Questions and answers with Roberto Piazza
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0572
By Jermey N. A. Matthews
Condensed-matter physicist Roberto Piazza was born, raised, and educated in Italy. He obtained his physics PhD in 1986 at the University of Pavia, where he taught for three years before moving to his current institution, the Polytechnic University of Milan. His research is based on the experimental study of soft matter and complex fluids, and specifically the study of structural properties, microscopic dynamics, and phase transitions.
A self-confessed amateur astronomer—he says he’s resigned to conveying his love for the dark skies to his two teenage children—and lover of history and philosophy literature, Piazza has written his first book, Soft Matter: The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of (Springer, 2011). Physics Today recently caught up with him to discuss the book.
PT : What motivated you to write this book, who is your target audience, and what do you hope to teach them?
Piazza : The 20th-century revolution in quantum physics has left unsolved many subtle and challenging classical problems. Soft matter is the broad field where all the keystones of classical physics merge under a new light, often yielding surprises; besides, it has the great advantage of showing itself in everyday objects, ranging from milk and fine dust to ice cream, crude oil, and suntan cream. Thus, in principle, this book is addressed to a very wide audience. Yet, that goal is probably too ambitious. I will be satisfied if at least young students in physics, chemistry, or biology profit from this popular science reading. To my view, good books in popular science should not seriously pretend to teach anything. Rather, my goal was just arousing curiosity and a little excitement for this fascinating “middle earth” lying between the atoms and ourselves.
PT : While writing, what was the greatest challenge you had to overcome?
Piazza : I am rather skeptical about some popular science books that pretend to address in plain language esoteric topics such as superstrings, black holes, or dark matter, but in fact just convey an idea of science as “black magic” rather than the fruit of the humble labor of many people. Luckily, as a soft-matter scientist, I knew that [nonexpert] readers would feel much more at ease with stuff they meet in everyday life. I dared, with little hope, to write a popular science book on soft matter retaining a firm physical content with no math at all. A humbler goal was writing something my wife, a naturalist who is terrified by physics and math, could appreciate. That worked better than I expected. Also, at the risk of being politically incorrect, I conceived the introductory chapter as a conversation with an anonymous lady reader. Besides being a literary trick—any good book should start with a dedication to a muse, and a hirsute muse would have been rather weird—this was just paying homage to the richer, multifarious experience women generally have with soft matter.
PT : What does the title mean, and how was it conceived?
Piazza : The subtitle is drawn, and arranged to common parlance, from Prospero’s line in “The Tempest,” in which Shakespeare tells us what we ourselves may actually be. As I state in the book, biological matter is nothing but a “rave party” of polymers, surfactant-like molecules, and particles of colloidal size, cooperating to generate that miracle we call life. So the book title is a basically a way to foster in readers a reflection on our intimate bounds with many humble things surrounding us. We might possibly be just stardust, or soap bubbles, but, surely, as Prospero says, we are “such stuff as dreams are made on.”
PT : What books helped you in writing yours?
Piazza : My work mostly originated from the educational, often heated debates I’ve had with many colleagues, and not necessarily from other books. If the reader wishes to be entertained on related topics, however, I recommend the following: Ben Franklin Stilled the Waves: An Informal History of Pouring Oil on Water with Reflections on the Ups and Downs of Scientific Life in General (Oxford University Press, 2004) by Charles Tanford; Middle World: The Restless Heart of Matter and Life (Palgrave McMillan, 2006) by Mark Haw; and Made to Measure: New Materials for the 21st Century (Princeton University Press, 1999) by Philip Ball. For educated physicists, I recommend: Foundations of Colloid Science (Oxford University Press, 2001) by Robert Hunter; Intermolecular and Surface Forces (3rd edition, Elsevier, 2011) by Jacob Israelachvili; and Biological Physics: Energy, Information, Life (W. H. Freeman, 2004) by Philip Nelson.
PT : What are you reading at the moment?
Piazza : In my leisure time, I love dedicating myself to literature and philosophy, and I strongly advise both physics students and my colleagues to do the same. Great humanity books teach us to look at what we do with a different eye and help us frame our job and duties in the general context of the human struggle to improve. Presently, I am rereading the essays of [Renaissance-era writer Michel de] Montaigne. The main lesson I learned from them is that complex problems require long meditation and thoughtful, articulate answers—because trivialization of complicated issues, a disease my country seems to have recently suffered from, is the tombstone of human growth and of democracy.
