Cumrun Vafa, Muslim Scientist Competitor of Stephen Hawking

ilmuwan

Cumrun Fava, Muslim Scientist Competitor of Stephen Hawking

"He answered the unsolved mystery of Stephen Hawking."

Dream - The night is not too old in Iran. On the porch of a house, a young boy sits in contemplation. His eyes gaze sharply at the moon. His mind continues to churn. He keeps asking himself: why does the moon keep floating in the sky? Why does the moon never fall to the ground that it steps on even though it has no support? This contemplation brings about distress. The curiosity continues to surge. Those questions lead his life to science. The boy, overwhelmed by curiosity, is named Cumrun Vafa.

His efforts to answer the mystery have led him to the depths of exact knowledge. His adventure later brought him to become a great Muslim scientist. The bundle of questions that he had buried since first grade of elementary school, he later unraveled with academic research. And this process has led him to become a world-class physicist. Because of his journey of curiosity, 15 years ago Vafa received the Dirac Medal award. A prestigious award for physicists from the research institution Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP).

Cumrun Vafa, Muslim Scientist Competitor of Stephen Hawking

The annual medal awarded to Cumrun Fava is to honor Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, the founder of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. It is a prestigious award for scientists.

The reward was given because Vafa is considered to have made an important breakthrough in the study of mathematical physics String Theory and astrophysical object Black Hole or lubang hitam. Together with his two colleagues from Harvard University, United States, Vafa successfully uncovered several mysteries of black holes, especially the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. All of this was done using string theory and geometry. In the last half century, String Theory has indeed become a magnet for physicists who are eager to find a unified theory of the universe.

This theory provides a framework for unifying everything we know about nature, including all particles and forces between them, in a consistent quantum theory. String Theory, also known as the Theory of Strings, does indeed seem ambitious. Considering that the theory aims to describe physical phenomena involving a scale 1.025 times smaller than an atom. This is essentially like explaining the cosmology of the universe.

Physicists believe that there are four fundamental forces at work in this universe. These four forces are explained by two theories, namely quantum mechanics - which explains the existence of three fundamental forces operating at the atomic scale - and the theory of gravitation.

The three basic forces in the atomic scale are the electromagnetic force, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. The electromagnetic force is the force that binds electrons to be attracted to the atomic nucleus and underlies the interaction between atoms. The strong nuclear force is the force that causes protons and neutrons in the nucleus to not repel each other. Meanwhile, the weak nuclear force works in terms of beta decay. The three forces described by quantum mechanics have been successfully attempted to be combined with what is called the standard model.

However, the attempt to combine these two major theories - quantum mechanics and gravity - has never been successful. Even the attempt to combine one or all three of the basic forces of quantum mechanics with the force of gravity has also never been successful. Albert Einstein himself failed to achieve this combination. String theory is an attempt to formulate these four basic forces. The essence of this theory is that all particles in this universe are composed of strings or vibrations of energy smaller than electrons.

This theory states that all particles in this universe, and all forces that cause matter to interact, are made of those energy vibrations.

"Like a theory that encompasses everything, String Theory also requires an extraordinary amount of mathematical theory. In fact, most of the mathematics needed for String Theory has not been developed. Therefore, scientists who study String Theory have the task of developing mathematics as a tool to discover new laws of physics. Because of this, it is not surprising that String Theory branches out into many fields, including mathematics, particle phenomenology, and astrophysics. Vafa's research involves all of these aspects."

Together with his colleagues, Vafa worked on the typology of strings or wire structures, which attempted to explain some new mathematics derived from String Theory. In this way, the 62-year-old professor has explained and unraveled several mysteries of black holes, particularly the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy theory. Unsurprisingly, Vafa is often referred to as a rival of the famous scientist Stephen Hawking in the field of cosmology.

Famous in the US

Becoming a physicist with various complex thoughts is not actually Vafa's aspiration. When he was still in his homeland, he never thought of becoming a physics expert. "I am interested in physics, but I didn't consider it as a profession when I was still in Iran," he said as quoted from www.hupaa.com. Although he never thought of being involved in the field of physics, Vafa admitted that he liked the subject since entering elementary school. He became more interested after frequently observing nature around him, including questioning why the moon never falls to the earth.

"The statement continues to occupy my mind, and also why others are not bothered by it and feel as if it's normal. So I have been interested in this question since I was young," he said.

After graduating from Alborz High School in 1977, young Vafa decided to migrate to America. In Uncle Sam's Country, he landed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Since studying there, he has fallen more in love with physics. "But I still didn't think of making physics my job. The natural sciences department, at that time, was still unfamiliar in our culture." But, after thinking and being supported by his family, he finally made up his mind to choose his favorite field. "That's why I finally chose physics and mathematics," said the man born on August 1, 1960.

And in 1981, he achieved dual degrees simultaneously from MIT, namely a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics. He then pursued a PhD program in physics at Princeton University, under the supervision of Edward Witten. He graduated in 1985. Vafa was later appointed as a Harvard Junior Fellow scholarship recipient in 1985. Since then, his career as a scientist has flourished. He was subsequently appointed as an assistant professor at Harvard for two years. In 1990, he held the title of physics professor from the prestigious American campus.

Because of his works, Vafa has repeatedly gone up and down the stage to receive awards. In 1989, he received the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation, then the Alfred P Sloan Award and Packard Foundation Award in the same year. He also received the AMS Leonard Eisenbud Prize for Math and Physics and the Dirac Medal from ICTP in 2008. Waving in a foreign land does not mean Vafa forgets his homeland. Amidst his busy schedule teaching at Harvard, he frequently goes back and forth to Iran, serving as a commissioner in the Network of Iranians for Knowledge and Innovation (NIKI), a non-governmental organization initiated by Iranian academics scattered across the United States and Europe.

"Even so, I consider myself more Iranian than anyone else. So even though most of the time I am outside of Iran, most of my memories from 17 years or more still remain in Iran,"
tutur Cumrun Vafa. Translation: "The words of Cumrun Vafa."

The reflection of Vafa's children on the moon while in Iran did make him momentarily lose his words. But it was that very question that propelled him onto the world stage. As one of the leading Muslim scientists.