 So, welcome back everybody. I hope you're connecting reconnecting again. So it's my great pleasure to introduce the speaker today, Professor Sylvester James Gates. He has a long list of accomplishments. So he's currently him and he works at the boundary of mathematics and physics and he's currently the director of the Brown theoretical physics center. And he has many, many awards. But perhaps I will just read when President Obama awarded Jim Gates the National Medal of Science, which is the highest award given to scientists in the United States. The citation reads as follows for his contribution to the mathematics of supersymmetry in particle field and string theories and his extraordinary efforts to engage the public on the beauty and wonder of fundamental physics. And I have of course been very familiar with Jim Gates through his works in supergravity. But I also had the pleasure of, you know, getting to know him after I became the director, especially about his quite personal connections with ICTP. He has visited ICTP on a number of occasions, but especially when he was a postdoc at Caltech, he was kind of in an ambiance in those days, which was not exactly welcoming. When he visited ICTP kind of were dispirited about physics and being here and talking to Abdul Salam really inspired him to get back to physics. And there's a wonderful talk by him that I saw called what Abdul Salam taught me about jazz. And I don't know if he's going to mention this today. But it's a very wonderful idea very important idea that ICTP seeks to really make science available to everyone, because we fundamentally believe that science knows no borders and scientific talent is to be found everywhere. But the so is true in music. And the point is that it not only offers equality of opportunity, which of course we would like to ensure, but it also ensures a diversity of perspective. Because jazz musicians explored a completely new dimension of the musical space, which really depended on the personal histories of those musicians, and which is quite different from let's say white male musicians growing up in Europe. So I think that concept, what Abdul Salam taught him about jazz really captures in some ways, our notion of making really science making being a common heritage of all humankind. So with these words of introduction I give the floor to Professor Sylvester James Gates. Thank you, it's so wonderful to at least virtually be visiting ICTP again. As you mentioned in your introduction I actually have a fairly expensive but largely unknown connection to ICTP as well as to Abdul Salam and we're going to explore some of that today. And since you mentioned my talk that I gave at the Kentucky State University, let me just switch over to that before I begin my formal presentation. For anyone who might want to follow up your comment. I indeed in 2018, I gave a presentation at Kansas State University and the title was in fact, what Abdul Salam taught me about jazz. And we're going to return to that today because it's very central to my story and my relationship to my relationship to Abdul so let me stop sharing this and get on with the presentation. While I'm doing this I want to thank everyone who was responsible for this invitation. As I said, when we go through my talk you'll see why ICTP holds such a central place. It's in my heart and not just in my science so here we go with the presentation. Okay, so I'm going to talk about very diversity and barriers and science, and I'm going to talk about it to a very, very personal lens, namely my experience to with both of these. So let's start. I'm going to start with meeting Abdul Salam and visiting ICTP in 1980 and beyond. It was the first time that I visited ICTP and there was a conference in those days on supergravity. I was in 1980 I was a postdoc just starting my postdoc at Caltech, and I got this wonderful letter to come and give a presentation with all of the, the founding establishers of the theory of supergravity and I was excited it was the first time I was supposed to speak at an international conference. I had been an undergraduate student at MIT from 1969 to 1973, and I, in that time I accidentally earned two bachelor's degrees. That's another story you want to how you actually are two degrees but I managed to do it in that period one of my first undergraduate degree in mathematics and second in physics, although I always intended to be a physicist, and then I stayed on there in 1977 and earned my PhD. During this period when I was earning my PhD was when I was first exposed to the writings of the salon. In 1975, I was thinking about how to write a PhD thesis that would not just allow me to get my degree, but also to begin the process of building a long term career. You see I had been interested in becoming a scientist since I was four years old. And so, you know, here we are in 1977 26 years old, over a decade has passed and I'm still pursuing this dream. And so I, I was a student at MIT and I began to look around at all the topics that were interesting and high energy physics those days. There was something called a bag model dilute approximation to QCD gas model QCD instantons there were a whole list of subjects. And what I noticed was that papers in those days we only had preprints we didn't have email, but once a month you get these preprints, and I noticed that there were all these interesting papers, but a lot of them were written by professors. Now I'm just a graduate student. So it became obvious to me that this was not a fair competition. Mainly how is a poor young graduate student who's just learning the subject, going to compete against faculty members who perhaps have a careers that are decades long. So I began to look around and say, Well, gee, how can I make this more fair. And so I did a big survey of the literature. And in that survey, I came across the paper, whose first title page you are