Round Table Talk:

Peter Goddard with Hitoshi Murayama and Hirosi OoguriPeter Goddard

Professor, the School of Natural Sciences , the Institute for Advanced Study

Hitoshi Murayama
Kavli IPMU Director

Hirosi Ooguri

Kavli IPMU Principal Investigator

How the Newton Institute Got Off
the Ground
Ooguri: Thank you for joining us forthis conversation today.
Goddard: Itʼs my pleasure.
Ooguri: You were the Deputy Directorof the Newton Institute which is
now one of the leading institutes inmathematical science in the worldand you have been responsible instarting that institute, including thedesigning and the construction of thebuilding.
Goddard: With other people, yes.
Ooguri: You were also the Directorof the Institute for Advanced Studyand led the expansion of programs.
You guided the institute through16

financially turbulent periods. So, I
think we have a lot to learn fromyour experience. The areas you haveworked on are also quite relevant
for this institute. In fact, tomorrow,youʼre going to give a colloquium
about the interdisciplinary research
between mathematics and physics ̶that would be another subject that
we would like to talk about today.
Murayama: Iʼd love to hear about thestory of how the Newton Institute got
off the ground ̶ how you actually
had a vision for the institute and how
you tried to bring people in.
Goddard: Well, I think that in the
middle of 1980s, I and many of mycolleagues in the UK, and particularly

Kavli IPMU News No. 26 June 2014

in Cambridge, realized that thecountry didnʼt have such institutes.
We realized that there was a growthin such institutes because the Institutefor Advanced Study had been playing
a particular role worldwide for many
years and that had inspired various
people to start other institutes. For
example, Hirzebruchʼs Institute inBonn is one famous example, andthe IHES (Institut des Hautes Études
Scientifiques) near Paris is anotherthat was inspired by the IAS.
Ooguri: And there is RIMS (ResearchInstitute for Mathematical Sciences in
Kyoto).
Goddard: So, often people who had
been at the IAS had seen there werethings that they could emulate in theirown countries ̶ they didnʼt usually
make replicas. In the United States
the MSRI (Mathematical Sciences
Research Institute) in Berkeley and
ITP (Institute for Theoretical Physics),
now the Kavli ITP, in Santa Barbara
were started. I think many of us
found that we were spending oursabbaticals and our vacations inthese institutes because they werevery good places to go to intersectwith lots of people and to be in a
research intensive environment. But
there really wasnʼt any such institutein the United Kingdom. We thoughtthat it was excellent that we should
go and help run a program in Santa
Barbara or take part in the workshop
in Oberwolfach (The Mathematisches
Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach), or
what have you, but itʼs important tohave a two-way flow and to be able
to bring people to the UK and, ofcourse, to Cambridge. Some people
had already started thinking about
this in London. Michael Green was
involved, but they hadnʼt managed toget off the ground. And we saw anopportunity in Cambridge because,at that particular moment, we could
see that there might be resources
available in the colleges rather thanin the university, in Trinity College
and Saint Johnʼs College, and that it
might be possible then to convince
the UK research councils to matchthe resources that Cambridge
was finding for itself, to make aninternational institute there. Then we
had to decide what the appropriate
scope of the institute, and what theappropriate model of operation of
the institute should be. We felt thatthe scope should be very broad andthis would help get broad support,
but also many of us thought thatthe interesting areas were perhaps

