- [Announcer] Funding for the Secret life of scientists is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
(upbeat logo music) (keyboard keys clicking) - The kind of science I do studies the behavior of the biggest things in our universe, which is the universe itself, and the tiniest bit of matter which basically are things that are much smaller than atoms and ask the question what do these two things have to do with each other?
Because the universe was also very tiny at the beginning.
(upbeat music) (keyboard keys clicking) My first saxophone, it was a vintage E Flat Alto Sax.
My dad bought it for 50 bucks.
My dad loved the saxophone.
He used to listen to a lot of sax music.
So that was my first horn.
Mr. Kaplan was the one that started really educating me about jazz and jazz and improvisation.
Who's good and who's, who sucks.
One of my musical favorites when I was younger was sax player I discovered on my own, his name was Kenny G. (bright saxophone music) So I took a tape into Mr. Kaplan's office.
And Mr. Kaplan, you gotta listen to this guy.
This guy is amazing.
He can really blow.
Very excited to educate him on my new discovery.
Kaplan's, I'll take a look at it.
He comes back the next day with another tape.
He goes, this, this is a real horn play.
It was a John Coltrane tape.
So I took this home and it absolutely blew me away.
(bright saxophone music) The first thing that stood out was his sound.
The tone made my hair raise.
It was like nothing I've heard before.
And his dexterity and his harmonic conception, he was waiting to be discovered by me.
And that's when I really started to take music a lot more seriously.
(fast-paced saxophone music) (upbeat logo music) (keyboard keys clicking) When I was little, I wasn't necessarily the strongest student.
And I used to bring in comic books and deliberately sit at the back of the room.
I was into at the time Ironman, big time, and the X-Men.
I continued on throughout the New York public school system I went to do a Clinton High School.
Clinton was known as basically the school for the truants basically.
Around 10th grade, I actually took physics.
My physics teacher was a man by the name of Daniel Kaplan.
The guy walked in the Middles room, sat on a desk, and took a ball and he threw it up in the air.
And then he goes, "If I throw the ball up, and it goes to the top, the velocity is zero.
What happens to the velocity when it comes back down?"
And at that moment, I just basically had this intuitive feeling for it.
And I just called out the answer.
"The velocity should be exactly the same if there's no friction."
And he goes, "That's absolutely correct.
That's absolutely brilliant."
And it was the first time that any teacher had used those types of words toward me.
So instead of cutting class, I used to just go into his office.
He'd be doing his work but if I had a question, I wanted to look at a book, he was just there.
One day I went to Mr. Kaplan's office, decided to test this idea and said, "Mr. Kaplan I wanna be a physicist."
Of course, you know, the truth was I was very much insecure and didn't think I had what it took to even graduate high school.
Then he was just like, "Okay, what you have to do is go to the very best college, and you have to be good at math because that's a language that physicists speak."
I was like, "Okay, I'll do that."
He said, "Okay, so they teach calculus.
You should take calculus early."
So the next year I took calculus.
So this was the kind of energy that he kind of gave to me.
very important As a young person, this guy's like, you know he's like a superhero.
He had a real passion and vision to make a difference.
And I'm a product of that.
(sensual upbeat music) (keyboard keys clicking) (slow saxophone music) (keyboard keys clicking) John Coltrane.
(enchanting saxophone music) He's beyond science.
(keyboard keys clicking) Running away from Gary.
Gary was a bully in the basketball court that didn't like me.
He was much bigger than me.
(keyboard keys clicking) Dare to think the unthinkable.
(keyboard keys clicking) Dare to play the unplayable.
(keyboard buttons clicking) Because dark is beautiful.
(laughs) (keyboard keys clicking) Who was the guy from?
What was that movie?
'Back to the Future'.
(indistinct audience chatter) Yeah, doc, what's his name?
Doc Brown from 'Back to the Future'.
(Doc Brown whispers indistinctly) (Doc Brown falls with a thud) (keyboard keys clicking) The Einstein field equations.
(keyboard keys clicking) Meeting Stephen Hawking for the first time.
(keyboard keys clicking) Tenor, 'cause I played.
(sensual saxophone music) (keyboard keys clicking) (sensual saxophone music) (upbeat music)