Light and matter have long been seen as separate: spirit vs. flesh, earthy vs. divine. However, according to Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek, physics has blurred the line between light and matter, showing that reality is far from permanent, but rather ever-changing. In this video, filmed at a meeting of the Commonwealth Club of California, he takes a closer look at the nature of reality, and how our perceptions of reality have changed over time.
Frank Wilczek received the Nobel Prize of 2004 for work he did as a graduate student at Princeton University, when he was only 21 years old. After getting his Ph.D. from Princeton, he worked there and at the Institute for Advanced Study, and at UCSB's Institute for Theoretical Physics. Wilczek is currently the Herman Feshbach professor of physics at MIT. He is known for the discovery of asymptotic freedom, the development of quantum chromodynamics, the invention of axions, and the exploration of new kinds of quantum statistics (anyons).
