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Nautilus’ Ingenious this month, Alan Lightman, is a successful writer and physicist, and one of the very rare people to receive an appointment in both science and humanities at MIT*. He did his doctoral research at Caltech while Richard Feynman was a professor there. One day, Lightman was on hand to see the brilliant and charismatic physicist make a monumental discovery—only for all evidence of the revelation to soon vanish. 

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Watch more of this fascinating interview with Lightman, and also the essay he wrote for Nautilus about his personal experience with and thoughts on nothingness.

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* Correction: This sentence erroneously said Lightman was the only MIT professor of science and humanities.

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