Science on Screen: Particle Fever + Presentation by Semir Zeki

Semir Zeki, Professor of Neuroestetics at University College London, searches for an understanding of the mysteries of the human brain.

Particle Fever is a documentary, unusual in being directed by a former theoretical physicist and having among its producers a professor of physics. It is about the series of experiments culminating in the identification of a fundamental particle of nature, the Higgs Boson.

Over a seven year period, the film follows physicists and mathematicians who apprehend truths about the structure of the Universe long before the facts are actually discovered through very costly experimentation, involving hundreds of scientists and untold millions of pounds.

The apprehension of these truths often comes, as with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, through mathematical formulations of great beauty. In the words of the physicist Paul Dirac ‘the experience of mathematical beauty in these formulations thus becomes a guide to their truthfulness and, by extension, gives us insights into the laws governing the structure of the Universe’