UNLIKE experimental physicists, with their big, expensive toys (see article), theorists content themselves with blackboards, coffee and—crucially—a free rein. Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI), in Waterloo, Ontario, which has just opened a snazzy, new wing named after Stephen Hawking, the world's most famous living physicist, offers all three.

PI was set up in 1999 by Mike Lazaridis, founder and co-CEO of Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry range of personal digital assistants. Mr Lazaridis, a physics buff and fan of Dr Hawking since his days as an engineering student at the University of Waterloo, in the early 1980s, has stumped up C$170m ($165m)—a quarter of his personal wealth—to help endow his brainchild.

The new wing, which has absorbed C$29m, doubles PI's capacity, to over 200 researchers, making it the world's biggest institute for the study of theoretical physics. The humming brains it accommodates are working on a range of problems at the cutting edge of the subject: superstring theory, quantum-loop gravity, condensed-matter physics, complex systems and quantum information—the last of which involves PI's single concession to experimental science, the sending of quantum-encrypted messages between it and the nearby Institute for Quantum Computing.

A breakthrough in any of these areas would be the stuff of Nobel prizes. In time, it might also be the stuff of new technology. Even the most abstruse fields, Mr Lazaridis observes, yield practical benefits in the long run. He calls fundamental theorising “the most high-impact, low-cost pursuit in science”. He should know. The BlackBerry itself would be impossible without theoretical insights developed 100 years ago by the first quantum physicists. Come back, then, in another century to find out if the whole exercise has been worthwhile.