looking at now there's this one call by obdus and John it was published in 1984 I found a paper in 1985, and I was fascinated because it described what was called super space, and I had never heard of the concept before then. So I looked around for other things to read. And as you can see very prominently in the publication title page was mentioned ICTP that's how ICTP came on to my radar is during this period. I began to read and I began to learn about these things so super fields of super space. It was mathematics I had never heard of. Since my first degree is in mathematics I thought I knew a lot of mathematics that would be relevant to physics, but to find this entirely new idea was just exciting beyond And so here's a third paper. So these papers collectively were the three books of my personal physics Bible in those days this. These are the sources from which I learned about super symmetry. And one of the things about the subject. At that time we didn't know about the history that went on in the Soviet Union, because in fact super symmetry was actually discovered in the Soviet Union several years before it became obvious in the west. In the western branch of the story these were my Bibles these are the things. And because it was so young. I thought that's going to be a fair competition. None of those old professors can know more about this subject than I do. And therefore running to the boundary to create research that was state of the art. And cutting edge was much much easier here. And as a consequence, I became the only student at MIT who not just student I was the only person that MIT who in 1975 7677 maybe as late as 1980. I was the only person at MIT who knew anything at him about super symmetry and super fields and so as a consequence, I produced MIT's first PhD thesis in 1977. As you can see the title of my thesis was symmetry principles and selected problems of field theory. It is a hyphenated title because part of it is about the symmetries of the weak interaction. I don't know I started off as a weak interaction from now knowledge is, but I actually have one or two papers on that subject. And then in the process of trying to figure out something that was sustained a long term career. I moved to super symmetry. And because of that I've had now a career that's, it's over 50 years, approaching 50 years. So again, let's say these are the books that led me papers that led me to the foundation of my career. So, in 1977 I graduated from MIT, and went to Harvard for three years. I met some interesting people while I was there, including Edward Witten, Michael Peskin was my office mate. Martin Rochek was a graduate students who had just come back from CERN. He was a visiting professor who was often at Harvard from, from Brandeis University in Boston, and another new postdoc, a guy named Warren Siegel. Now Warren, and I had never heard of each other before we got to Harvard, but it turned out we were both interested in exactly the same subject, namely super symmetry, and in particular, super gravity. When we first met each other, I concluded that he might have some sort of mental defect, and I'm sure he concluded I was an idiot. So as a consequence, our first meeting was a spectacular failure, and we didn't talk to each other for about three months and then later for reasons I still can't remember, we each figured out that the other might know something about what we were both passionately involved in doing. In fact, at Harvard we wrote a series of papers. They were the most in depth, mathematically complete descriptions of super gravity at the time. And as a consequence, John Schwartz invited us both to come to Caltech as postdocs. Caltech, the books on super space, which some of you may have heard it was written with Martin Rochak, Warren Siegel and Mark Grisru, but in 1980 when I first got to Caltech, I got this invitation to come to ICTP. I had made all sorts of preparations I got my passport for the first time, well actually for the second time in my life, but the first time I got this. The first time I had a passport, I was like two years old, my parents got it. But now I'm approaching 30. And so I directly get my passport. I make all sorts of preparations for my travel to Italy. The trip goes just fine. I arrived late at night in the bus station in Trieste. I was basically abandoned. There's no one there, except one policeman, and I walk over to him to ask how do I get a taxi to ICTP. And I realized I forgot to buy an Italian English dictionary. So there I am, just babbling for this policeman he spoke no English I spoke no Italian. And so for a few minutes I thought oh my God I have traveled all over the around the world to have a disaster strike. Well, fortunately, I can say the letters ICTP, ICTP. He understood that I must be an international visitor, and he arranged for me to get taxi and that's how I came to ICTP, ICTP, the first time. And met, of course, its founding creator and director of this salon. Well, I gave a talk there in the same lecture hall, where the ICTP Bandini lecture hall, where our host are currently seated. And I remember giving that lecture and having of this on the front row and having other luminaries like Michael, Michael Green was there, Peter West was there. I think Peter Van Neven-Hoyson was there, the real founders of Super Gravity were there and I was speaking in front of them, this young post-doc. And for young people, you know how that feels because you hear these names, and you see the works of these people and you think that perhaps you have just a small suspicion that perhaps they are, you're not part of the same species as these other people. Maybe they have some extra insight, some extra brain cells that allow them to do this work that you're only striving to do, and I certainly felt that giving this lecture. I managed to give the lecture without making any terrible faux pas, and at