preferentially where there werecrossovers between disciplines or
between sub-disciplines. Then you
had a greater added value froman institute because you could
bring together people, who would
not normally have the time to
get together in universities, fromdifferent disciplines. I think one of thereasons that institutes have grown inimportance ̶ and it was one of thefounding principles of the institutein Princeton even back in the 1930s,
is that the modern university, and I
think this is true all over the world,
is now a busy place. Itʼs a place inwhich the academics are expected
to be entrepreneurial, not a place inwhich theyʼre expected to sit in theiroffices and have the detachment tothink about fundamental questions.
They donʼt, in general, have the timeto interact with their colleagues in
the next department. Theyʼre more
likely to interact with colleagues
from other disciplines when theyʼrein other places, when they donʼthave to go to meetings ̶ I thinkthat has been one of the reasonsfor the growth of institutes likeours worldwide. We saw all thosereasons as good reasons. The idea
was that if we had a broad institute,it would gain perhaps more support
from a wider range of colleagues
and, secondly, that it would havethe opportunity then to operate incross disciplinary areas: not that thethings that happened in the Newton
Institute had to be cross disciplinary,
but in each program, in comparing
one with another, one looks at whatis the added value of having thishappen in this institution.
Murayama: Who initiated this
discussion? Was it Michael Atiyah or
you or...?
Goddard: Well, there were a numberof people who initiated it. Peter
Landshoff, Martin Rees, and others.
Murayama: Oh, Martin Rees?
Goddard: Yes, Martin Rees wasinvolved all the way through,and Peter Landshoff played an
important role along with me. We
did most of the donkeywork, as theysay. Then there were very skilled
mathematicians, John Coates and...
Ooguri: Is that because of the British
tradition that theoretical physicists are
regarded as part of the mathematics
department?
Goddard: It was partly that, because
the initial push for this came fromthe Faculty of Mathematics which
included the Department of Applied
Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.
Ooguri: It included many of theleading theoretical physicists likeyourself and Martin Rees.
Goddard: Yes. Then we got support
from other Faculties as well. The
dominant push came from inside
the Faculty of Mathematics. I was aprofessor of theoretical physics in the
Faculty of Mathematics.
Ooguri: I have a question regarding
the scope of the institute. You
mentioned several mathematics
institutions existed before yourinstitute. But there are different kinds.
For example, places such as IAS and
IHES have their own strength in thefaculty. They have leading scholars in
the area, and they are the attractions.
On the other hand, the places like
MSRI have only a very lean faculty,
basically just the director, and thestrength of their program attracts
people. You chose the MSRI mode.
Goddard: Yes.
Ooguri: What has led to that kind of
choice?
Goddard: There was a discussion
among those people who were
forming the institute ̶ and this is at

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the end of the 1980s. [We started
thinking in about ʼ88.] There werea number of points if you look at
the taxonomy, if you like, of these
institutes, their various structural
aspects. And this is an important one.
Do you have a permanent facultyor do you not have a permanent
faculty? There are arguments eachway. One of the issues for an institutein particular is, how do you gain abody of support for it? How do you
have a group of people who careabout it? One way, of course, is tohave leading academics be faculty
members. I think this is true of ITP in
Santa Barbara, and so on. The otherissue you have there if you have apermanent faculty is that you could
make some wrong appointments.
Now, in fact, if you take something
like the Institute for Advanced Study,
I think it has a remarkable record of
not making wrong appointments.
Ooguri: You canʼt afford to makemistake at places like this.
Taking Risks to Do Things That
Change How People Think
Goddard: Well, I think the problem is̶ the way I would say is and when I
was director at the institute I would
try to explain to trustees is thefollowing. Even if we make a mistake,weʼre making them extremely rarely,
and it is more important that people
do groundbreaking work. What one
has to try to get across is that weare not trying to do quality control
here. Weʼre not trying to be in a riskfree environment. What is importantis that we do things that change
how people think, that we change
the nature of the subject, that we
make break throughs, if the choice isbetween doing that and doing very
good research that doesnʼt reallychange anything.

18

Ooguri: Thatʼs a difficult decision,right? You have to take risks to dothat.
Goddard: Yes, you have to explain
to people that that is the whole
point. That it is much preferable tohave an institution in which there
might be one or two people whoare not as great as you might like,though I donʼt think this is true of theinstitute, but even if it were true, thatwould be better, because alongsidethat there are people like Edward
Witten, Pierre Deligne, and so on,
who are completely reconfiguring
how we understand whole areas ofintellectual activity. You should be
more concerned about that thanyou have nobody who falls below acertain standard. The analogy I used
to take, it probably works in Japan
as well, is ̶ if you want to take thedriving test, you go to the driving
school, presumably.
Murayama: In Japan, yes.
Goddard: Then all youʼre concernedwith is passing the test.
Murayama: Right. There is aminimum threshold. Other than that,you donʼt care.
Goddard: Thereʼs a very precise thingthat you want. You donʼt care...
Murayama: You donʼt care whether
you take 100 ̶ yes, thatʼs right.
Goddard: You donʼt want to geta perfect score. Thatʼs not really
relevant.
Murayama: Thatʼs not necessary.
Goddard: You donʼt go home andboast to your spouse or your parents
that you have a perfect score. You
donʼt go there to have your lifechanged. You might expect when
you go to a university, perhaps at 18,
that your life will be changed andthat it will be a formative experience.
But thatʼs not the purpose of thedriving school. The purpose of the

