maybe half an hour.

imagine that the sun wouldbecome 10 times brighter in 10 minutes. would scare the hell outof you, wouldn't you? well, x-ray sources do that. interviewer: how was thatdata communicated? i know that you used tofollow the balloons around in a small plane. lewin: well, in the early days,we recorded the data on board on film.

later, we would transmitthem by radio to earth. we would fly-- the balloonwould be at 140,000 feet. and airplanes fly at30,000 feet, so it's five times higher. and we would stay with theballoons as long as-- particularly at night,we were in radio contact with the balloon. we could give commandsalso from the plane. and then when the balloon getsover area where airplane lanes

are, then you cannotfly over there. [inaudible] safety. then you have to terminatethe balloon. you do that on radio command. you separate theballoon from-- actually, the top of thetelescope is attached to a parachute, and you separate the parachute from the balloon. and then it comes down.

interviewer: can you talk aboutyour discovery in 1967 of the first rapidx-ray variation? lewin: yeah, that was sco x-1. that was the famous-- october 15, i'll neverforget the date. on october 15, we measured-- i think it was in mildura,australia, from a balloon flight that sco x-1 went upby roughly, if i'm not-- i think almost a factor of fouror five times brighter on

a time scale of about10 minutes. and then it decayed awayagain roughly on a time scale of 10 minutes. and this was such a totallybizarre thing. you must imagine. how can the sun, on the timescale of 10 minutes, becomes four times brighter and thenfour times fainter again? so when i wrote that stuff upand i sent it to astrophysical journal, the editor at thetime was chandrasekhar.

and he sent it to referees-- peer reviewing. and one of the peer reviewssays, this is utter nonsense, because we know that x-rayresources don't vary. and then bruno was sokind to call them-- to call chandra. and bruno says, i knowwalter lewin. i've looked at thedata with him. you better publish.

and they did. interviewer: thatwas exciting? lewin: yeah, i think for me thatwas the first time that i felt i had really establishedmyself as making a real dent in x-ray astronomy. i gave a talk here atmit about that. and the two giants in x-rayastronomy of the world, ricardo giacconi andherb gursky-- from across the street, whereas&e was in cambridge--

they both came to my lectures. i think they both were skepticalat the time. interviewer: how oldwere you then? lewin: well, it was '67,so i was 31 years old. interviewer: so a little later,in 1976, your research into x-ray bursts put you atodds with other scientists, most notably josh grindlayat harvard. you refer to this periodof time as "burst fever." please explain.

lewin: in 1975, there were twoindependent groups in the world, one in los alamos,and one was a dutch satellite, ans-- it's called the astronomicalnetherlands satellite-- which was a collaborationbetween herb gursky at harvard and the group in thenetherlands, utrecht and it was george grindlay's group whodiscovered, with ans, all of a sudden an enormousoutburst in x-rays. several months before that,something very similar--

more than one, actually--had been seen by the people in los alamos. and those are calledx-ray bursts. we at mit-- under the leadership of georgeclark, who was the principal investigator-- we launched a satellite, whichwas an old mit satellite. it was 1975. and we started seeingx-ray bursts.

our instruments were way moresensitive than the ones who discovered it. when we built sas, we didn'tknow about x-ray bursts. so again, it was a stroke ofluck that we just happened to have the right instruments onboard to study x-ray bursts. and i don't recall how manyburst sources we discovered, but i would say at least 10or so in a time scale of about two years. so we took over theentire field

of x-ray burst astronomy. and one of those sourcesproduced about 1,000, 2,000 bursts per day, whereas mostothers, more like one or two bursts for two or three hours. and so not only did we makethese discoveries with the instrumentation, but we wereeven able to explain, to understand, the very fundamentaldifference between these different two bursts. interviewer: and therewere skeptics

initially, weren't there? lewin: there are alwaysskeptics. and of course the skeptics wereat harvard, because they thought they knewbut they didn't. they just dug their heels in. they thought they were made bysuper massive black holes, which is totallyutter nonsense. we had almost from day oneevidence that they were produced by neutron stars.

but yeah, there wereskeptics, but you can't listen to skeptics. none of my papers were everreviewed, believe me. i must have published close to100 papers on x-ray bursts. interviewer: so during yourcareer, how common were rivalries between researchers? and how did your rather intensetemperament factor into those situations? lewin: well, rivalry is thenecessary consequence of the

american system. we have to write proposals. and these proposalsare peer reviewed. you want to make observations,say, with balloons, you need money for those balloons. you need money for thehelium, you need money for the telescope. later, when the satellites camealong, you want to make observations.

you have to hire postdocs. you need computers. you need money. we at mit at that time, asfaculty members, didn't even have summer salary. you had to come up with yourown summer salary for three months or two months. so you have to win a proposal. you have to write a proposalthat is better than the

competition. and you know who the competitionis, believe me. so that means rivalry,right there. now, as far as the temperamentis concerned, with one exception-- and i may be biased, becausei see it, of course, through my eyes-- with the one exception, which isthat the situation with the x-ray burst, whereby when it wasblatantly clear to anyone

in the world that these x-raybursts were the result of thermonuclear reactions on thesurface of neutron stars, there was still this person atharvard, this josh grindlay, who kept telling the worldthat they were not. he even published, when it wasalready completely clear, a ridiculous paper-- atheoretical paper-- to prove that theywere produced by massive black holes-- 100, 200, 300 massblack holes.

a neutron star is only 1 1/2the mass of the sun. and so that caused, at times,at meetings, and even at social meetings, sometimessome emotional friction. interviewer: i'd like you totalk a little bit about your collaboration withjan van paradijs. lewin: jan van paradijs got hisphd in amsterdam in the netherlands. and the boss there, the directorof that institute, was ed van den heuvel.