the end of the lecture, to my very great surprise of this salon invited me up to this office, the director's office, which I hope is still upstairs with that beautiful view of the Adriatic. I remember walking in, sitting down, and he was so kind. He asked me a little bit about myself. And then he made a couple of statements that were surprising to me. One of them was that he didn't know that I was black. And I thought, well, there was no way for you to know. And it's not like I put a special note of my favorites, raising this back. And I, of course, didn't say this this was just a vagrant thought that passed through my head I'm, I'm kind of, I'm kind of cheeky as the English would say at least between my ears. And then he said, later in the conversation he had something that really astounded me. And this is how I looked when I met this salon. I tell you, look at the perfectly spherical afro. And now you can see me today it's shorter and wider. And so you can tell I'm aging these are like tree rings I tell people look at my hair they're like tree rings. If it's longer black in the picture I'm young, if it's white and retreating then I'm old. So this is how you can tell my approximately my age. But this is how I looked at this. This is also how I looked when I met Richard Feynman by the way this picture was actually part of my Caltech ID card when I first got to Caltech. And Richard Feynman when he first, his first words to me at a luncheon was you know, when I was young, I wanted to wear my hair just like that. And so I have had some amazing interactions with some of the giants of physics around ethnicity and my hair and all kinds of strange things. A little bit about figures and we're going to come to that. So hair freezing. Because I don't remember the exact sentence. But the sentiment of the sentence was when a sufficient and this comes from obvious. He said when a sufficient number of people of the African diaspora engaged theoretical physics. It was his expectation that something like jazz would appear in the discipline. Young Sylvester James Gates Jr. I was stunned into silence by this statement. I had no idea what in the world, this Nobel laureate physicist was trying to tell me. I thought perhaps it was some advanced form of physics that maybe yet I had to learn. I have been stunned by such a statement's only one other time in my life. And it was by this gentleman Albert Einstein, who many years earlier made the statement imagination is more important than knowledge. I'm stunned because when I read this statement to me imagination was about comic books and superheroes and imaginary inventors and outer space where his knowledge was how you built rockets and planes and technology so I couldn't understand how imagination could possibly be more important than knowledge. In the same way, I cannot understand what the salam was saying. The complete statement of Albert Einstein makes it much more clear. Not only is he said imagination is more important knowledge he says for knowledge is limited to all we now know and the emphasis is on a word now and understand while imagination embraces the entire world and all there will be to know and understand. And that's because Einstein understood something that many young scientists do not understand, namely that the motive driver that allows science to increase is actually our imagination. It's not our knowledge and knowledge of the foundation, but the imagination is what launches us into the future. Alan Turing made an interesting comment also he said sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. I hope you know about Alan Turing he was a great computer scientist English contributed a lot to defeating the Germans through the decoding of the Ignitman machines at Bletchley Park. But in that 1980 visit was the first of a number of visitors, as a teacher mentioned in 1984 I brought this young woman with me we were just married. In fact, we spent part of our honeymoon. You might wonder why I CTP. Well, I was a young still a young professor I didn't have a lot of money. And so, since I had essentially for some distance standing invitation to come to ICTP. It was a way for me to also. Well, first of all pay for me to get to Europe. All I had to do was pay for my life to get to Europe. And so we were able to use ICTP as a launching pad on a two month honeymoon. We got your real passes we traveled all over Europe as far north of Stockholm we saw Paris we saw Rome obviously we were in Germany, we spent time in Switzerland, and all because of this is kindness to reach out to me. In 1988 was around the time of my final visit to ICTP. This is a picture 1988. You can see me in this picture. My hair is shorter in this picture. And that's because my wife had said she wouldn't marry me all along here. I had to get a haircut and therefore diminish that perfect circular afro that I was wearing for years. But this is a meeting 1988, which was the meeting that established the Edward Boucher. This conference was the foundation of that Institute. You can see I'm sitting in the center of the picture next to Joseph Johnson, Professor Joseph Johnson, who was a fluid dynamicist and Professor Warren Henry, who spent his career mostly studying Buddhism. If you look to the right of the picture you'll notice there's one character who's not paying attention and not looking at the photographer. Of course, that would be me as I told you in my head. I'm a kind of cheeky using the British term character. But I'm just also at some point presented me with a copy of his book. Now, I, it's not a signed copy to my recollection, recollection, I in fact have to go look for it. But I have a colleague named Stefan Alexander, who is a physics professor here at Brown University, and he has a signed copy of this book. However, the signed copy that Stefan possesses was given to usef Latif directly from obdus. Latif was one of the great