Nautilus’ Ingenious this month, Alan Lightman, is a successful writer and physicist, and one of the very rare people to receive an appointment in both science and humanities at MIT*. He did his doctoral research at Caltech while Richard Feynman was a professor there. One day, Lightman was on hand to see the brilliant and charismatic physicist make a monumental discovery—only for all evidence of the revelation to soon vanish.

Watch more of this fascinating interview with Lightman, and also the essay he wrote for Nautilus about his personal experience with and thoughts on nothingness.





* Correction: This sentence erroneously said Lightman was the only MIT professor of science and humanities.