As far as I remember, the first time I stepped onto a university campus was in junior high school, when I visited Johns Hopkins for an awards ceremony for the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth. (I grew up in an environment that didn’t involve spending a lot of time on college campuses, generally speaking.) The SMPY is a longitudinal study that looks for kids who do well on standardized math tests, encourages them to take the SATs at a very young age, and follows the progress of those who do really well. I scored as “pretty precocious” but “not precocious enough to be worth following up.” Can’t really argue. My award was a slim volume on analytic geometry, which — well, the thought was nice.
But the campus made an impression. It was elegant and evocative in a way that was new to me and thoroughly compelling. Grand architecture, buildings stuffed with books and laboratories, broad green commons criss-crossed by students and professors talking about ideas. (I presumed that was what they were talking about). Magical. I was already committed to the aspiration that I would go to university, get a Ph.D., and become a theoretical physicist, although I had very little specific concept of what that entailed. Soaking in the campus atmosphere redoubled my conviction that this was the right path for me.
So it is pretty special to me to announce that I am going to become a professor at Hopkins. This summer Jennifer and I will move from Los Angeles to Baltimore, and I will take up a position as Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy. (She will continue writing about science and culture at Ars Technica, which she can do from any geographic location.)
The title requires some explanation. Homewood Professors are a special category at Hopkins. There aren’t many of them. Some are traditional academics like famous cosmologist Joseph Silk; others are not traditional academics, like former Senator Barbara Mikulski, musician Thomas Dolby, or former UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. The official documentation states that a Homewood Professor should be “a person of high scholarly, professional, or artistic distinction whose appointment brings luster to the University.” (You see why I waited to announce until my appointment was completely official, so nobody could write in objecting that I don’t qualify. Too late!)
It’s a real, permanent faculty job — teaching, students, grant proposals, the whole nine yards. Homewood Professors are not tenured, but in some sense it’s better — the position floats freely above any specific department lines, so administrative/committee obligations are minimized. (They told me they could think about a tenure process if I insisted. Part of me wanted to, for purely symbolic reasons. But once all the ins and outs were explained, I decided not to bother.)
In practice, my time will be split between the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Department of Philosophy. I will have offices in both places, and teach roughly one course/year in each department. The current plan is for me to teach two classes this fall: a first-year seminar on the Physics of Democracy, and an upper-level seminar on Topics in the Philosophy of Physics. (The latter will probably touch on the arrow of time, philosophy of cosmology, and the foundations of quantum mechanics, but all is subject to change.) And of course I’ll be supervising grad students and eventually hiring postdocs in both departments — let me know if you’re interested in applying!
You’ll note that both departments have recently been named after William Miller. That’s because Bill Miller, who was a graduate student in philosophy at Hopkins and became a successful investment banker, has made generous donations both to philosophy and to physics. (He’s also donated to, and served as board chair for, the Santa Fe Institute, where I will continue to be Fractal Faculty — our interests have considerable overlap!) Both departments are already very high-quality; physics and astronomy includes friends and colleagues like Adam Riess, Marc Kamionkowski, and David Kaplan, not to mention benefitting from association with the Space Telescope Science Institute. But these gifts will allow us to grow in substantial ways, which makes for a very exciting time.
One benefit of being a Homewood Professor is that you get to choose what you will be designated a professor “of.” I asked that it be Natural Philosophy, harkening back to the days before science and philosophy split into distinct disciplines. (Resisted the temptation to go with a Latin version.) This is what makes this opportunity so special. I’ve always been interdisciplinary, between physics and philosophy and other things, and also always had an interest in reaching out to wider audiences. But there was inevitably tension with what I was supposed to be doing as a theoretical physicist and cosmologist. My predilections don’t fit comfortably with the academic insistence on putting everyone into a silo and encouraging them to stay there.
Now, for the first time in my life, all that stuff I want to do will be my job, rather than merely tolerated. (Or not tolerated, as the case may be.) The folks at JHU want me to build connections between different departments, and they very much want me to both keep up with the academic work, and with the podcasts and books and all that. Since that’s exactly what I want to do myself, it’s a uniquely good fit.