and ed van den heuvelwrote one day a letter to george clark-- we have here this young janvan paradijs, this young astronomer, he looksquite bright to us. would it be possible maybe thathe works one year at mit? so george says, well, you weregoing to give a talk in the netherlands in a few weeks. meet with jan. what do you think of him?

that was shortly after idiscovered the rapid burster, this source which has 1,000bursts per day, by the way. and so he was in my audience,jan, and we had dinner that evening. and what i realized was that iam a physicist, but he is a real astronomer. i'm exaggerating a little bitnow, but i don't know what an a1 and an a2 or b3or a g4 star is. that's for him of pea soup.

that's the way hewas brought up. so he was a beautiful complementto our group. he could really bringin the astronomy. he could say, perhaps weshould do some optical telescopes, or whatever. and so i recommendedto george, yeah, we should hire him. so jan came in my life 1979. maybe it was 1978.

we became the closest friendsthat you can ever imagine. we've published 150papers together. we were more than brothers. we lied for each other. we laughed together. we cried together. but he died. he died too young. he was 10 years youngerthan i was.

he died in 1999. so how old was i in 1999? i was 66, so he was 56. he died of cancer. it was a terrible, terribleway he ended his life. interviewer: and did thecollaboration take place at mit over all those years? lewin: it started one year atmit and then i went every year to amsterdam.

every other year,he came to mit. then i had an alexander vonhumboldt award in germany. and that was close to amsterdam,so half the time i was in amsterdam and half thetime he came to germany. i've only one picturein my office. i don't have any pictures of my children, not of my parents. not even at home, exceptfor paintings. there's one picturein my office.

that's a picture of jan. interviewer: you had awonderful friendship, collaboration with him. lewin: it was more than that. when he died, part of me died. interviewer: i'm sorry. in 1997, you received a nasagroup achievement award for being part of a team thatdiscovered, on december 2, 1995, a bursting pulsarnear the center of

the milky way galaxy. can you describe that day, thatmoment of discovery-- the setting, how it happened,how it felt? lewin: rather insignificant. the great discovery was when iwas here at sas-3 working day and night, and saw thedata coming in. this data was obtained by thegro, the compton gamma-ray observatory. i hope i have the name right.

and jan at that time was marriedwith his fourth wife, chryssa kouveliotou, who workedin huntsville, alabama. and one of the experiments onthe gro, on that spacecraft, was run by the groupin huntsfield. and so jan got involved. and since jan and i exchangedgraduate students-- sometimes my graduate studentworked with jan in amsterdam, sometimes his worked with me-- chryssa, jan, and i worked out acollaboration, which was led

by my graduate studentjeffrey koomers. and there was an agreement thatwhatever came out of that particular set of data wouldbe jointly owned by us. and would be publishedjointly by us. you often make those agreementsahead of time to avoid misunderstandings, badfeelings, if all of a sudden there is a brilliant discoveryand then someone says, it's really mine. and so one day, when neitherjan was in huntsfield nor

chryssa was in huntsfield nori was in huntsfield nor jeffrey kommers was inhuntsfield, it was the group leader there-- i should remember hisname, but i don't-- who actually saw in the databursts coming out. but it was also aknown pulsar. a pulsar is an objectthat produces x-ray blips every so often-- three seconds, six second,or a hundred seconds.

and up to that moment in time,the combination between a pulsar, x-rays going like this,and bursts had not been seen before. so in that sense it waslike a bombshell. so here is a pulsarthat is bursting. and so we were informedby that. there was an internationalastronomical union circular and our names were on it. my name was on it.

i don't even think-- i'm not even surewhether chryssa kouveliotou was one on it. it may have been thegroup leader there. and then when we finallypublished it, all our names were on it. so there was never the emotionalimpact that the discovery off the rapid bursterhad, when you're standing in sas-3 on the fourthfloor of building 37

and out of the data comech-ch-ch-ch, this crazy thing. there's never anythinglike that. we were told on thephone, by email. and it was an importantresult. you must understand thatthese nasa awards in a way are quite arbitrary. there is no doubt in my mind,and everyone would agree with me what i say here. it has nothing to dowith arrogance.

what i really deserved for wasa nasa award for my work on x-ray bursters. and i never got one, forreasons who knows. and here was all of a sudden groand nasa needs publicity. another major discovery, major,it's gro, and so-- pssht, awards. article in the newspaper,et cetera. and so i don't-- you get a diploma.

you know what i didwith the diploma? in the trash can. it meant nothing to me. i'm happy that i was part ofthat group, and it was certainly an importantdiscovery, no question. but it was not something thatemotionally for me was anywhere nearly as important,nowhere nearly as important, as the golden daysof x-ray bursts. nowhere nearly.

interviewer: i'd like to shiftgears again and go back to talking about your passion forteaching, for which you've won numerous awards. what makes you such aneffective teacher? and how would you describeyour philosophy around teaching physics? lewin: i think i am an effectiveteacher for a variety of reasons. i often get questions--

daily-- by physics professors from allover the world, literally from all over the world, to askme the same question. and then i say, have you everlooked at my lectures? can't you see how differentthey are from yours? can you not at least mention 10things that are different? not just one thing, but 10things that are different? it is your passion. it is your imagination.

it is your commitment. when you think of a lecture, ithink of it like an architect builds of building a house. i think of my lectures trulyas works of art. you build them slowly, andthey become one unity. you cannot just shave off alittle piece or add a little color somewhere. and that takes weeks-- thinking, walking on the beachand thinking, how am i going

to structure this? and i almost always doit in a different way than books do it. that's dry and boring. i derive every equation thati think is important to be derived with a piece of chalkon the blackboard. if you show a derivation onpowerpoint, that's criminal. that's a crime. i've never committed that crime,because the students

can't follow it. so as i work it out on theblackboard, i slowly make them aware of every single step. if i want them to copy that intheir lecture notes, at least i have to have the decencyto also write it, because otherwise you might as wellsay it's in the book. once we have the derivations andonce we have what people call the dull equations whichpeople in high school are scared about.

