Alan Lightman
Alan Lightman
Alan Paige Lightmanis an American physicist, writer, and social entrepreneur. He is a professor of the practice of the humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of the international bestseller Einstein's Dreams. Einstein's Dreams has been adapted into dozens of independent theatrical productions and is one of the most widely used "common books" on college campuses. Lightman was the first professor at MIT to receive a joint appointment in the sciences and the humanities. He is also...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTeacher
Date of Birth28 November 1948
CountryUnited States of America
I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Michael Bulgakov, and Salman Rushdie. I also like the magic realist writers, such as Borges and Marquez, and feel that interesting truths can be learned about our world by exploring highly distorted worlds.
I think it is always a long shot getting a book made into a film. Making that book into a film is going to be quite a challenge.
I re-read a lot of books that I like a lot. There are some books that I try to reread every couple of years. A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life.
The Diagnosis is by far my most ambitious book. I such great hopes for it... there was so much I wanted to do with the book. I was extremely insecure about it for several years. Just didn't know whether I would finish the book much less for it to come close to what I intended. I think that for any novel you never know exactly how the book is going to turn out...
I still will sit down at the piano and play when I am wrestling with something emotionally or just want to move into the musical world.
Franz Kafka is an idea person. His books begin and end in ideas. Ideas have always been important to me in my writing. To the point that I have to be careful that they don't take over.
Music is, of course, a universal emotional experience, cutting across cultures and languages. I studied piano for ten years as a child and consider that experience one of the most valuable in my life.
If I were not a writer, I would spend more time doing the things that I am already doing, which include doing research in physics, teaching, and running a nonprofit organization with a mission to empower women in Cambodia.
I've taken a philosophical position on e-mail. Although I think it's a wonderful communication technology, and it has a lot of good uses, it is abused quite a lot.
I'm humbled and enormously grateful to be connected to [Franz] Kafka in a any way. He is one of the writers I admire. I think he has been a big influence on me. I appreciate the idea of the individual person battling the society - which is true in all his books.
I think e-mail is representative of our fast food mentality in the United States, where everything has gotten faster and faster, and we're required to respond to inputs more quickly with less time for thought and reflection. I believe that we need to slow down.
I oppose any belief that contradicts experimental evidence as determined by the methods of science. All beliefs not in such contradiction may be considered as faith. Whether faith in a particular belief is beneficial or not is another matter.
I have too many friends who tell me that they spend the first hour of every morning going through their e-mail messages. I'd like to use my time more carefully.
I think people all over the institution recognize that different ways of understanding are valuable. Artists may think in a different way than biologists or chemists, but you can learn something from that. It is true that the arts at MIT don't have the same amount of funding or same status as the sciences or engineering.