Korean researcher nurtures amateur astrophysicists

Park Moon-ho, a scientist at the state-run Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), delivers a lecture using complicated equations and mathematical matrix to ordinary citizens. / Courtesy of ETRI

By Kim Tae-gyu

A lecturer fills a whiteboard at a university in Seoul with many mind-blowing mathematical equations explaining the origins of the universe to scores of people for five or six hours with just a short break.

Strangely, most of the audience is not postgraduate students of science but salaried workers, housewives and retirees in their 60s or 70s who have never studied cosmology or astrophysics.

More strangely, they do not walk away or fall asleep. Instead, they try hard to remain focused throughout the long session and write down everything the lecturer says.

“To know the history and operation of the universe, you need to memorize only 10 formulae. What a great surprise and pleasure?” said lecturer Park Moon-ho, a scientist at the state-run Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).

“Of course, they are very tough for the layman to understand. Hence, I ask them to memorize the whole things. If they continue the works, they will surely know the profound meanings.”

The memorize-first-and-understand-later approach seems unorthodox ― the general belief has been that students have to build off very smaller things to learn high-level concepts.

Most experts would say that it is a waste of time for ordinary citizens to open up a cosmology textbook or biology research paper since they would have no clue about what is going on.

What Park is doing is to refute such experts and his way attracts citizens, who pack his Sunday classes ― Park delivers 10-plus-week lectures on the cosmos in spring and neuroscience in autumn.

Park asks the audience to write down all the equations and diagrams so as to learn them by heart and they do so faithfully like cult members.

The 56-year-old is also a famous blogger with a loyal following. They are recommended to give lectures themselves on such complicated issues as Albert’ Einstein’s theory of relativity or nuclear fusion in the Sun for 20 or 30 minutes.

Park organizes an overseas trip twice a year to such places as deserts and desolate canyons so participants can feel both the greatness and emptiness of Mother Nature.

They are not allowed to tour, shop or drink alcoholic beverages. While sleeping in tents and eating decent meals, they just study Albert Einstein who devised the Theory of Relativity and Bernhard Riemann, a German mathematician who inspired Einstein.

Still, Park does not lack volunteers who are ready to spend substantial amounts of money for the unique overseas travel opportunity to study space and the world while looking at the night sky.

In other words, Park nurtures amateur astrophysicists, who take advantage of matrices and covariant derivatives to calculate the age of the universe or the heat inside the Sun.

Park, who got his Ph.D. in electronic engineering at Texas A&M University, said that he wishes for everyone on Earth to understand science.

“Those who specialize in science can take enough time to first study basics to move on to more advanced areas. But ordinary people can’t take the strategy, which takes so much time and energy,” he said.

“The only option for them is to memorize the whole formulae and repeat the process. Then, they will eventually understand them. Members of our group amply demonstrate that such tactics work.”

Asked why salaried men and housewives have to study the difficult areas, Park said that such efforts are their duties.

“As living organisms, we should try to know the Earth and evolution. It is kind of a rent we should pay as tenants of this planet,” said Park, whose Korean-language lectures are available through YouTube.

“Along the same line, we have to study the astrophysics and other sciences. In a nutshell, we should know more about the nature. I strongly believe science is more significant than humanities.”