why do people do sopoorly on physics? because they see equations andhave no idea what they mean. and then when they get an exam,they shove some numbers in there and they hope that theright number comes out. i make them see throughthose equations. i make these equationspart of their world. i try to connect them to theirworld wherever possible. and i do that by giving exampleswhich, if possible at all, are not the standardexamples.

and i do demonstrations which,if possible at all, are not the standard demonstrations. demonstrations that they willnever forget in their lives. and so then my enthusiasmradiates away from me. and all this preparation thatgoes into it, which is phenomenal-- i dry run a lecture. first, built a house. then i dry run it three weeksbefore i give the lecture.

it's always too long. i have to cut a little back. empty classroom, a weekbefore the lecture, i dry run it again. at five o'clock in the morningof the day of the lecture, i am alone in the lecture hallwith no one and i dry run that lecture again. it becomes a performance. it becomes a work of art.

is it conceivable that i makea mistake on the blackboard? no, because it'sa performance. you've done it so many times. and it is all that together thatmakes it a piece of art. interviewer: how many hours doyou prepare for each lecture? lewin: it's hard becauseit begins, really, walking on the beach. but i would say roughly50 hours. that's a reasonable number.

if i gave the same lecturesthat i have given before again, it would stillbe 50 hours. interviewer: so the lecturesthat we captured in 1999, are they the result of a 20-yearprocess where you modified and improved over those years? lewin: not as muchas you think. people ask me thatquestion often. no. i don't think that my 1984 802lectures, which was the first

time i lectured 802, was anydifferent from my 2002 lecture, which was filmed. not very different. the same walter lewin,the same style. what is very importantis a sense of humor. you have to make them laugh. you have to challenge them. i can make my students cry. i can make them stopbreathing.

larry, if i want to, i can makethem wet their pants. interviewer: the tapings thatwe did together benefit from 20 years of preparation. twenty years of honingyour craft. and i also sometimes think thatwe captured you at the top of your game. is that accurate? lewin: i could not improve onthat, if that's what you mean. larry, something thatstrikes me.

almost every day, i getquestions, typically two dozen questions per day by email. fan mail, i call that. and then people ask mephysics questions. and then they ask me specificquestions about a lecture. i always say, which lecture,801, 802, 803? what is the numberof the lecture? how many minutes intothe lecture? so they tell me that.

and then i start fiveor 10 minutes early. without exception,i say to myself, what a brilliant lecture. i can never do that again. how could i ever improveon that? the way i built that up socarefully, and in such a way that it climaxes always-- in other words, it starts in away that students say, hey, why would he start that way?

they wouldn't have no idea. and by the end of the lecture,they say, now i understand why he started that way. that's the architectureof the house. truly, it is sometimesamazing. even my talks for kids. i recently watched again alecture for the wonders of electricity and magnetism. thank god this is on tape.

if ever i had to give thatlecture again, i could never do any better. at best, i can duplicatemyself. interviewer: well, itis a wonderful, wonderful body of work. i wanted to ask more aboutteaching and how it relates to the research that you did. have you had moments ofteaching, whether in front of the lecture hall or tutoring astudent in your office, where

you experienced the samekind of exhilaration or accomplishment thatyou felt when you discovered that x-ray burst? lewin: not during lectures,but during the 10 years of unbelievable email messages. what i receive every day in themail, how i have changed the lives of people. you cannot even imagine. this morning again.

professor lewin,i was retired. i didn't know what todo with my life. i felt bored. i was depressed. i discovered your lectures. i came to life again. professor lewin, you'vechanged my life. i now look at the sky again. and i know why thesky is blue.

and i love it. and i ask myself questions thati've never asked before. my lectures, larry, isa new way of seeing. that's really my goal. i make them love physics, andthat's a new way of seeing. it is very naive to thinkif you lecture maxwell's equations, totally naive tothink, of any professor here at mit, that a monthafter that, they remember maxwell's equations.

forget it. maybe the night before theexam, and then it's gone. but the maxwell's equations havea beauty in them that i make them see. i spent a whole lectureon that beauty. and then i tell them that thisis a highlight in their life, because this is the first timein their life that they see a complete field theoryand understand it. and i hand out flowersto every single

students, to 600 students. i buy 600 daffodils. and every student comesand gets a flower. now, 30 years later, theyremember the daffodils. a month later, they don'tremember maxwell's equations. and so, is that important? it is not importantthat they don't but what is important thatbecause of the way that i connect it with this momentousday and with handing out the

flowers, it becomes a newway for them of seeing. and that's what i try todo wherever i can. interviewer: so your lecturesare clearly a performance. lewin: they are a performance. interviewer: and thedemonstrations, i feel, are a key part of the performance. where do the ideas for thedemonstrations originate? and what are a few ofyour favorites? lewin: well, the majority ofthem were already present at

mit when i came here. i have added a substantialamount. and i have modifiedquite a few. and it is often the modificationthat gives it that lewin twist. that unexpected thing,to challenge them. what is your question again? oh, my favorites. if you think about it that imust have done for three

different courses-- 801, 802, and 803-- if i round off roughly,there are about 1,000 demonstrations that i do. on average, between fiveand ten per lecture. and there are 35 lectures on801, 35 on 802, and 30 on 803. so you can come up with roughlyof the order of between 800 and 1,000. they're all wonderful, becauseeach one tells

a surprising story. and i try to give it thatsurprising twist. a classic-- but that's not necessarilymy own preference-- a classic one, in a parallelwith the maxwell's equations, is you derive in class theperiod of a pendulum. a pendulum is a piece ofstring with an apple. and it swings. and you derive that in class.

