Newton was more interested in the motions of the planets, but his mathematics applied as much to heavenly bodies as to falling fruit. The public is on to the hunt as well. More than a thousand people turned out on a chilly and rainy German afternoon for a triple bill of string-theory presentations, overflowing the University of Potsdam's auditorium and filling five additional rooms with live video connections. There were even some 300 people who didn't fit into any of the rooms and stood out on the lawn listening to the lecture on the loudspeakers, the world's first stringheads enjoying the quantum vibe. The mathematics involved daunt even other physicists.
Jobs are available, both for post-docs and on the tenure track.
During the coffee breaks, some participants eye papers while others swap gossip on who's doing exciting work. The German Academic Exchange Service provided extra funding so that young and unestablished researchers could meet leading practitioners in person. The field draws talent from around the world, and supports numerous research centers as well. The Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics and the Albert Einstein Institute are the second European hosts in the 11-year series of strings conferences, and in 2001 the meeting will travel to Bombay, India. String theory seems to be the best way to solve a number of highly non-trivial questions, but there is no guarantee that these hundreds of brilliant minds are on the right path.