Nadav Drukker

Reader in Theoretical Physics
King's College London
London

Simultaneously an artist and a scientist, these two facets of me get fused in my ceramics.

As a theoretical and mathematical physicist at the Mathematics Department of King’s College London I teach and research the deepest mysteries of the universe. As an artist, I create sculptural pieces with forms closely resembling traditional pottery whose purpose it to mirror the creativity of scientific pursuit in art. My works represent specific research projects with the shapes and designs inspired by the research, within the topic of string theory, the most fundamental hypothetical theory of nature.

In my art I aspire to present the language of mathematics as beautiful and holding knowledge encouraging further exploration.

Cusp-20
Cusp-20
36 x 30 x 10 cm
Glazed stoneware
2018

This piece of stoneware with green celadon glaze represents a research project calculating a quantity known as the quark-antiquark potential.

The potential has two alternative description, and we used both to calculate it. I use the two sides of the pot to represent the basic formulas in the two calculations. On this side you see sketches of minimal surfaces in hyperbolic space. Expanding in powers of the parameters theta and phi leads to zeta functions.

At the base you can find the list of arXiv references on which our research is based.

I submitted a paper to the conference on this research and its realization in art and hope to be able to exhibit this piece to complement my talk.