Bulletin

Issue: October 2006

News

On hallowed ground where scientists meet

Iggy McGovern will tell you with a rare flash of exasperation that the only common ground between physics and poetry is their shared position in the alphabet – but ask him what a synchrotron is and the poet answers before the physicist does: it’s a 21st century medieval cathedral where scientists meet.

Professors McGovern (left) and Riley in
s the La Trobe physics laboratory.

(It is also, he says, essentially just a big light bulb where electrons scurry around generating the kind of light physicists need for their shared experiments: big powerful beams that help penetrate the secrets of the atomic world.)

It was in such a hallowed space, at a synchrotron in Germany, that Irish poet and physicist Professor McGovern met fellow La Trobe University physicist, Professor John Riley, leading to an invitation to Australia and their current plans for a two-way collaboration on improving silicon chip technology.

The two scientists are discussing how to correlate their methodologies. (Professor McGovern specialises in organic semiconductors and Professor Riley in the inorganic kind.) With the completion of the Australian Synchrotron in Melbourne, chances are these physicists will meet again soon in a ‘cathedral’ closer to home.

Iggy McGovern, poet and small-‘p’ philosopher, and Ignatius McGovern, Associate Professor of Physics at Trinity College, Dublin, equally look forward to that – for reasons best explained in the language he speaks most fluently: see To a Synchrotron, below, an acrostic sonnet written for the La Trobe Bulletin.

A Fellow at La Trobe’s Institute for Advanced Study, Professor McGovern alternates his two ‘Ps’ when opportunities permit: talking up organic semiconductors in the lab, and ‘the rage for order’ at poetry readings and literary festivals.

He conducted a seminar at the University in mid-October titled: ‘Science and Poetry – Not so Different?’ He also made a guest appearance at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival and held a four-week residency at Varuna, a writers’ retreat in the Blue Mountains.

Not so long ago, he says, there wouldn’t have been any distinction between his two interests – people would ‘do’ physics AND write poetry.

‘The famous Irish mathematician, William Rowan Hamilton firmly believed they were inseparable, remarking of his discovery of quarternions (four-element numbers) that they had four parents: geometry, algebra, metaphysics and poetry. Today, scientist-poet Miroslav Holub says that science and poetry share the same aim: to defeat tyranny, whether of politics or orthodoxy, in science or literature. ‘

Despite shying away from writing poems about physics because he does not want to be labelled a ‘physics poet’, the poet sometimes catches the professor peering over his shoulder. He concedes, under duress, that his physics does sometimes inform his poetry, but rarely the reverse.

‘One poem in my book The King of Suburbia is about my cat, so some vague reference to Schroedinger’s cat appears.

My big problem would be remaining true to the physics. I’m confident that the reverse process is rare – that is, of poetry informing the physics – but I acknowledge that when productivity is high, it is high in both areas simultaneously. ‘

The primary themes of his first collection are the relationships of father and son (based on his own with his late father and with his son, Eoin, now 25), and the personal and domestic matrix of suburbia. Several of the poems have a subtle provenance in his science, cleverly disguised by humour, irony and rhyme.

He says he tries to counteract the idea that science is a nasty business: ‘Some people really do believe that; that it’s antihuman, anti-nature. I suggest in one of my poems that it’s human nature that’s nasty, not science. ‘

He admits however to hearing the siren call of the metaphysical: that sooner or later he will take up the challenge, and poet and physicist will speak as one.

To a Synchrotron

Thirty years a-growing
Old together; perhaps I should
Also be (like Tantalus) in the
Smithsonian Institute? And yet
Your prettified maiden names
Nina, Astrid, Bessy, forever
Conjure up an afterlife of
Hedonistic nights.
‘Research’, of course, was only half
Of the story, if they asked me
To account for it, I could
Respond with the analogy
Of a medieval cathedral: Draw
Nigh, receive the light!

Iggy McGovern - September 20, 2006.