Ashoke Sen

“In theoretical physics, one can, in principle, work from anyplace as long as one has a computer and Internet connection. So I do not find any disadvantage of being in Allahabad.”

“My dream was to be a 'scientist' even before I knew what a scientist did.”

“I had been interested in particle physics, which deals with the fundamental constituents of matter.”

“There are no excuses for theoretical physicists not to perform and deliver.”

“Theoretical physics hardly requires any research funding, so I never felt the need. The overall government and institutional support has been good enough for my work.”

“My work indicated that if we consider smaller and smaller black holes, at some stage, the properties of black holes become indistinguishable from those of elementary particles.”

“One of the questions that always puzzled human history is, what are we, and everything around us, made of.”

“I work in string theory. This is a branch of physics which assumes that the elementary objects in the universe are not particles but one-dimensional objects, that is, strings.”

“Good teachers have joined Presidency from different parts of the country and even abroad. We have got idealistic teachers, and we are relying on their idealism. But state universities pay their teachers less than the central ones. If salary is not on a par with central institutes, teachers would tend to leave for those places.”

“In many ways, string theory attempts to go beyond Einstein's dream... an all-encompassing description of nature that works at large distances where gravity becomes important as well as small distances where quantum mechanics is important.”

“The beauty of string theory is that it is all about mathematics. For that, you don't need resources or labs. Just sit in your room and do the maths.”

“Doing physics is a lot of fun if you like it.”

“My work on black holes was on the connection between black holes and elementary particles.”

“Throughout my work, I have assumed that the standard model is correct, and hence, the Higgs boson should be found. Although this is not directly connected to string theory, the discovery of the Higgs boson demonstrated the power of theoretical reasoning.”

“My work on symmetries of string theory is on what is known as strong-weak coupling duality, or S-duality.”

“Since my work is theoretical, the financial needs are very little. Doing the research itself is the toughest challenge.”

“One of the main successes of string theory is that it has been able to unify the general theory of relativity, which describes gravity, and quantum mechanics.”

“To me, the most exciting thing about the discovery of the Higgs particle is that its existence was predicted fifty years before its discovery through experiment.”

“I came to realise that string theory offers us the best hope of finding a unified theory of all matter and forces.”

“The beauty of science is to imagine more than we can prove. And string theory gives you a radically different interpretation of the universe.”