Interview transcript

Professor Josephson, welcome to this interview. We’re very happy to have you here today. You were very young when you got the prize, only 33, and when you made your major discovery you were 22. In which way has this had an impact on your life, to start off with?

Brian Josephson: It’s made it very busy. I get lots of invitations, most of which I have to turn down. It’s given me a bit more freedom in that I can work on my interests which are on the unconventional side, without people feeling that they can say: You can’t work on that. Some things are a bit of a nuisance, the amount of correspondence one gets, with a corresponding increase in secretarial help. So it has its good and bad sides and it does not seem to help one get grants I’m afraid.

It doesn’t? Did you when you were 22, had you expected it or did it come as a complete surprise to you?

Brian Josephson: You mean my discovery?

Yes, the discovery and then eventually the prize.

Brian Josephson: I suppose at the time of the discovery it was interesting to see the range of possibilities that came out, which I wasn’t quite expecting. Then it turned out to be a subject of, I suppose it was quite important, so I was not too surprised about getting the Nobel Prize. I did think perhaps not, logically or not, that Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer had got it for superconductivity the year before. They would move on to a different subject so it wouldn’t be the year I did get it, so it was a bit of a surprise.

You were sharing with Giaever and Esaki and Esaki said in his speech during the banquet that he was so glad that it was people from different backgrounds who could share the prize, and that it showed that science was global, that background wasn’t the essential part. Anybody could achieve these major discoveries. How is your feeling about that, what he said? Do you agree?

Brian Josephson: Yes, I think it’s quite good if science is not too concentrated in one country. One point which was made was none of us had professorships at the time.

Is it important to be young? I mean you were very young. Is that the height of your creativity or what is the major quality that you need?

Brian Josephson: I suppose being young helped. I was a bit of a child prodigy so maybe I was more likely to see deep ideas than most people. But I feel that I’m still just as creative and in fact the work I’ve doing on the brain I think that’s in a way more significant and more difficult than the superconductivity work.

That’s the work that you’re presently involved in?

Brian Josephson: Yes. I think the fact that I meditate helps me keep my mind creative. It’s actually an extremely long term project because in the late sixties I started to find … I think physics was going through a less interesting period compared with what it was in the early sixties. I looked elsewhere for interesting things and I got interested in the brain, and only gradually built up the ideas that I’m working with and publishing in now. So something like a 30 year project or more.

You say your creativity is just as great now as it was, that’s your feeling. It has nothing to do with age but it has to do with curiosity?

Brian Josephson: Yes, I think curiosity has a lot to do with it.

You have your own physical constant, The Josephson Constant. What do you think about that? Is it good or bad?

Brian Josephson: I think it’s very nice having something named after one, not just a constant I suppose. In fact a few years after I got the prize there was a science fiction story which I was in, so that’s real fame.

Really?

Brian Josephson: Yes. I suppose there are things that remained important and it was thought that it might be used in computers, which didn’t come off, but it now might have use in quantum computers. But it does have more in the way of practical applications than I expected at the time.

Next year is the year that UNESCO have announced that that’s the year of Einstein. Do you think it’s important to highlight these great scientists to make the public in general understand the need for science?

Brian Josephson: Yes, I suppose. I think scientists themselves would want to celebrate Einstein since he had such an important role. I guess it may be a good thing to help in presenting science to the public since everybody’s heard of Einstein, so it’s really more an excuse than anything else, but there it is.

Is it difficult for scientists to at times explain or make the public at large understand the need for science?

Brian Josephson: Perhaps the problem is the range of abilities of the public in that some people,e they can tune easily into anything, whereas other people you have to talk in a very low brow way and grossly oversimplify.

Do you feel that there is a great interest in science among young people today? What do you encounter?

Brian Josephson: To some extent. Certainly the students here seem very interested in the Lindau meeting. But I think there’s been some turning away from science perhaps because people find it – I’m talking about the UK – that’s because people feel it’s a difficult subject and perhaps it’s not being presented as interesting. It’s a presentation problem I suppose. Or also perhaps the difficulty in getting good teachers in school. If you have a teacher who doesn’t really understand science, he or she is not going to inspire the pupils.

If you compare basic to applied research and science, what is your feeling around that? It has been maybe more a drive towards to applied research over the last 10, 15 years particularly. Industry is so focused on it.