the student's sitting there. he writes on the blackboard. they copy it. and there's the equation. the length of the pendulum isin the equation, which is a nice letter l. the gravitational accelerationof the earth is in the equation, small letter g. and then you say to the class,we must have made a mistake.

professor lewin makinga mistake? because the mass that is hangingon the pendulum is not in my equations. that must be wrong. and then they say, yeah, that'sbizarre that the mass is not in the equation, becausewhether you hang there 50 pounds or five pounds or 100pounds at the end of the same pendulum, for sure thatshould make a difference in how long it takes for thependulum to swing around.

you may imagine a huge,100-pound object would probably go way slower than a50, than a five-pound object. so i said, well maybe it isindependent of the mass. maybe the mass doesn'tenter into it. and then i bringthat to a test. i take a 30-pound object and ihang that on a five-meter long pendulum, and i swingthem 10 times. they get a very high accuracy,because my reaction time is tens of a second.

if i swing them 10 times,i get the period. the period is defined as onecomplete swing to one hundredth of a second. so we know the period to onehundredth of a second. remember, coming backto accuracy, how important that is. and then i say, let'snow see whether it depends on the mass. what do i do then?

i hang on that pendulum. the class goes bananas. their professor hangson a pendulum. he times himself. ten oscillations. and within one hundredth ofa second, the same result. do you think that they willever in their life, ever, forget that the periodof a pendulum is independent of mass?

it is not because the m wasmissing on the blackboard. there shouldn't be a mass on theblackboard, but it is the drama that i add to itby hanging on it. and hanging on it is verydifficult, because if you would it on the bob, then thecenter of your body goes up. that means the pendulum iseffectively shorter, and you would get a different period. so sitting on itis not enough. you must lie on it like this.

and that's extremely painful. but that's the price you pay. and that has becomealmost my logo. it's even used by itunes u. whenyou turn itunes u on, you will see walter lewinon the pendulum. interviewer: also, that's thepicture that's on the cover of your book. it has become my logo, yeah. so when people ask me for--

i get lots of requests forphotographs with signatures. i always send them onethat i'm swinging. interviewer: so let's go backto the makings of this internet phenomenon. you were an early adapter at mitfor using video delivery in support of teaching. in 1984, you started offeringphysics problem set help sessions for deliveryto students via the mit cable system.

how did that come about, andhow were they received? lewin: it was in '84? interviewer: i believe so. lewin: craig just said 1990. i think '84 is more accurate. i remember that i was in ameeting of the physics department when someonesuggested that perhaps it would be a nice idea to havemaybe one hour per week. i think it was professor kingand it was tony french, but

i'm not even sure whether-- i know it was tony. interviewer: well,ed taylor, also. edwin taylor was also involvedin the early ones. lewin: it could be. interviewer: yes. lewin: and so, wouldn't it benice if students could call and then ask questions? and so the whole thingwas improvised.

it wasn't so successful. and i think it was tony frenchwho came to me once and said to me, walter, i have a feelingthat you might be able to do it differently. and maybe better. and i said, i'm willingto give it a shot. i would not want them to call. i would look at the homeworkassignment. i would give a ten-minute review.

and then i would pick out themost difficult problems. without solving them, i wouldgive them a hint. make a drawing, a parallel,and slowly bring them to a point that i say, well, nowit's in your hands. i helped them. and these help sessions becameso popular that upperclassmen on friday told me they would geta crate of beer and they would be drinking beerand watching. seniors would be watchingmy 801 help sessions.

and that went on for yearafter year after year. and you were part of that. and then it was dick larsonwho was also part of that. interviewer: that wasmany years later. we're going to get to that. interviewer: it was notso many years later. it was during the help sessionsthat dick said, walter, you have a style. it is eccentric.

it is so unique. this is the way you doyour help sessions. when you are going todo you lectures, they got to be taped. and he got funding for taping. he had that vision. it came out of thehelp sessions. interviewer: i understood. and that was some--

15 years later, in fact. '84 to '99. but in terms of the help sessions, did you get feedback? for example, did studentperformance in those classes improve as a re-- didyou ever get any of that kind of feedback? interviewer: it'sunmeasurable. it cannot be measured,unfortunately.

by the way, those help sessionswere shown also for six years at the universityof washington tv. they had a tv station, butthey had no programs. it was not a cable. it was all over seattle,two million people. and they had heard, i don't knowfrom whom, that there was a lecture series, 801, by bobledoux and walter lewin, and they knew about thehelp sessions. and so they persuadedme to give them

permission to use them. i said no, because i didn'tthink they were professional enough. they were not edited,for one thing. at least, not the lectures. but they kept pushing on meand i finally gave in. and it's interesting that billgates wrote me later that that's how he got to know me. he got to know me when mylecture went on the air in

1995 every day in seattle,washington. interviewer: through theuniversity of washington tv cable system. lewin: university ofwashington tv. interviewer: and i recall evenback then that you used to get fan mail from students ofall ages, including students in their 80s. lewin: the range is aboutfive years to 95. yeah, five years.

not joking. interviewer: so that was in '95,and those lectures were-- lewin: no, those werehelp sessions then. '95 were still help sessions. and the bob ledoux/walterlewin lectures 801. interviewer: exactly. and those were very basic,single camera recordings of your-- lewin: single camerarecordings.

interviewer: and then it wasin '99 that dick larson led the effort. lewin: three cameras. one handheld camera. handheld camera'svery important. it was actually-- was it four cameras, craig? three cameras. lewin: i think itwas three, yes.