Kavli IPMU News No. 26 June 2014

driving school is to have a very quality
controlled result and if you lookedat choosing between driving schools,
youʼd just select the one that had thehighest passed rates, whereas ̶ thisis the complete antithesis of this ̶
weʼre not trying to produce people
who can drive cars. Weʼre trying tochange the way people think, and so
it doesnʼt matter if there are one or
two bad results.
Ooguri: I recognize that. I shouldnʼtmake a mistake alone is not a good
way to approach this recruitment.
Goddard: You shouldnʼt if you gotvery few appointments. Then if you
make a mistake, thatʼs a real problem.
But I donʼt think itʼs possible to havean attitude that youʼre trying to avoid
risks and still really, really do dramaticthings.
Ooguri: But in the case of the
Newton Institute, you decided not togo that way, but rather...
Goddard: Yes. There were anumber of reasons but I think thefundamental one was really related
to the sort of model of programmatic
activity that we decided on, which
was based on, letʼs say, particularly
Santa Barbara. We decided that apermanent faculty wasnʼt necessary
for this model of operation. It would
be quite expensive. It would also
arouse jealousy in the sense thatin Cambridge, by and large, nearly
everybody is teaching. If we wereto try to create positions in theuniversity, which were completely
free of teaching like this, or even if
ones which would in some sense be
seen as privileged in this institution,
this would arouse some opposition.
I think one of the considerations wehave to have ̶ I donʼt know whether
this applies very much in Japan;
it applies much less in the UnitedStates I think than in the UK̶ is that

there is a danger when you try to
make such an institute other people,
outside Cambridge, would be jealous
because itʼs in Cambridge, and inside
Cambridge people might be jealous
because it was being given suchspecial terms.
Ooguri: I think, you can argue inboth ways. In the case of Santa
Barbara, there could be people whoare jealous, but most of the faculty
members who are not at ITP would
recognize that this is an excellent tool
to recruit people like Joe Polchinski
and Lars Bildsten.
Goddard: Of course, they had somegood people like Jim Hartle, John
Cardy and Bob Sugar and so on,
before, but I think it must be truethat the standing of Santa Barbara
as a graduate school in physics haschanged enormously.
Ooguri: For the university as awhole, they benefited by having
this, so probably most of the people
recognize the value there.
Goddard: Yes. But, at Cambridge,
it is more difficult to get that to berecognized, I think, because there
are already so many good things
happening.
Ooguri: So they might argue, We
donʼt need that because we areat Cambridge and we are alreadyexcellent.
Goddard: Some people would argue
that.
Ooguri: So it sounds like it was apolitical decision.
Goddard: It was partly a politicaldecision, yes, and it was partly
financial. But it was a challenge to get
the resources together anyway. And
to get these resources as well, andwith these political considerations, we
decided at least to put the issue off.
Ooguri: It is functioning very wellbecause itʼs located right next to themath department and within thismathematics complex.
The Institute Constructed outside
the Traditional Univ. Area: The
Faculty of Math Moved There
Goddard: It is now, yes. We had tomake a decision at some point as
to whether we would try to get abuilding in the middle of Cambridge.
In that case it would be a preexistingbuilding. We already thought that
it was very important to design
this building so as to encourageinteraction, and if we had the existingbuilding, it would almost certainly
be impossible to do that very well,because itʼs very expensive to ripapart an existing building and toreconfigure it inside.
Ooguri: Was it why you decided
to move outside of this traditional
Cambridge University area?
Goddard: That was probably the
major consideration. The second
one was that the buildings of thefaculty of the two departments(theoretical physics and appliedmathematics, and pure mathematics)
were overcrowded, so that we were
inhibited in doing new things or evenhaving very many visitors in comfort
because every space was alreadyover-occupied.
Ooguri: I remember your previous
location at Silver Street.
Goddard: Yes.
Ooguri: That was some kind of afactory or something like that.
Goddard: Youʼre very discerning.
It was a book factory! It was thebuilding in which the University Press
actually printed the books.
Ooguri: So then, itʼs interesting thatthe institute was constructed outside
and the math department followed it
and moved to that location.
Goddard: What we perceived wasthat if we put it in the center, thedepartments might have to moveanyway, at some point, and thatprobably we should force theissue. Then fortuitously, my college,
St. Johnʼs College, had a field ofseven acres available. It had been
reserved for the expansion of oneof the colleges that was further out,
Girton College, to come more into
Cambridge. It had been kept empty
for a few decades actually when it
might have been developed. It was
earmarked for college or university
purposes so that when we talked
inside the college about whether thecollege had any land that might help
with this process, the Bursar of thecollege, Chris Johnson, mentioned
this particular site. We saw that
actually the whole of the faculty
would fit in this site.
Ooguri: So, you already had thevision of eventually building thismathematics complex there.
Goddard: We thought it would
probably take more years. But assoon as the institute was opened
and I was there running it day to day
for Michael Atiyah, we felt that one
mile from the old faculty buildings
was a real disadvantage. People
would not just pop over to go to thetalks, and then they wouldnʼt feel so
supportive or get so much value fromit. In some sense actually a mile is avery bad distance because somebody
will make a special effort to go to
London but they donʼt necessarily
make a special effort to go a mile. So
we decided that, very soon after we
opened the Newton Institute, that weshould seek to move the faculty next
to the...
Ooguri: And you succeeded in doingthat.
Goddard: Yes. Then we had to raisemoney. So, Peter Landshoff and I,