jazz musicians in the US of the 20th century. And so this is some confirming evidence that obdus paid attention to jazz I didn't know this at the time he made this comment. And Stefan Alexander of course is also the author of a more recent book called the jazz of physics, a little bit more about my story in science. So I study super symmetry. And for those of you who don't really know a lot about it, the simplest way I can tell you or any of the public is that we know from physics that nature has well elementary that we call quarks and leptons and force carriers. And if we classify them according to whether they are force carriers and fermions or boson or I'm sorry fermions which are the matter fields or bosons which are the force carrier fields. This is what the standard model looks like and I say, does that look symmetrical to you. Most people say no. What if the universe was really looking like this. This is the basic idea of super symmetry. And this is one of the reasons I became excited. As a graduate student in 1975 when I heard about super symmetry because I realized it would be a symmetry that apply to matter and energy, making our understanding much more symmetrical. I'm just salam and john Strathley and those papers that I showed you that I call the three books of my personal physics Bible, gave us the ideas of super fields and super fields are field variables where some of the coordinates of space, but the other coordinates are not numbers at all they're what are called grassland variables, and these things terminate after a certain order before dimensions, the Taylor series mansion can only go up to four. And so this is what obdus and john gave us as one of the greatest tools and studying the mathematics of super symmetry. And so the questions that those tools have never been able to answer. And so around 2005 or four. I was still wondering about those two questions by by that time. Well, let's see, in 1998 I became an endowed professor. In the endowment one has a freedom to study what one wants to study, as opposed to getting permission by one's colleagues about what's most interesting and what's most important. And so some of the questions that I had learned about much much earlier in my career. By 2005 I was ready to attack those questions, no independent of what other people said. And so we established a technique for looking at some of these super fields, and turning them into a kind of a graph. We call these graphs a dinkras. The word a dinkra is a word that comes from West Africa, African tradition, and it means a symbol that has hidden meaning. This is one of those symbols that expansion that john and obdus worked out in terms of a network and using the approaches that we develop look like this. You can analyze this network in terms of its spin content. And going forward to 1994 in 1995 but looking back to 19 from 2004 or five 1995 wouldn't propose what people think is a leading candidate for quantum field theory is called in theory and in theory and a special limit only has these variables. One of the problems that I was wondering about was, how does this description of M theory with these three variables fit and become consistent with the super field, concept of obdus along and john stroth be. No one knew the answer to that question. Around the time I developed this network approach I start thinking about how could we possibly go beyond this construction. So, until 2020, no one had ever been able to answer this, but in 2020 due to four or five papers I did with two of my graduate students here. I just run quickly through the title pages. We were able to figure out the rules for building these networks. And that they, these networks are generated by taking exponentials of objects called young to blows. You have to pick them appropriately and you have to use two different kinds of young to blows, some for fermions those are red boxes, and some for bosons those are the blue boxes, but if you do this and simply create these objects, you get the fields that occur in salon and stroth these super field concept, and we verify this many times. And then, on the basis of this observation, we built a network that contains over 2 billion feel components. It contains the 11 dimensional super gravity that is a limit of in theory. And as I said, this is precedent setting. No one has ever been able to do this before. And in my story, you can see the way we were able to do it was not actually by using super fields, but using concept that came from super fields and changing the paradigm to a network. So, as I said, we have actually been able to do something that is ethical. And it's always nice when you can do something that you can look back over, say, almost 40 years, no one knew how to answer the problem. And suddenly, you know how to answer the problem. It gives you some confidence that you learned something in those 40 years. What does this have to do with the Dinkras? And in particular this expression of Dinkra Jazz, which is the title of that we have used on occasion. In 2010 I was at MIT and I had to give them a presentation. The image that you see at the bottom of this, this very artistic image, that's another one of these mathematical Dinkras that we've been able to invent on the basis of studying supersymmetry. Dinkra Jazz, as you probably know, is a form of music that emphasizes spontaneous innovation. And what I now understood at this point in my career was that that's what Abdus Salam was talking about when he had this conversation with me. He meant the ability to have paradigm shifting insights that allow you to solve problems. Atish was very kind in the introduction to talk about jazz, but you see the ability to innovate is not just restricted to music. And in fact, this is where the importance of the Albert Einstein take on imagination because it's the imagination that allows you to innovate. And finally, I have an