interviewer: and itwas rehearsal. and so what we were able to dowas to capture walter lewin's lectures at a very high level. lewin: well, it's veryinteresting. and i think it's importantthat this goes on record. so dick larson somehow had thevision that the time was right for putting things, videotaping,and then maybe someday, somehow, have otheruniversities profit from that. how i think was notso clear in 1999.

then in 2002, he got againfunding for my 802. in 2001, ocw came on the air. we said, well, you can use thelectures from walter lewin. but they didn't havethe software yet. they didn't know yet how todo the video streaming. so they said, wecan't use them. two years later, they could. and so my 801 and my 802 wereamong the very first lectures, together with [inaudible],math, to go on the air.

and i would like to think thatwe really made ocw in the early days. they were amazingly popular. i then realized that ishould also do 803. so i went to the physicsdepartment, under the leadership of marc kastner. i under the leadershipof tom greytak. and i said, look. 801 and 802 are amazinglysuccessful.

i would like to also havemy 803 videotaped. but dick larson has now adifferent position and cannot get money anymore. i got an email. we are not interested in taping walter lewin's lectures. so you see, there are peopleat mit who have vision. and there are some whodon't have vision. i got the money anyhow for803, not through dick.

so we now have 801, 802,and 803, 94 lectures. interviewer: and then we've alsobeen able to add to those by taping some of yourone-off lectures. so all told, you have over-- lewin: one hundred andthree lectures. interviewer: one hundredand three lectures. and you've become-- lewin: ninety-fourcourse lectures. and then there are about sevenon mit world, talks i've given

for children, for kidsand their parents. "the sounds of music"was very popular. "the wonders of electricity andmagnetism." for science teachers, i have given talks. and they are on mit world. and then i gave at northwesterna talk about the birth and death of stars. it's the only one thatwas not taped at mit. and recently, i gave one inthe netherlands, which was

also not taped by mit, whichis also part of it now. one hundred and three total. and then, oh, my art lectureat 2004 iap. interviewer: and you've becomean internet celebrity. what surprised you most aboutachieving this celebrity with these online lectures? lewin: well, it came of coursein a adiabatic fashion. it's not something thathappened overnight. it was a slowly growing thing.

i never conceived that thetime would come that two million people would watchmy lectures every year. it's almost a full-time job forme nowadays, exaggerated a little bit, to answerall the fan mail. because everyonegets an answer. i get over 30, 40 messageseach day. it was then in the year 2007,on december 19, that the new york times wrote an articleabout me on the front page. and what was the color pictureon the front page-- what do

you think the color pictureon the front page was? interviewer: you andthe pendulum. lewin: walter lewin hangingon the pendulum. and so then publishersstarted to call me. i got 25 publishers who wantedme to write a book. agents started to call me. and i finally decided tostart writing a book. i got a co-author, whichis warren goldstein, who did very well.

and that book is now beingtranslated in 13 languages. i'm going to barcelona nextmonth, where the spanish book will be released. it will be a lot of hocuspocus, television press release, television programs. radio interviews. there will be in aprila similar one in the the one in united states isalready out for one year. russia will be comingup shortly.

and the germans isalready out too. interviewer: how exciting. now, the boston globe just namedyour book one of the top science books of 2011. lewin: one of thetop 10, yeah. interviewer: and you also gavea memorable lecture to kick off the publication ofyour book in 26-100. lewin: may 16. at the end of thatlecture, i cried.

because i thought itwas going to be my last lecture in 26-100. it's not so clear that it willbe my last lecture, because mitx is coming up. and they've approached me formitx, in which case i may be coming back to 26-100. lewin: were you therein that lecture? interviewer: that lecturewas certainly, i think, one of the--

what was so exciting about thatlecture was it was the best of walter lewin. it was a combination of yourfavorite, most popular demonstrations. you delivered it masterfully. we recorded it inhigh definition. and we have the expertisecraig milanesi switching that lecture. lewin: what does that mean,switching that lecture?

interviewer: directing. he directed that lecture. lewin: there were 700people in 26-100. they were standing in theback because there are only 550 seats. it was absolutely packed. may 16, i will neverforget that. may 16, 2011. interviewer: and it canalso be seen online.

it's one of my 103. so when i said to you 103,it's one of them. it's called "for the loveof physics," by the way. interviewer: so we've talked alittle bit about the emails that you receive from viewers. a common theme in many of these,which you've already pointed out, is that youhave changed people's lives for the better. how is it, do you think,your lectures have had

that impact on people? lewin: say it again. interviewer: how is it that yourlectures have had that impact on people? lewin: because i change the waythey look at the world. they look at my lectures andthey say, holy smoke. is that how wonderfulphysics is? if only i had had a teacher likethat, i would never have hated physics.

the number of people thatchange their careers-- students, to physics, which i'mnot even proud of-- it's never, for me, in any wayrewarding when a student says, oh, i was a student in ee or inaero and astro, and because of your lectures, i changedto physics. that is not important for me. really, honestly. that's not my goal at all. i want them to love physics,to see the beauty

of their own world. and when people are retired, orwhen they're five years old and they see some of thatbeauty, that turns them on. it changes their lives. it changes the way theylook at the world. the famous rainbow,they never-- i told you, even the rainbowlecture alone changes their lives forever. that one lecture.

whenever they see a rainbow, notonly do they think of me, but there are four things thatthey will check to make sure that they are reallyall there. and they never even saw thosefour things, let alone that they check whetherthey are there. and so every time that theysee this rainbow, that knowledge is what i callthe invisible beauty. it is the beauty of knowledgethat adds, over and above to the colors that everyone cansee-- everyone can look at a

rainbow and say, oh, how nice. it's red. it's blue. and if they turn around andyou say, was blue on the outside or on the insideof the bow? they have no clue. and then you say, have younoticed that there was a huge difference in brightness ofthe sky inside the bow and outside the bow?

