Phymaths podcast # 52 || Guest: Dr. Rajesh Gopakumar

Description Dr. Rajesh Gopakumar is a theoretical physicist, who has majorly worked on holographic duality in his career. He got his Ph.D. from Princeton University under the supervision of David Gross and right now, he is the director of ICTS Bangalore in India. The list of his works is available below. Some links 1) Dr. Gopakumar's list of works: https://inspirehep.net/authors/1007959 2) Link to the high energy physics resources page on my website: https://hassaansaleem.com/graduate-level-theoretical-physics-resources-in-progress/ Contact Info My website: hassaansaleem.com Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hassaan.3142/ Join the Whatsapp channel: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Va9DkjmAzNbs7IlGuv1X Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Hassaan_PHY Email Queries: [email protected] Time stamps (0:00) Coming Up (0:31) Intro of the guest (0:48) His recent projects (8:53) Multiple open string descriptions (11:21) His interest in Physics (15:10) Pressure to go to engineering (16:12) IIT Kanpur (20:11) His skepticism for string theory (25:08) What is string theory? (31:01) Is spacetime fundamental? (34:28) Overview of holography (36:38) Maldacena's example (37:26) Using holography for QCD (43:10) His work on holography (50:51) Higher spins and Weinberg Witten theorem (57:40) His work on Chern Simons theory (1:01:35) Being the director of ICTS (1:10:30) Choosing a Ph.D. student (1:13:14) Publishing trends (1:15:40) (People's question) Physics and AI (1:19:45) (People's question) Phenomenology (1:21:26) (People's question) deSitter spaces (1:22:43) (People's question) Masters in ICTS (1:25:12) (People's question) Ashoke Sen (1:27:12) (People's question) Research Transition (1:29:42) (People's question) Comparisons (1:32:02) (People's question) Failure