School of Mathematics

Tim Adamo

Taraneh Latifi Seresht has written the following article as part of our series of Academic Interviews; featuring Tim Adamo!

When we spoke, mathematical physicist Dr. Tim Adamo told me about a book and chain of events that changed the future he imagined for himself. “I’ve always been a nerd and wanted to become a writer. Not necessarily an academic, but I wanted to have a kind of intellectual life. It wasn't until I was in university and started engaging with research for the first time that I thought it was something I would love to do for the rest of my life.”

Early life

Born and raised in Middletown, Maryland, Tim mentioned, “I was fortunate to attend Middletown Public High School; it’s a great school with great teachers.”

At the end of high school a book called ‘The Elegant Universe’ made such an impression on Tim that he gave mathematics a thought. “I thought of mathematics to be a boring subject, but this book about string theory, something I had never heard about, made me think that this was something I'd like to learn about. By the time I finished high school I had some vague interest in these things.” 

Four years later he graduated with a degree in Mathematics and Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. Tim mentioned, “I think Pitts was fantastic. Great professors who opened my eyes to all sorts of interesting topics in mathematics. It was also a place that provided me with an opportunity to kind of get involved with research for the first time.”

After his UG degree he applied to Oxford University, “It was the first time I entered the UK, and nothing had prepared me for how much like Harry Potter is was going to be! At Oxford, I had a great PhD supervisor, Lionel Mason, and I was lucky because the college I was in had a great graduate student community. I played football and darts for the college team and made lots of good friends in the math institute where I was doing my studies.”

Academic Career

“In mathematical physics, if you want to pursue an academic career after your PhD, you apply for what are called postdoctoral positions and that's what I did,” Tim said. His first position was a junior research fellowship at Cambridge University in Saint John’s College, followed by a position at Imperial College London. “Both positions have been fantastic. They're outstanding academic places for the particular type of mathematics that I do and I had the freedom to work on whatever I wanted while I was there; I was able to engage with the other people who were in those departments as little or as much as I wanted, which was a fantastic experience.” When the opportunity came, Edinburgh was a natural place for him to apply, “I’ve been up to the department in Edinburgh a couple of times to give seminar talks. I had a positive impression of the University, the Mathematical Physics group and the city as a place to live and work. I think I fit in with the research profiles in the department. Not duplicating things already done, but complementing the research. I work on finding new mathematical techniques to perform Quantum Field Theory computations. Enabling us to predict what is going to come out the other end of various ‘smashing together’ experiments that we might be interested in.”

When I asked him about this favorite paper among the many published under his name, he mentioned 'A world sheet theory for supergravity'. The project he collaborated on with Eduardo Casali, a graduate student at the time, and David Skinner, an academic at Cambridge University. The paper showed that general relativity can be reformulated to a theory governing the way objects called Riemann surfaces are embedded in some higher-dimensional space. “It was a hard one, we found the right way to do it. It’s a beautiful story, but it was something we struggled with for a year.” He continues, “There were many times that we stood in front of a blackboard covered in calculations. Things that didn't work, indicating we got the idea wrong. I remember telling David and Eduardo that we should leave this and do a different project. I learned a lot from David, especially his persistence. He believed we would be able to do it and then we, all three of us, did it.” 

 “Working on good problems means they will be hard; otherwise, everyone could do it and other people would have done it. The upside is that when you figure it out, it's a great feeling. It's the academics version of scoring a goal in football! You can't replicate it, this means most of the time the default state you find yourself in, is being stuck and having to try and figure out new ways of overcoming problems. You have to learn to deal with it and not get overwhelmed by the fact that things aren't working.”