Enthusiasm for science is the driving force behind success. This is also demonstrated by Lindau Meetings, where for decades young scientists from all over the world have been meeting Nobel laureates. "The atmosphere of togetherness and mutual support they experience there is an invaluable source of inspiration," says this year's participant Petr Veřtát, a postdoctoral fellow from the Department of Magnetic Measurements and Materials at the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting is said to be fundamentally different from science congresses. Could you name the secret ingredient?
It's definitely the enthusiasm of everyone involved. It's amazingly motivating and I'm so glad that it's actually been with me to some extent throughout my life. I had an amazing physics teacher back at primary school – she absolutely lit up when she was teaching and it was terribly contagious. If the one with such passion was a German teacher, I might have specialised in German not physics. Enthusiasm – I felt it all around me throughout the whole meeting with the Nobel Prize winners.
But not only that. What is often mentioned is the "Lindau spirit" engulfing everyone involved. And indeed, nowhere else have I felt such a sense of belonging, of general optimism, of vigour and of wanting to solve problems not only in physics.
Suddenly, I became one of the 650 participants who have the whole physical world in front of them and want to make a difference. They all had incredible insight, were able to discuss everything from astrophysics to the latest trends in quantum physics, but at the same time no one lacked humility and gratitude to be able to pursue what they enjoy in life.
Everyone at Lindau was open and sharing. The distinction between the individual participants, whether young scientists or Nobel Prize winners, has completely blurred. Even for me – quite a strong introvert – it was no problem to start talking directly to anyone there. In fact, the friendly atmosphere permeates the whole town, which over the decades of the event being held there has become accustomed to the presence of Nobel Prize winners and young scientists. Like in festival towns, the locals cherish their "stars", and when one walks there with a conference badge; everyone smiles appreciatively at the sight of it.
It was also fascinating that there was an atmosphere completely devoid of rivalry. Everyone was on the same page. Sometimes it seems to me that we Czechs, or perhaps more generally we should say Central and Eastern Europeans, are a little different from the rest of the world in that we sometimes create rivalries artificially. Let me share one personal observation: When someone takes a great photo and shows it in America or maybe in New Zealand, people say approvingly that it's a great photo. The typical Czech reaction will be not to praise and grumble that I could do it too if I wanted to.
How did you make your choices from the overwhelming programme offer?
That's a good question. The programme often started as early as seven in the morning, for example with a breakfast combined with a lecture, and continued practically until eleven in the evening. Although much of the program was the same for all the participants (for example, the major lectures by individual Nobel laureates or panel discussions), there were also smaller parallel sessions and a choice had to be made. There were, for example, the Open Exchange(s), where in the intimate atmosphere of a smaller room without cameras, individual Nobelists met with young scientists who could ask them virtually anything. These were really hard to choose from. On the one hand, you gravitate to your field, but sometimes you want to listen to something else. I often choose to go by my personal feeling of the person. I think one should keep their perspective. Having only one role model means that one is too influenced by that person’s opinions.
It was a great help that Lindau has a large Mediatheque from previous years available on the Internet, so one can prepare a bit in advance. Some of the Nobel laureates have been to Lindau many times, and by watching a few recordings I already knew when choosing a program what to expect from the person and what questions I could ask.
The smallest format events, however, were lunches or walks of ten participants with selected laureates. In booking these also luck was needed as each person could only choose one lunch or walk. Initially, the booking system crashed under the surge of interested parties. When it was re-launched a week later, some Nobel laureates were booked out within tens of seconds. But good fortune smiled on me and I had lunch with quasicrystal discoverer Dan Shechtman. For young crystallographers it is their dreams come true. In a restaurant on the shores of Lake Constance, we discussed not only his scientific and life journey, but also the recipe for the best soap bubbles. Actually, now that we are talking about lunch, it came to my mind that to some extent there is in fact a similar atmosphere at the FZU during the Science Lunch events. There, too, you can come up to anyone before or after a lecture and start talking about interesting physics. And a similar principle is used in our mentoring programme.