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with help from people like Martin
Rees, set about raising the money
funding those buildings.
Murayama: Itʼs adoubly expensive
proposal to dothat, right? You
started a new
institute and at
the same time were working to movethe mathematics faculty.
Goddard: But we had already started
the institute. So the fundraising thenwas for these new buildings.
Murayama: I see.
The Instituteʼs Building Designed
to Promote Highly Interactive
Activities
Ooguri: Now, since
we are talking
about buildings, I
want to ask you
this. When I firstwent to theinstitute, I immediately fell in lovewith the building. It really worked
like a dream. You have the central
interaction area and you comeout and youʼre in the middle ofdiscussion. But if you want to focus
on your research, you can just retire
to your office. Itʼs very well thought
out, and it works very well.
Goddard: Thank you.
Ooguri: It has been subsequently
emulated by many institutions,
including this one. What was theprocess of coming up with this kindof design?
Goddard: We wrote a brief forarchitects. We listed all the things we
felt we needed, what were important
to try to achieve. And, in particular,
we explained that we needed toencourage interaction. I should say
there was one prior aspect to this.
You said that there are different

20

sorts of institutes in which different
things happen and you distinguished
whether there was faculty or not, but
along with that also goes whetheryouʼre bringing people there tointeract or whether youʼre bringing
people there to do their own thing.
At the institute in Princeton, basicallypeople do their own thing thoughsome schools are more interactive
than others. Natural Sciences ismore interactive perhaps than, say,
Historical Studies, and Social Scienceis a bit more interactive perhaps than
Historical Studies. It just depends on
the style of the particular school, but
the institute can accommodate thosedifferences of style. If you go into
IHES, itʼs more like IAS, in terms ofpeople sitting in their offices. But we
decided ̶ so it was a choice ̶ that
we should have activities going on
at the Newton Institute that would
be highly interactive. There would be
programs and we would specificallytell people that youʼre not meant tocome here and write your book or
your paper. Youʼre coming here to
discuss. As you say, you must havethe opportunity to go to your privateroom and work out your calculations
if you want, but there will be atendency to interact. We put all ofthese into the brief...
Ooguri: So, that probably also
has to do with the focus oninterdisciplinarity that was alreadythere from the beginning of the ideaof the institute.
Goddard: Yes, exactly, to bring
together people who werenʼtnormally talking to one
another. We wrote down a whole
series of considerations about thisand then we selected with the helpof the central university authorities,
a number of architectural firms ̶maybe four. We got these firms