example in my career where I have gone from end to end in my relationship with Abdus in understanding finally a statement he made to me when I first met him. And 40 years later producing a result in my physics career that incorporates the essence of the statements and allows me and my team to have established a new result in physics. And let's say this is a little story, because we don't know where this is going to be next, but now we have a new foundation for asking the questions. There are other echoes however my life from that 19 of this salon statement, I'm going to talk about those things. I wrote an essay in 1995 called equity versus excellent excellence a false dichotomy and science and society. It was published in a magazine called the scientist. And I open that by saying the first commitment of a scientist ought to be to using logical and rational effort to comprehend an objective reality without regard to one's emotions or prejudices. Those of us who have had the privilege of a scientific career and love the doing or saw of science are hard pressed, not to accept this as one of the paradigms in our view of life. Personally as an African American, I've often been asked about my attitudes towards an opinion towards affirmative action diversity in science, engineering, and technical fields. In this essay, I give a response having spent some time thinking about it. This part of my life has led in some very interesting strange directions I was a, I was an advisor to the President's Council. I remember the President's Council advisors to science and technology to President Obama, and you can see my long black hair on the right hand side of the picture so you can tell it was some years ago, and you can see President Obama on the left hand side. This particular picture was taking, taking a meaning one day where I was advising the President on a report that we had made on STEM education. For such reports in total, I was a lead author on all of them. So by this means I got to interact with the President of the United States. In 1946, going backwards in time, Albert Einstein spoke at a historically black college. And what was really interesting was that by that time in his career, Albert Einstein had stopped accepting invitations to give commencement addresses. But he made an exception for this Lincoln University address. As you can see from this photograph, all of the students in this audience are members of the African American diaspora, the African American citizens. In his commencement speech, Einstein had a remarkable statement. He said that disease that I'm sorry that racism is a disease, and even more provocatively, he said it was a disease of white people and he would not be quiet about it. These are the words of one of the greatest physicists of all times. This disease leaves in prints on my society. In the United States, if you look at houses, because homes in our country are the basis of family wealth for most ordinary citizens. Similar homes are valued 23% less if they're owned by African Americans or if they're in mostly African American neighborhoods. The homes can have the same amenities, they can have the same size, but they are valued at 23% less. Now why is this important? What you see in the United States, public education, the kind of education that kids get in K through 12 grades is based on property taxes. And if your property taxes are based on the assessment of the value of your home, and your homes are valued less, means there's less taxes available for the schools that your kids go to. So this is one of the imprints of the racism that Albert Einstein talked about when he came to America. We see this gap in many, many ways. There's the COVID gap where you can see that African Americans are far more likely than other Americans to die of COVID. Particularly our European American colleagues are the least likely to have died from COVID. Their lives varies by age. African Americans are not the only people who suffer from discrimination in our country. Of late, many of our Asian American colleagues find to their great dismay that the kind of racist offenses that have afflicted the African American community are now starting to be problems for them. And in terms of active action, it turns out that if you look at the statistics, African American and Hispanic American students are less represented in the nation's top universities and college than they were 35 years ago. This country was study that was done in 2017, and the results were printed in the New York Times. So these are the realities that are faced in the United States for people of color as we think about careers in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine. In fact, it turns out that in medicine, a shameful figure is that there are less African American doctors being educated in medical schools in the U.S. right now than there were in medical schools in 1919. So in 1995, this essay, I began to talk about issues of race, as I saw them playing out in the country. And in particular this issue of affirmative action and diversity, where I was asked specifically why are these important questions, and I was asked by a young scholar of color. So I thought this is something that needed to be addressed. In the essay I point out some things. Why diversity is I think the first important thing. And so what I did in this essay was say, let's look at nature and ask the question, what is diversity doing nature. The answer turns out to be pretty obvious if you're looking at genetics is the diversity of a gene pool that allows a species to survive to survive when the environment becomes more hostile. The second example I looked at in this article was food stocks, because this was some years after the so called Green Revolution, and suddenly humanity was able to grow much more food, and how did it happen. It turned out that the genetic diversity of the plants that we