For more than 70 years, the motto of the meeting has been education, inspiration and connection. Will the event influence your future scientific collaboration?
The search for possible collaborations was a universal bonding element, and if I found someone who was also into materials and was a "solid-state guy", we got into a long discussion. I had the opportunity to better understand the topics that my colleagues were doing, and if we needed help with anything in the future, we could turn to each other. I have gained a lot of valuable contacts. We even started a giant community on WhatsApp, where there are now about 500 members and the discussions are divided into various sections, including ones with offers/requests for collaboration. The spirit of Lindau connects scientists forever and they take away a sense of belonging and camaraderie.
In the diverse community of young scientists from all continents, more than 60 countries, and even more than 90 nationalities, no differences were made. It was wonderful to meet new people. The organisers are well aware that this is one of the significant benefits of the event. At the beginning, each participant even received a packet of their own business cards to hand out to others, and in addition there is an internal Lindau Alumni Network where all participants have created profiles with details of their background, contact details, links to other networks etc.
However, in this diverse group of people one could sense how much of the cutting-edge physics research is virtually confined to Europe, North America, Australia and the developed countries of Asia. But participants from third world countries would also like to do good science, for which many are well placed. However, they often do not have the necessary, often expensive, equipment that we have. Sometimes just having the results of measurements, which for me is a 20-minute routine, might help. So, we have arranged with many of the participants that they can send their samples for measurement if necessary. In addition, as a crystallographer, I enjoy broadening my horizons and gaining experience on materials I have not had experience with before.
What was the biggest benefit of your stay in Lindau?
I gained a better perspective and became convinced again that there are people who do not share our typical querulousness. That the vast majority look at the world with an open mind and prefer to look for the positives over the negatives. I took away a lot of inspiration in terms of approach and conduct that I would like to incorporate into my work or speech. The Nobelists' lectures were also enlightening in the ways in which they were sometimes able to capture the attention of the audience. For example, Konstantin Novoselov, the discoverer of graphene, had black text in all the slides and always one letter in red. This intrigued me, and even if I had no interest in graphene at all, I would still want to know if the red letters form a message together or are chosen at random. I immediately started writing them down as they went along. That was an amazing enlivening element and yet such a small detail. The advantage for all the speakers was definitely that they were in front of an audience that understood physics and were on the same page, they could make insider jokes and didn't have to explain them.
A panel discussion How to Preserve Trust in Science in the Age of AI? on the development of artificial intelligence and its impact on science and society also draw a lot of attention. It is a highly topical issue that we encounter today and every day. Of course, we who do serious science cannot rely on the output of AI alone – there is always a need for validation of the models used and critical evaluation of any output. But can a person who doesn't understand the subject matter do this? So they just ask, say, ChatGPT, which figures something out. And does that person even realize that they have to take the output with a grain of salt? It is still quite easy to detect longer texts generated typically by ChatGPT, which often overuses some unusual words and creates strange phrases. But detecting misleading information is not so easy... As for the scientific use of large language models, when stylistically editing text, AI washes away differences between authors, and if someone is dyslexic or perhaps struggles with English, this can have a very positive effect on their texts. But it is definitely necessary to make sure that it does not interfere with the scientific part. Although artificial intelligence and machine learning can help in a lot of mainly mechanical things, and even find connections where they are not visible at first sight, a key element in serious science is the existence of someone who is responsible for the published outputs and their accuracy.
Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings have been held since 1951 and offer different generations, cultures and disciplines the opportunity to meet in an international scientific forum. Each year, the three scientific disciplines for which the Nobel Prize is awarded – physics, chemistry and physiology/medicine – alternate. Every three years there is a Meeting on Economic Sciences and every five years there is an Interdisciplinary Conference. This year's 73rd meeting took place from 30 June to 5 July and was attended by 37 Nobel Laureates and 650 young scientists from more than 60 countries, who passed a rigorous multi-stage selection process.