I’ve had a great time at Caltech, and have nothing bad to say about it. I have enormous fondness for my colleagues and especially for the many brilliant students and postdocs who I’ve been privileged to interact with along the way. But a new adventure awaits, and I can’t wait to dive in. I have a long list of ideas I want to pursue in cosmology, quantum mechanics, complexity, statistical mechanics, emergence, information, democracy, origin of life, and elsewhere. Maybe we’ll start up a seminar series in Complexity and Emergence that brings different people together. Maybe it will grow into a Center of some kind. Maybe I’ll write academic papers on moral philosophy! Who knows? It’s all allowed. Can’t ask for more than that.
Congrats, Sean! Wonderful news, for both you and Hopkins, even if it means returning to a place with winter weather…
Congratulations! You deserve it. You’ve been an excellent face of physics, science, and atheism for at least a decade. When my late friend Vic Stenger was planning to debate William Lane Craig, I helped him by watching a lot of Craig’s debates. Vic did Ok, but you’re the only one who thoroughly defeated Craig. I really enjoyed your Biggest Idea lectures and I look forward to the books.
Congratulations and welcome to the neighborhood from a fellow Marylander! Jumping in with a philosophical thought in response to your discussion with Coleman Hughes in which you discussed why is murder wrong,… You noted that, unlike animals, people can be sad if they know they might be killed. I would add that it’s not just feeling sad or worried. If murder were allowed, besides the lost future contributions of the victim, people would waste enormous resources protecting themselves. So it would be a bad rule for society. Generalizing, this might explain in part why it’s more troubling to hear about the victim of violence than the victim of an accident. Generalizing further, I suggest that in moral philosophy often adding a bit of thinking like an economist will add to understanding moral (or legal) precepts.
Thanks, Prof Carrol, informing us about your starting of possible new windows
into the puzzle of existance.
We will be waiting for the new chapters for even the BIG(GER) PICTURE..
Many of us were already facinated with the BIG one….
yours…
This is exciting!
Thank you for all you have done to stimulate deep thought and inspire awe regarding the workings of our universe. You are a gift to humanity.
Congratulations Sean! I look forward to seeing more of your philosophy 🙂
Thanks for inspiring and teaching all of us physics, people like you are the reason why there is sanity in this word, wishing you good luck and may you live for a long time, your parents & caregivers must be very proud of raising you and done a fantastic job for the humanity.
Good news!
This sounds wonderful and a perfect fit, congratulations! The path you’ve created is one of high impact, albeit a non standard one.
I’ve been very influenced by your books and your various online classes (including the wonderful “biggest ideas”). Thank you very much, and I’m looking forward to seeing more of your contributions.
Dear Sean,
This new position will allow you to make public the ambivalence of the human being.
Here’s to our common struggle in the service of civilization!
https://twitter.com/StratCom_AFU/status/1502254439410941953?cxt=HHwWgoC-9YGditkpAAAA
Dr. Carroll:
First congratulations. The position and the opportunities (and challenges it presents; there are always those) seem a perfect fit, as though the position was written with you in mind.
I also enjoyed and appreciated the announcement, with details, personal and professional; a delight. I’m interested in the nature of science and we don’t often get information on how an academic makes this kind of decision.
I wish you, the two of you, bon voyage and happy trails.
I’m among your many fans.
Cheers
Congratulations on your new position, and congratulations to Johns Hopkins on the new luster!
Seems like a great fit. Good luck in your new adventure.
Congratulations on your new position and welcome to the east coast! You don’t have to worry about earthquakes much on this side of the continent. Once I was standing on my brother’s porch when one struck in the St. Lawrence valley, and I didn’t even notice it, though my brother did inside the house. The porch must have damped the oscillations.
I apologize for being off topic but there is an issue about the Bullet Cluster that is puzzling me. The galactic clusters in that system are estimated to have only 10% of the total baryonic mass (clusters plus gas clouds). So I would think that for the Dark Matter (DM), which stayed with the clusters, to induce the multiple, concentric gravitational lensing rings only around the clusters, that the DM in and about the clusters would have to be multiple times the mass of the gas clouds, since only a single lensing ring encircles both clusters and gas clouds. So the clusters would then have, say, 20, 30, or more times DM mass than baryonic mass, which seems excessive, as the average DM/baryonic mass ratio, Universe-wide, is 5 to 1, from what I’ve read.
Congratulations and a big thank you.
Just happened upon your wonderful news. Superlatives are inadequate, so I’ll just say, Well, well deserved.
Good luck! You won’t need it.