they say no. then you say, have youever noticed that there is a second rainbow? i say, have you ever noticed ifthere was a second one that the color sequenceis reversed? never seen it. but after my lecture,they will check that there is a secondary. they will make sure that redis on the outside of the

primary bow. they will make sure that redis on the inside of the secondary bow. it's a disease. and i cannot even curethem anymore. and i don't care. it's a disease for life. and they always will noticethat the sky inside the primary is way brighter than thesky outside the primary.

there's a huge difference. and they never saw it. they looked at it, butthey never saw it. interviewer: so your lecturershave given people a mechanism for seeing things ina different way? lewin: a new way of seeing. isn't that what i saidearlier to you? and therefore, starting to askquestions in areas which i didn't teach.

asking questions in their liveswhich they never would have asked. in other words, i enrichedtheir lives by the new way of seeing. they then try to expandon that on their own. and often, they write me. they often do that. interviewer: let's shift againto talk about another one of your passions, and that'syour passion for art.

you're a serious student andcollector of modern art. could you tell us a bit aboutthe origins of this passion, and how it shows upin either your research or your teaching? lewin: my parents, after thesecond world war, started a very interestingart collection. they bought largely art fromdutch artists, and mostly from artists in the hague which isthe town where they lived. so i was raised in a climatewhereby art was important.

i would go every saturdayto an art gallery in the i would go so often to themuseum, the general museum, that i would even start to takemy class and be a guide and explain things. i gave lectures already wheni was 15 years on art. these must have been awfullectures, but i did. as a natural extension of myparents' collection, i started to collect art myself. i have about 125 worksof art in my home,

more than i can hang. and then when my parentsdied, of course, a lot of them were added. physics is my life, butart is my love. i'm on facebook. i get about 2,000 friendrequests every year. and i only allow people tobecome friends if they pass an art history test. and of the 5,000 who havetried to take the

test, only 50 passed. and the rest, i don't accept. so they are angry because theysaid, you're a physicist and we want to ask you physicsquestions. well, if you're onfacebook, you can ask me physics questions. you don't have to befriends for that. and so ask me any question,i will answer it. but facebook, for me, is art.

at mit, i had for at least sixyears outside my office at mit on the bulletin boards, everyday a work of art, reproduction, with a box. and they could write their ownname on a piece of paper and tell me who the artist was. and then the three best of theyear, i gave substantial presents at the endof the year. i no longer do that, becausei'm retired, but now i have three quizzes on facebookper week.

and i only have 55facebook friends. and sometimes-- they love it-- i ask one of them, forthe next week, you may choose one artist. and they feel extraordinarilyhonored. they may choose the artist, andthen together we choose the work of art. and then i post it always at twoo'clock in the afternoon.

tomorrow at two o'clock,i change. and then i give the solution. and then i tell them whatthe next quiz is. and they come in withthe answers. and they send me the answers ina way that no one can see on facebook. you can send someone a messageon facebook that others cannot read. so i have on facebookthis art quiz.

interviewer: and who encouragedyou to have such an active participationin facebook? lewin: i don't knowhow it started. i don't remember. it's about 3 and1/2 years ago. i have no idea. interviewer: one of yourgraduate students? lewin: no, i don't know. i really don't remember.

i draw a complete blank there. interviewer: well, good foryou for utilizing the capabilities of social media. lewin: but, of course, my wifesusan has a bachelor's degree in art history. art is the glue between us. every major exhibition innew york and washington, philadelphia, we go. every one.

when the famous willem dekooning exhibit was there, which finished a few weeksago, we went twice, even. interviewer: you've also hadsome very interesting artistic collaborations during your timeat mit, with first otto piene and then peter-- struck-yen? lewin: struycken. close enough. interviewer: please tellme about both of those.

lewin: so i was flying balloonsalready in 1967. and then i walked by the centerfor advanced visual studies one day, where juliekepes was the director. and i saw a piece of paperhanging outside there signed by an artist, otto piene, whowas one of the founders of the zero movement in germany. and i didn't even know he wasat mit, but i knew of him because i know my art history. and he was asking people whocould help him with a balloon

art experiment. so i said to myself, well, if idon't do it, who the hell is going to do this, right? i have the balloons at the tipof my fingers, and i would love to collaborate with otto. and so i've collaborated withotto many, many years. the climax of our work--for me, at least-- was the 1,500 feet long rainbowballoon that otto designed for the closingceremonies in 1972 in munich.

and i was instrumental in thedesign of that balloon. five colors. the five rainbow colors. little did we know that therewould be this massacre of the jewish people. and so the closing ceremonieswas delayed by one day. had it not been delayed by oneday, we would not have been able to fly our balloon,because the wind was too strong.

actually, in my book is apicture of that balloon. so when kepes was no longer thedirector, otto took over the show of cavs, the center foradvanced visual studies. and so we became close friends,because i worked with otto on many projects,for many years. it culminated in the one inmunich, but we collaborated-- i don't know, for atleast 10 years. i've several wonderful worksby otto that he gave me. and so one day, he callsme in my office.

it was not so unusual. and he says, i havea guest here. maybe you want tomeet this guest. i remember mark di suverowas visiting him. very famous american sculptor. and so mark came to my officeand i spent with mark a few hours, which was anexperience for me. i met claes oldenburg thatway in my office. those are giants in the field.

and then one day, he said,he is a dutchman. and we have a problemwith the language. he doesn't know what[inaudible] is. how do you translatethat in english? so i told him, initialconditions. and then otto said, ok. initial conditions. so he says, maybe you wantto meet with this guy. i said, well, otto, look.

most dutchmen are boring. i have other things to do, sowhy would i want to meet with a dutchman? just because he's dutch? he says, well, ok, walter. i know you're busy,so it's fine. you don't have to. i said, oh, by the way? what's his name?