Brian Josephson: I feel it’s politicians as well. Some politicians don’t quite seem to understand what science is and they only think of it as something which produces practical spin offs. But I suppose the climate has changed anyway, certainly at the Cavendish where I work there’s a great emphasis on practical applications. Of course that is important if they can produce discoveries that are of practical importance. But when I was younger it seemed to be quite acceptable to do pure research and now it’s seemingly not so important, not so accepted.

Is there a difference between America and Europe do you think? It seems like many scientists did at least move to America and for different reasons, but often to where they will … Particularly after they had an award or have made major discoveries, they were asked to come over to America. Do you see a change? Do you think it’s changing in Europe?

Brian Josephson: That move to America is probably because there are more resources available there. I don’t know if it’s so applicable these days. One thing about public understanding of science is that TV programmes are probably quite important in getting people’s interest and there seems to have been a feeling that the programmers must entertain, which to some extent is at the cost of the science.

Can one do science more entertaining do you think – for example the research that you are involved with? Could that be made in such a way that people could find it entertaining?

Brian Josephson: They make it entertaining with add-ons like music or jazzy effects. It’s very distracting from the science and very annoying to real scientists, so I think it’s not good. Again it’s a phenomenon of our times.

Is there any specific advice that you could give to young scientists that might listen to this interview?

Brian Josephson: I think I might duck on that one, because I don’t know any real answers. I don’t know whether we might talk a bit about my campaign for, let’s see, when I talked about pathological disbelief …

Is that what you spoke about in your lecture? We can talk about that very briefly if you would like to. You have some ideas and very strong thoughts about it.

Brian Josephson: I can make a statement about it. One thing I’ve been concerned about quite a bit is there seems to be some faults or pathologies in the scientific process. I can think of at least three things which have been regarded as nonsense by the scientific establishment and there’s a vicious circle in that once people – actually there’s some people have a sort of mission to denounce certain subjects, often in a not very scientific manner. The effect of this has been that editors feel that there’s something unscientific about them and don’t take, won’t take papers about them and that becomes a vicious circle. Because if scientists can’t actually see the research, they’re cut off from the research, they won’t be able to get a balanced judgment. How else can they get corrected. I’m doing what I can to try and counter this. But it’s difficult, you have to find some scientific outlet which will actually agree to publicise these forbidden views.

Is it so that you have to have patience as well. We talked about advice to young students, there have been examples of scientific discoveries that were almost seen as nonsense and then almost as an embarrassment, and then of course turned out to be major discoveries. Could that be an advice to young people that they need to have the courage of standing up for your fight?

Brian Josephson: It’s not so practical for graduate students because they only have a limited length of time and they may just not get anything accepted at all, so it’s more for people who are already established that they have to be patient.

What would you like to see as an alternative if you feel that there is a difficulty to get certain issues discussed or papers published? What could be an alternative if it at the moment is not as open minded as you would like to see?

Brian Josephson: There are some journals that are more open minded but the problem is that they’re ignored by the scientists, so something must be done forcefully to bring scientists into contact with reality, that’s how I see it. A lecture such as the one I’ve just given does make the point rather forcibly and perhaps that will have an effect. Once people start to understand that errors are still being made like the continental drift area which people ignored extremely strong evidence for continental drift and if people can start to understand that the same kind of errors are happening today they must try as well as possible not to condemn something unless the arguments are clear. What actually happens is that the people who try to put down these subjects are arguing unscientifically but somehow they are authorities and people take what they say rather uncritically.

Just to finish off this interview, if I may ask on a more personal note, are there any memories from Stockholm that you are particularly fond of when you were there as a young person, 33 years old, one of the youngest Nobel laureates of any time?

Brian Josephson: An ice rink readily available near the hotel.

Really, you did go to the ice rink?

Brian Josephson: I also arranged previously with the daughter of one of the other laureates, we said we’ll take our skates and we went off skating there.

Great – that dark and cold wintertime in Sweden.

Brian Josephson: Well, it wasn’t bad, and in fact at the centenary my wife and I skated at that open air rink. Apart from that the pomp and dressing up which I’m not so keen on.

Professor Josephson, I really enjoyed talking with you. Thank you very much.

Brian Josephson: Thank you.

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