José Figueroa-O'Farrill

Alex Sealy and Laura O'Sullivan worked together to produce this article as part of our series of Academic Interviews; featuring José Miguel Figueroa-O'Farrill!

Early life

José Figueroa-O'Farrill was born in Cuba in 1963 and moved to Madrid at the age of four. After attending a Catholic school for a few years, he transferred to an English-speaking British one. He completed his O-Levels in Spain before moving to the USA where his grandparents lived.

University

José had a keen interest in STEM growing up, but wasn’t always set on studying mathematics and physics. Initially, he considered studying molecular biology, but the focus on memorising facts didn’t appeal to him. Thus he turned to the “exact harder” sciences, which concentrated on computations, and chose to study physics and mathematics at MIT. His interest in mathematical physics was sparked by a lunchtime lecture given by a PhD student which dealt with classical mechanics. His eyes were opened to the maths behind physics which inspired him to pursue the subject.

José intended to do his PhD on cosmology, however he discovered a passion for Conformal Field theory, a formalism of perturbative string theory. This became the topic of his PhD which he completed at the Stony Brook University in New York. Over his career, José has moved to similar areas in physics, however, he has remained dedicated to working on string theory.

Supergravity and Research

As part of his research, José has been investigating supergravity theories. This is an extension of general relativity and the solutions of supergravity are space time. In the context of supergravity there is an interesting class of space times called super symmetric space times. A lot was learned about string theory from these and solutions were found. However, there was no order to these solutions or ways of unifying them. In string theory, 10- and 11-dimensional space times are interesting, yet they remain unsolved, and José is working on these.

In 2001 he discovered a solution to supergravity, showing that it could arise by limits of other well-known things in physics. This solution proved useful for testing the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence.

José likes to take a more mathematical approach to his work. He is more comfortable thinking of things according to their mathematical descriptions as it gives a solid grounding on which he can make progress. When working on a specific topic, José outlines the problem that he is trying to solve and his ultimate goals. When using this approach to a problem, he may find another aspect that could be researched further which leads to a small detour from the initial problem. This could take years, but he generally returns to the original goals he set out.

Physics research

Starting out in physics research can be difficult. There is a lot of time pressure with publishing a paper as competition is strong and there is a risk that someone else will report a solution before you. Unfortunately, those who are first tend to receive most of the credit, even if it isn’t entirely correct. As a result, physics has been slow to adapt to new formalisms as credit isn’t given for these. Despite this, José believes that reformulation is essential for physics to survive. Using old formalisms can hinder communication and make it harder to transmit information to the next generation, as learning is more difficult and less succinct. This contrasts with mathematics where credit is given when a new formalism is discovered for a proof which makes it smoother or defined more clearly. Reformulation can also be useful in research as you can apply advancements made in other areas to your problem which may help you make a breakthrough.

Collaboration

Collaboration in José’s work is based on communicating mathematics. In his experience there have been major issues with this between mathematicians and physicists. Fortunately, the Institute of Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook University where he completed his PhD was located in the mathematics building, which meant there was frequent contact between mathematicians and physicists. This enabled José to learn to communicate efficiently and act as a “broker of peace” between the two sides. Collaborations like this can in fact be productive as it helps people see things from a new perspective and rethink the problems you are facing.

One of José’s most memorable moments was early in his career. It occurred when writing his first paper, on which he collaborated with a fellow PhD student. As he was applying the finishing touches, he realised to his dismay there was a major flaw in their work. In spite of this, they didn’t allow their mistake to set them back. Instead, they were motivated to delve deeper into the topic. This gave them a better understanding of their work which gave rise to new papers. This has taught him a great lesson on the importance of truly understanding what you were working on.