Solitons simplified by Australia Prize winner

By Damon Shorter

Professor Allan Snyder, winner of Australia's most prestigious science award, and one of the most decorated intellects in the country, not only thinks most science is unimaginative, but finds a lot of work published in his field unintelligible.

This month, Prof Snyder and another theoretician from the Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering, Professor John Mitchell, published a paper in the journal Science, explaining the behaviour of solitons. Solitons are what every surfer dreams of - waves that go forever without changing.

The paper caused quite a stir in the physics world, with the editor of the journal calling the paper a "breakthrough" and one reviewer from Berkeley University describing it as "a giant step forward".

The waves were first described by a Scottish engineer in 1843, who is reputed to have chased one down a canal for more than a mile.

Ever since, mathematicians have struggled to explain why solitons exist and have resorted to "ugly", unintelligible mathematical proofs, Prof Snyder said.

"The maths of solitons was simply horrible, horrendous, esoteric," Prof Snyder said. "What we have done in this paper is take something totally incomprehensible even to mathematical physicists and provide a simple, beautiful description of a natural physical process."

"Most people in our field are wrapped up in their fancy mathematics and they get a kick if they do something that is unintelligible to the rest of the world," Prof Mitchell said.

Professors Snyder and Mitchell, on the other hand, see themselves as simplifiers.

"When you have a PhD in mathematical physics, it is easy to apply heavy mathematics to anything, it requires no thinking whatsoever," Prof Snyder said. "The field is full of that-cookbook maths. But it takes a lot of experience to make things simple. It is a real art form."

Prof Snyder, a self-confessed technophobe unable to operate a computer, was awarded the Australia Prize earlier this year for his contribution to telecommunications and the development of optical fibres.

He says the next big challenge for science is to understand the mind.

"I'm interested in the fact that ideas come to you in your sleep - big things, holistic things," he said. "These sorts of problems haven't received much attention because they are too big, too scary. But they are interesting and I'd like to work for the rest of my life on interesting things."