I had Nobel Prize Winner of Physics 2019 as Teacher at Cambridge

Ara Mambreyan
Nov 3 · 5 min read

On 8 October, it was announced that The Nobel Prize in Physics 2019 was awarded to James Peebles “for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology” and Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz “for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star”.

When I heard the news, I immediately thought I would write an article about my personal experiences of being supervised by Didier Queloz during my first-year undergraduate study at the University of Cambridge.

Most personal accounts of extremely successful people are biased towards depicting them as superhuman geniuses.

Instead, in this article, I tried my best to remain objective and not allow confirmation bias to cloud my judgment.

Hence, my opinions and impressions are based on before I learned that Didier won a Nobel.

Jim Peebles, Michel Mayor, Didier Queloz

FIRST MEET

At Cambridge, we have so-called supervisions where a professor/doctor/PhD student supervises a pair of students for a particular module for 1 hour per week.

In Autumn 2017, when I was a fresher at Cambridge, I got an email from Didier saying that he was my supervisor for Mechanics. As I had never heard of him before, I was a bit worried that he would not be a good supervisor. (Oh, the irony!)

Before then, it did not cross my mind that I was being supervised by a future Nobel Prize winner.

The first time I met him, I was 15 minutes late for my supervision. I was stupid enough to cycle the wrong way.

When I finally got to his room, I was all sweaty and looking funny. Didier saw me, put on a charismatic smile as in the below picture and asked me what happened.

All three of us — Didier, my supervision partner and I — introduced ourselves. When Didier spoke about his research, I did not even realize how impactful his work was. (That goes on to tell you how humble he is.)

UNCONVENTIONAL ENDING TO THE SUPERVISION

At the end of our first supervision, Didier told us that there is more to life than physics.

What hobbies do you have?”

I do not even remember what I told him, but I recall he was truly curious and listening.

“You should try to have fun as well besides work. If you don’t have fun, you won’t enjoy Cambridge. The sunset at Cambridge comes soon so make sure to put some lights on your bikes! And wear a helmet.”

Remember, besides being your teacher, I am also here if you need anything other than teaching. If you have any problems, issues, worries, doubts, talk to me.”

It was the first time ever I lived outside of Armenia and the way Didier spoke made me at ease. It was not about the advice but more that I felt supported. To note, giving support and advice is definitely not part of supervisors’ responsibilities. In fact, I think he was one of the very few supervisors who went beyond his teaching responsibilities and offered his advice and support!

This is the first time I realized that Didier has exceptional social skills and emotional intelligence.

SUBSEQUENT WEEKS

Since then, every week I had a supervision with Didier. I had done a good share of physics before— having participated in International Physics Olympiad 2015 and 2016 — so I managed to impress him which feels nice.

In the second supervision, I asked him a question about significant figures from the lectures. (In theoretical physics, you might quote numbers with significant numbers e.g. 7.341 m/s has 4 significant numbers.)

He shook his head and said “I don’t know. I don’t know. I always write errors.” (As Didier is an experimental physicist, he always writes numbers with errors e.g. 7.34 +- 0.03 m/s.)

After the supervision, I thought about this “I don’t know.”

It takes guts to admit you don’t know something. I even wrote a post about it on Facebook afterward about how I appreciate that teachers at Cambridge say “I don’t know” often.

Once, my partner was late so Didier and I started talking about our backgrounds. I do not remember where exactly he said he was from, but if I remember correctly he is from Southern Europe (Italy, Greece). As Armenia’s culture shares similarities to that of Southern Europe we were both pleasantly surprised. I should also note that he sounds like someone you would want to drink whiskey with!

THE INSPIRATION

As I promised at the beginning of this article, I tried to remain as objective as possible. That is why I feel I should also include the “unexpected” bits.

I would be a liar if I said that, from a teaching standpoint, Didier was my best supervisor. His explanations were relatively good but there were a few times when he could not answer questions (which were definitely out of the scope of the module.)

I am telling you this so you would know that all humans are flesh and bones — yes, even the ones who won a Nobel Prize.

When I saw Didier Queloz won a Nobel Prize I thought: “I keep saying that you do not need to be an out-of-the-world alien 6D visualizing genius, whatever that means and if they exist, to achieve greatness.” (I am sure Didier will agree with this!)

The media, journalists, and Hollywood, of course, would always portray Nobel Prize winners as superhumans. Why? Because it sells!

People want to watch how a superhuman genius kid won a Nobel Prize. It’s not intriguing and nail-biting to watch a movie about a guy who just worked hard and had exceptional perseverance to overcome challenges and do exceptional things.

But, the truth is, it takes hard work. It takes passion. It takes dreams. It takes confidence.

Just stop doubting yourself just because a journalist wrote that Albert Einstein was solving differential equations before he was born.

Your brain is a muscle.

Physics is a skill. Math is a skill. Thinking is a skill. Problem-solving is a skill. And skills are honed and practiced, and if you keep honing yours, you might be the next Nobel Prize winner!


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Thanks for reading. In case, we haven’t met before, I am Ara Mambreyan :) Feel free to connect on LinkedIn and Quora.

Ara Mambreyan

Written by

Information Engineering, Cambridge (2021) | IPhO medalist 2x | 10M+ Views | National Basketball Champion 5x | SWE Summer Intern, Barclays (2019)

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