and he said, oh, his nameis peter struycken. i said, my parents havefive struyckens! of course i want to meet him. and then i said, tell peter thati have half hour for him. i lied. the reason why i do that, thatafter half hour i can say, time is up. peter came at 3 o'clock and leftat 10 o'clock at night. peter's impact on my life iscomparable, but different,

than jan van paradijs. peter made me see art. peter showed me why i only hadlooked at art, why most of the stuff that i liked was trash,had no artistic quality. he built me from scratch. we went to chicago, we wentto new york, we went to washington. he taught me aboutart history. he taught me how important oneyear can make, whether the

painting was made in 1915 orin 1916 that could make the discovery between amazingdiscovery or a derivative. and that, for me, isjust so wonderful. it's just like science. to discover something and befirst are the pioneers. to repeat it, or do somethingsimilar, is to some degree plagiarism. interviewer: so you're talkingabout the impressionists that came after the initial ones?

artists that are duplicatingsomebody else's style? is that what you'rereferring to? lewin: the impressionistswere pioneers. but there's a lot ofpost-impressionism which is derivative. picasso, in 1907,invented cubism. every single artist in theentire world except matisse started to paint cubistic. i can evaluate ages ofpaintings quite well.

and if anything has the flavorof cubism, you know it's after 1907, because it didn'texist before 1907. so the real pioneerwas picasso. now, i'm not denying theenormously important contributions that others havemade after him-- for instance, mondrian, who started withpost-impressionism, then he took cubism, and then hedeveloped his own whole new world, which is calledneo-plasticism. malevich, in russia, startedwith cubism.

everyone started after1907 with cubism. that was the thing. that is what string theory was15 years ago in physics. that was cubism in 1907. you were no one if youdidn't do cubism. but in 1915, malevich took offin a different direction and developed suprematism. so many wonderful forms ofart, completely different movements have evolved, butone year can make a

difference. and we know that malevich evenmisdated some of his paintings, put them one yearearlier than he really made. and it is still questionablewhether he did that purposely, so that later they wouldsay, you know, you already did that in 1914. or was it that he had not datedthem, and then the five or six years later, for anexhibit, that the art gallery holder said, well, you reallyshould date your paintings.

and that he didn't remember,and that he put 1914 on. that is possible. we don't know that. it's unknown. but there are definitelycases whereby artists purposely predate. interviewer: so thatthey wouldn't be thought of as copying? lewin: they want creditfor discoveries of--

take, for example, the enormousbreakthrough in art-- i named only one, cubismwas one-- the enormous breakthrough was non-figurativeart. imagine that you go from animage that you recognize-- a tree, a woman, a car, afurniture, a flower-- all of a sudden, tonon-figurative. in other words, there is noconnection with nature. that happened around1912, '13. there are five peoplewho can claim that

they were among them. they didn't steal itfrom each other. it was in the air. it had to happen. kandinsky made one paintingin 1910 that looks non-figurative. and his wife has defended himafter his death, year after year, that he really wasthe discoverer of non-figurative art.

he wasn't. it was an accident. it was just a study. it was not until 1914, '15, thatkandinsky became really but it was already long beforediscovered by robert delaunay, by picabia. even arthur dove, an american,played an important role. it was not kandinsky, althoughhe's been given sometimes, incorrectly, credit for beingthe first to paint

it's a huge step. it's almost pre-quantum mechanics and quantum mechanics. it's a whole new wayof looking at the world all of a sudden. think about the impactthat quantum mechanics had on physics. a similar impact didnon-figurative painting have on the world.

on the art world. interviewer: i'mcurious as to-- i've been to the rijksmuseum. what are your opinion ofthe dutch masters? lewin: the 17th century. among the greatest ever. and that's not chauvinism,believe me. that is not, absolutely. but i can evaluate otherperiods as well.

i can go back to therenaissance, and there is jan van eycke. and there is leonardoda vinci. so there are great periods. what this amazing, though-- it is amazing-- the netherlands is smallerthan massachusetts. you ready for this? we had rembrandt.

we had van gogh. we had mondrian. and we had willem de kooning. those four changed the way thatyou look at the world. if you had to mention the 15 or20 most important artists ever, they're allfour among them. and the country is this small. but the 17th centurydutch artists-- although rembrandt is generallynear the top, there

is vermeer, who isunbelievable. there is frans hals, whichis absolutely incredible. there is jan steen, whichis incredible. but it's true thatrembrandt is-- rembrandt is comparableto mondrian. comparable to willemde kooning. interviewer: we could talkanother two hours just about art, i'm sure. lewin: oh, way more.

art is my love. interviewer: i can see that. so let's talk about-- starting to wrap this up-- let's talk about what'snext for walter lewin. what interesting projectsdo you have coming up? lewin: right now, i'm gettingalmost every week an invitation to go somewhere inthe world and give a talk. interviewer: that's exciting.

lewin: yeah, but it is, ofcourse, very unpractical. some invitations are real, inthe sense that they say, we want you here for a week. korea wanted me recently. and malaysia approached me. we'd pay you first class traveland you'd get first class hotels, and yougive a few lectures. and then i found out that thegovernment of malaysia is strongly anti-semitic, so isaid, over my dead body.

korea is now negotiatingwith me. most of those invitations arebecause of the lectures. people stop me on the streets. people stop me in thesupermarkets. people stop me in restaurants. they recognize me. and so that is everywherein the world. they want to see walter lewin. they want to see him actuallygive a lecture.

interviewer: are you goingto do any of those? lewin: yeah, well, i did one inthe netherlands in october. and i may give anotherone again in april. i give one in barcelonain a few weeks in connection with my book. so i can combine them often. most of the invitations,i decline. don't forget, travelling toeurope, six hours time difference, jet lagis killing you.

