FERNANDO PASSOS SILVA

I was born at Queluz, near Lisbon, in the past century! I got a bachelor in Physics with the classification of 17 (in a scale that ranges from 0 to 20), a graduation in Mathematics with a classification of 19, and a master degree in Mathematics (classification of "Very Good"), with a thesis on the representations of the Virasoro algebra. All these degrees were obtained at University of Lisbon. Currently, I work on a PhD on Mathematical Physics, centring on matrix models. I am Assistant Teacher at University Nova of Lisbon. With my wife, I own an internet site, HARMONIA DO MUNDO (WORLD'S HARMONY), which includes, among many others, pages on science and on literature. I published so far six poetry books (three of them in collaboration with my wife), and a little essay on history of Physics. My idol is Einstein, though I don't believe he was right in not accepting the indeterminacy of the laws of Physics. A deterministic Universe would be something very boring, a place I wouldn't like to live in! Yes, I know, it could perfectly well be deterministic and still look as if it wasn't. But anyway I don't like to see myself as robot who just thinks he is free, while he is not, and I believe that the quantum indeterminacy might, in a way still to be discovered, reconcile the laws of Physics with human free will. I seldom write poetry in English, but here is a poem I dedicated to Sir Richard Dawkins. (By the way, my poetry books are signed Fernando Henrique de Passos.) I translated to Portuguese Gerald Holton's book "Einstein, History and Other Passions".