eat, allowed for the creation of generations of plants that had were able to produce more food and be more resistant to insects. So diversity in nature was pretty clear what it does you any of you can go out and look and verify these things. However, that was not the final goal of this essay, the final goal was actually to get to science and so I stopped in the middle and said, Okay, we know what diversity does in systems where genetics is important. What about in systems where means are important, mimetics, and I mean means in the original sense of the word, not the way the word is used today on the internet but means actually has a meaning independent of the internet. And it's basically describing ideas that act like genes. And so if you the one place you can see this is in American music, American music is generally regarded as being very innovative. And in particular I in this essay pointed out that rock and roll is an outstanding example. You can ask yourself where does rock American rock and roll come from the answer comes. Well, it comes from two groups of people musicians who mostly practice forms of the music that are rooted in African culture, and people who form who perform music that has been practiced principally in European culture is the unfolding of these two different forms of music that you get rock and roll. And finally, if rock and roll is due to diversity. And since I signed talking about ideas and imagination. Why is music so different. Well, because it comes from having a diversity of perspectives of people who think differently about the ethos and doctrine and the, and the highest performance of music, and it's out of this difference that you get these music forms. So surprising. It's not surprising to me after I thought about it for a long time, that diversity probably shows up in mathematics. Now, a lot of when I first say this to people a lot of you so how can that possibly be. And my answer is look at the mathematical literature from about 100 years ago, and tell me whether you think mathematics as practice that is at its highest level 100 years ago is the same as it is today. And you'll find that it's drastically different. And so if styles can change in mathematics, and if mathematics is the root of science. It means style, existing physics. It may be akin to style and music. And once again, you come back to the point that you might want to foster diversity and technical fields in order to create the broadest possibilities of people creating new innovative ideas. When I finish that essay I actually said there was probably a cost that science was subject to, because we don't server support diversity, whether big because of the cause of ethnicity or gender, or any other demographic factor because science does not and has not historically noted diversity, we are probably paying a cost. A paper appeared in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences a few years ago, it's this paper. And these are social scientists at Stanford University. And they in this paper argue that they have a methodology for actually quantifying the cost that is paid because diverse scholars, when presenting new ideas are not listened to on the broad on a broad equitable basis. In 2010, I was asked to write about diversity for a book that was created by the American Association for the advancement of science and the Association of American Universities about diversity and higher education and the law. I wrote an essay entitled thoughts on creativity diversity and innovation in science and education. And in this essay I summarize my 30 years of experience. Then 30 years of experience teaching students and how I saw diversity playing out in the classroom. My observation is that the broadest possible manifestation of diversity is a critical force small multiplier for the learning process of all students in a size classroom or laboratory. Now, when this, a few years later was a case called Fisher versus Texas, those argued before the Supreme Court. And so my very great surprise, ultimately, I learned that when the decision was rendered, this essay was cited by the Supreme Court. And so it shows that those thoughts on diversity that were triggered by office along in my thinking, led to the consequence of rewriting 30 years later on the subject, this essay, which was cited in the decision by the Supreme Court. During the hearing of Chief Justice Roberts asked a pointed question which was what unique perspective does a minority student bring to a physics class. Now notice, this is an extraordinarily strange question. Why didn't he ask minority student brings to a class or to a science class or to any class why physics. I don't know the answer to this question exactly, but that essay I just told you about was focused on physics. And we do know that this essay at least was noted by the Supreme Court so it is quite possible that that question was triggered by my essay on this subject. This particular piece I'm showing you here is a shortened is a shortened editorial, only a couple hundred words long that breaks the argument down in the longer essay into a bite size big bit. And the basic point is, I told some stories about things that happen with diverse classes and learning. I'm independent of my service to the United States President at the time, because I think all people have an essential obligation to fight for our fellow human beings. I was an advisor to the president and that was a very interesting experience. I met some very interesting people during that time, including the current president United States this picture from 2015. But for me, this is a global commitment. That's one reason I welcome this opportunity today. This commitment actually begins at home. I'm still connected to my high school. In fact, every year I give an award of monetary awards to the student with the highest performance in math and or science. This is 2001 