so lately, i am very muchinvolved in scheduling, trying to give no more than oncea month a lecture. i have one in washington linedup, one in new york, one in barcelona, one inthe netherlands, already for three months. then there's one coming up inrussia, probably in korea. and by the end of the year,there will be many more. interviewer: very exciting. so wrapping this up, you'vespent your career at mit,

going on 46 years. what do you valuemost about mit? lewin: mit made it possiblefor walter lewin to become walter lewin. that would never have happenedin the netherlands. never. and that's not only the researchwalter lewin, my pioneering contributions inx-ray astronomy, but, in a way, i call it my pioneeringcontributions in teaching.

i know that there are hundredsand hundreds of physics professors, who've told me byemail, that i have changed the way that physics willbe taught for the next 50 or 100 years. interviewer: what kind ofinfluence have you had on the students that you've taughtin terms of that? in terms of them goingoff and teaching? lewin: well, that's what myfan mail is every day. interviewer: but i'm talkingabout students that you

actually taught here atmit, students that-- lewin: you know steve leeb? he was one of my students,right? he says every lecture that iprepare, you are my gold bar. you are my gold standard. and every lecture that iprepare, i say to myself, would walter lewin havedone it that way? so surely, those who had meand who became teachers-- who had me here at mit,obviously strongly influenced.

in fact, steve leeb isquoted in my book. i don't know whether you readmy book, it's in the introduction. interviewer: i have. lewin: he was in my lectures802 in 1984. interviewer: and tell me alittle bit about your thoughts about the art program. the arts at mit. lewin: i've never been stronglyinvolved in the arts

program, but i think the nicething is that i can borrow works of art and hangthem in my office. and i do. i have real, very niceart in my office. students can do the same. it's not just onlyfor professors. interviewer: but the wayin which arts are represented at mit? interviewer: theschool of art?

interviewer: just theprogram itself. the importance of art in theoverall mit experience. lewin: well, harvardhas an art museum. mit does not. so when you compare mit withharvard when it comes to art, it's apples and coconuts,of course. we have a very nice collectionof sculptures on the campus. it would've been awfully niceif a school like mit had a world- class museumlike harvard has.

like bu has. but then again, we have world-class people in every field that we do. in every single field, we haveworld- class people. interviewer: includingthe arts. lewin: yeah, but notas far as the collection and the museums. including the arts, yes. absolutely.

but not as far as having amuseum that you can go to and say, here, this isthe collection. princeton has a collection. and most of these things arebeing given by alumni. so once you start it, it startsto grow on itself. and if mit had an artcollection, i would certainly have given them a choiceout of one of my top works that i have. i have some very nice works fromamerican early pop art.

john wesley. i have a stunning john wesley. i have a larry rivers. i have julian schnabel. they would love them, andi would then probably donate it to mit. i have a francesco clemente. but they don't have a museum,so they won't get mine. so if they had a museum,it would start

to expand on itself. interviewer: what in youropinion, could mit do better? lewin: a question rarely evertakes me by surprise, but this one really does. what could mit do better? i don't think i am ina position to give a meaningful answer. there's one thing that maybe mitcould do better, but i'm not even sure that itwould be better.

when someone as an assistantprofessor comes to mit, he or she is being told, at least inphysics department, that it's very important that you teachwell, because once the tenure decision is going tobe made, oh boy. they will look at your research,but of course, they will always look alsoat your teaching. bullshit. they don't. i've been on countlesscommittees.

brilliant teachers, excellentresearchers, but not the top of the world, out. so would do mit better toaccept some of those exceptional teachers? maybe, but maybe not. because after all, what keepsmit going, of course, is also the economy. and the real brilliant nobellaureate-quality people bring in tens of hundreds ofmillions of dollars

per year into mit. they rake in the overhead. and so maybe mit cannot affordto have only a small nucleus of brilliant teachers who arenot outstanding in research. so i don't feel that i amin a position here to make a value judgment. interviewer: well, in your case,you were both a very accomplished researcher anda brilliant teacher, so it certainly--

lewin: and we haveseveral at mit. we have several. i think very highlyof donald sadoway. brilliant researcher,brilliant lecturer. interviewer: so looking back,what have been the most rewarding aspects ofbeing a professor? lewin: the fact that two millionpeople watch me every year, and that i've changed-- no, more important.

i have changed the lives ofhundreds of thousands. so the two million peryear is an ego trip. that's not important. what is important, i'vechanged their lives. and i see that everyday, larry. every day. that is way more rewarding, forme, than some interesting discoveries that i have madein x-ray astronomy. and as neil pappalardo said onhis interview, walter lewin's

lectures will still be watched50 years from now. and i actually believe that. interviewer: so do i. so do i. lewin: bill gates has watchedthem, all three, he wrote me a handwritten note. three times. he's seen all my lecturesthree times. interviewer: so finally, walter,you end the first chapter of your book, for thelove of physics, with the

sentence, "physics illuminatesthe workings of the world in it's astonishing beauty andelegance." offer us a couple of examples. offer us a couple of examplesof where that takes place. where physics illuminates theworkings of the world in it's astonishing beautyand elegance. lewin: you want to use the word"rainbow," by the way? it's full of physics. physics is not even so simple.

isn't that beautiful? walk outside and lookat the sky is blue. it's physics. why is the sky blue? look at outside. why are clouds white? that's all physics. it's all around you. musical instrument,there you go.

you're helping me. it's all physics. i give a lecture when wetalk about resonance. i let students come in withtheir musical instruments. i let them play. i make them see the differenceusing oscilloscopes between what a violin is and a cello. it's everywhere around you. interviewer: well, thank you,walter, for helping all of us

see the world in adifferent way. lewin: larry, i have beenprivileged and honored that i've been able to teachat mit for 43 years. and this interview was apleasure for me too.

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