Kavli IPMU News No. 26 June 2014

together for a day and we showed
them the existing departments. We
talked about what was happening
there that we wanted to happen in a
new place, what was not happening
well there, and we spent the whole
day talking to them about the issues.
We gave them a formal document
as well. Then we asked them tocome back in a month, and each to
make a presentation for an hour or
two to us about how they would
tackle what we were after. The firmthat won came with a model andthe model was conceptually very
like the institute that you came to. It
had a central mezzanine floor and itemphasized the fact that you would
know what was going on in thebuilding. One way I think about this isthat peopleʼs experience of buildings
has a characteristic timescale that
depends on what youʼre doing there.
If you come to be a student in themathematics complex in Cambridge,
your experience there is on atimescale of 2, 3, and 4 years. If youʼrea faculty member, itʼs ten years. Now,
if youʼre coming to this institute, thetimescale is 2 to 3 months. And that
effects how your experience of thebuilding should be. For example, ifyouʼre coming somewhere for 2 or
3 years, you can spend time learning
how to get around the building.
Ooguri: It should be more intuitive if
you only have a short time.
Goddard: Yes, exactly. It should be
immediate. If somebody takes you on
ten-minute tour of the building, youwill already know it. That goes alongwith the interactivity because you cansee everything thatʼs happening inthat building once somebody shows
you around and takes you to youroffice. Youʼve already seen where thecoffee is, you can see into the twoseminar rooms, you can see wherethe library is. Now, the mathematics
faculty buildings are built next door
̶ theyʼre built more on a three-yeartimescale, and youʼll take some timeto learn all the nooks and crannies.
Itʼs not so transparent. Itʼs also thecase that at Newton Institute, if you
go to your office, thereʼs basically
only one way you can do that, andthat way involves going through thecentral area, whereas in the facultybuildings, you can get to your officein one of a number of ways.
Ooguri: Sometimes you may want to
do that.
Goddard: You
can either walkthrough the mainconcourse andadvertise yourpresence ... you
know, like in Italy, they have thispractice in the evening in the cities
of walking through the streets,
families walk through the streets in
Florence or in Siena, and advertise
their presence to see people and so
the Newton Institute makes you dothat. I donʼt know if I already told you
the story about Vladimir Arnold. He
was a very lively character. He wasa member of the first program andafter a while, he stopped me andhe said, You know this building is
terrible for my health. I said Whatʼswrong? Nobody is complaining.
He said, Well, you see, I come inhere, I have a cup of coffee andthen after an hour, I need to go to
the menʼs room. So I go out of mydoor, I go to the menʼs room, andimmediately somebody stops me andthen I manage to get past them andthen somebody else talks to me andeventually there is going to be someterrible problem.
Ooguri: Yes. My experience waslike that, and it was very intuitiveand so it would naturally be in the
middle of a discussion when I go
out of the office. Also, I like some ofthe playful elements of the building
such as having a small blackboard
in the elevator. I remember when I
was there, somebody wrote, I founda remarkable proof of the Fermatʼs
Last Theorem, but the elevator ride is
too short to write it. And, of course,
it was soon afterwards that theproof was actually announced at the
Newton Institute.
Goddard: Only one year afterward.
Somebody wrote that very early.
Ooguri: So the remarkable proof wasalmost there.
Goddard: Yes.
One Should Have an Idea ofTimescale for an Academic Institute
Ooguri: You were the deputy directorof the institute. For how many years?
Goddard: For three years, formally.
For one year before that I was doing
it in practice. So, I was really looking
after it for two years before it opened
and then two years after. I decided
after a year of its operating, it would
actually be good to leave after two
years and let somebody else continue.
If you start something like that, yourexperience may be different, but mine
was that itʼs probably good for the
person who starts it not to continue
too long because itʼs like you have aparental relationship and itʼs good tolet go.
Ooguri: At some point, you have tolet go of your kids.
Goddard: Yes, I think so. Since
I had been dealing with all thepracticalities, many of the things
started as a file on my desk in myacademic office, and now there was
the whole building, and so on, and I
just felt it would actually be good tostep away. I actually planned then to

go on sabbatical to IHES.
Ooguri: Just to be intentionally awayfrom the institute.
Goddard: Yes, for the next year. But
then my colleagues in my college
elected me master of the college sothat thwarted my ambition to getaway.
Ooguri: So, whatʼs your view of theinstitute now? Has it turned out
in exactly the way you anticipated
it would be, or were there any
surprises?
Goddard: I went back there for the
20th anniversary. We had a shortmeeting and they asked me togive a talk, so I surveyed what had
happened, and I felt very content
about the model. At the start, I
thought that you should have an
idea of timescale for the institute ̶
at least that particular institute, andPeter Landshoff and I and the others
felt confident that what this model ofthe Santa Barbara and MSRI type ofinteractions, which had really becomemuch more prevalent in the previous
20 years, I would say, would be a very
good model for the next 20 years ̶
50 years, perhaps, who knows? But
at least 20 years. Letʼs think that thisplace would exist for 20 years and it
should function well for that period,
and after that one could revise oneʼsview, and so you acquire permanent
fixtures, etc., thinking about thattimescale. And so, after 20 years wasa good point to review it since it hadreached that point and I think now
they still think a 20 years horizon
is a good horizon and are striving
to get more endowment. I think itʼs
approaching £10 million. It reallyneeds at least £20 million together
with grant income, too. But I think itʼsmade valuable contributions. So, Iʼmpleased that it worked.
(to be continued)

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