award ceremony. Later a ceremony. And next year, all of the seniors at my high school will be my alma mater high school will be taking physics. This is extraordinarily rare in the United States of America. It's even rare among communities of African Americans, but engagement matters. I've been a number of times talking about physics for everyone, particularly for physics, but for all people, South African 2002. And of course, my family has heard this. My daughter turns out to be a physicist. She just got her PhD. She studies black holes. My son looks like he's going to be a biophysicist. And my family also got a chance to meet this very interesting man in this picture with us. And all because of the salon made this very, very strange statement to me that triggered my thinking in this area. So with this, I'd like to end my presentation. And if we have time for a few questions, I'll take them. Thank you very much, Jim. This was a very insightful talk about both from personal experiences and from a broader perspective. And he really brought out this importance both in music and science of diversity, not only for the sake of equality for opportunity but for innovation and creativity. And I can say that, you know, Indian classical music is a bit like jazz that encourages free flowing innovation as you're playing. And also, at the same time, he talked about the discrimination and even the treatment, for example, by law enforcement officer. I remember an article by Cornel West, who is a professor at Princeton, how he would very routinely get stopped at night by police officers being African American with the suspicion that, you know, he must be doing something wrong in the streets of Princeton. But going back to his experience and I'm sure many of you have experienced this that arriving in Trieste at midnight. One of my African colleagues actually remarked that Trieste is the only place where if you see at night person with unusual hairdo, or with unusual skin color unusual clothes you know by European norms, you get asked. I looked at suspiciously, and if you're looking a bit lost, even the police officers ask you, are you a scientist. So this is actually credit to ICTP that people in Trieste think of, you know, people coming from different corners of the world as they must be doing something, you know, important at ICTP. Anyway, thank you very much, Jim. If there are questions, please write them in chat. My professor criminally will be the moderator so you can raise your hand or maybe it's best to write in chat. I'm sure you have many questions so. Ateesh, this is Jim. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. I was looking at chat and one person made observations that the slides were not visible in the live stream. I can send my slides to you if you wish for me to. No, I think that would be, I'm surprised. I think it should be okay, but please do send your slides in case there was some technical glitch. Professor Gates, you have some general suggestion for our students, especially the one who are graduating this year since this is a celebration of their graduation. So, you know, first of all, I tell people all the time, I don't give advice. You have to give advice that's actually valuable. You have to actually know a lot about the person to whom the advice is being given. And it is very rare that I'm in that situation. What I do tell people is I'm willing to talk about situation, how I have viewed and handled situations that might be similar to the situation that any individual facing. Fortunately, nothing in my life has been similar to the last year and a half or two years on the global stage. So, all I can do is say that the greatest challenge in my life that looks like what I see many, many young people facing now was when I was asking the question, how can I possibly build a successful foundation for a career that I have been dedicated to since I was four years old? And for me, the answer to that question was first of all to make sure that this is going to sound like perhaps rather strange as an answer, to make sure that this thing I wanted was the closest thing to my heart. Because if you're in love with something, you're willing to work extraordinarily hard in order to accomplish it. And that hard work typically will make you better at the thing in which you are working. And if you work sufficiently hard, you know, it's not, it is not true that you don't need luck. We all need luck at some point. In my story, I was lucky to have met Professor Salam. I often wonder what my life and career would have been like if I had not met him. Because in fact, as I was sharing with Atish, one of my conversations with Professor Salam was one of the most important initiating factors in my leaving a faculty position at MIT. So what I can say is, look to what you're most passionate about, tell us a lot. And when you meet someone who takes an interest in you, who doesn't necessarily share your gender, doesn't share your religion, doesn't share your ethnicity. If that person offers the hand of assistance, do not turn away. My life has been a testament to Professor Salam reaching out to me. Thank you. I think this partially answers a question that was in the chat, how to deal with difficult supervisors. Unfortunately, the only answer I know is you need to reach out to other people. And, but don't, perhaps you might not want to let your difficult supervisor know that. Okay, I think we can stop. Thank you very much, Professor Gates. Okay, thank you very much, Jim. And next year actually we're planning the ICTP reunion in person we're hoping and maybe, maybe you can make it at that time. Anyone sent me an invitation, I will sure try to. Yeah, this is our plan, we will see how we, you know, how the COVID situation develops, but please keep it in mind. We'll pick you up at the station. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, au revoir.