Eda Erdogmas, a bubbly 17 year old chemistry major from Istanbul, sounded like she had just met a rock star.
“After his lecture I just went up and asked him some questions,” she said breathlessly about Dan Shechtman, Israel’s winner of the 2011 prize in chemistry. “He was very friendly and it was amazing to talk to such an important person.”
Shechtman’s lecture on “Quasi-periodic crystals – A Paradigm Shift in Crystallography” may not have been everyone’s cup of tea, but it was certainly popular at the World Science Conference-Israel (WSCI) held at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The conference brings together 15 Nobel Prize winners (half of them in chemistry) with 400 promising young scientists from 70 countries, including some like Indonesia, which don’t have diplomatic relations with Israel, and Turkey where relations have grown increasingly tense.
To see a video of the conference click here [1].
The Nobel laureates were clearly the big draw, with each lecture receiving a standing ovation. David Gross, who won the Nobel prize for physics in 2004, spoke on “The Future of Elementary Particle Physics” to a rapt audience who responded with a standing ovation.
“The young students are so excited and so full of curiosity,” Gross told The Media Line. “That’s why I come to these things – it just gives me a jolt of energy.”
Gross, who teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara, first came to Israel in the 1950’s when his father was an advisor to the Israeli government. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Hebrew University. He says that now is a great time to be a young scientist.
“The questions we’re asking now are enormously exciting- they get to the most fundamental questions that humans have ever asked,” he said. “For example, “How did the universe begin? How did it evolve and what’s at the core of all the forces of nature?” We’re getting to the most basic hardest questions, and when you have well defined questions that can be approached by science, the answers will come in your lifetime. Maybe not my lifetime but definitely these kids lifetime.”
The conference is sponsored by the Israeli foreign ministry and includes sightseeing in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It comes as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is growing. Israeli officials say there is no overt political message, but that bringing all of these young people to Jerusalem is good for Israel.
“There’s no political message, but there is our intention on the one hand to create this platform and to bring to Jerusalem and to Israel this large number of scientists and Nobel laureates,” Guy Kivetz, an conference organizer told The Media Line. “On the other hand we see it as an opportunity to create the flagship of Israeli public diplomacy around the world.”
Some of the students said they were a bit nervous about coming based on media reports of clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem.
“I was a little worried,” Aleksander Raskhodchikov, 18, a physics student in St. Petersburg told The Media Line. “But then when I got here I realized it was very safe, which was nice.”
He said he especially enjoyed meeting young Israelis his age, and discussing their obligations for military service. He said he asked his Israeli counterparts “lots and lots of questions” about life in Israel.
Those involved hope that the connections formed among the young scientists will lead to future cooperation.
“It’s a good peer group for them,” P.S. Anil Kumar, a professor of physics and head of the 18-member delegation from India told The Media Line. “Many years from now the can say, “Remember when we met in Jerusalem in 2015?”
Organizers hope the young scientists will go home and have good thing to say about Israel.
“It’s brilliant that three religions can be peacefully combined in a city,” Turkish student Erdogmus said after a visit to Jerusalem’s Old City. “I’d say to all the Turkish people and Muslim people that they shouldn’t have any hesitations about coming here it’s important to come and see the city of Jerusalem.”
Nobel winner David Gross says he hopes the conference, which organizers say they hope to hold annually, will encourage more young people to dedicate themselves to science.
“A life in science is a wonderful life,” he said. “There are wonderful questions. We’ve answered a lot of them and we will answer many more.”