"Maldacena y Galileo", by Alfredo Leuco

February 19, 2019

New editorial of Alfredo Leuco for "I give my word"

Yesterday, my tolerance to the stomach was filled before the corrupted state. Talking about Amado Boudou always produces disgust. At least this time, it was to confirm that he was returning to Ezeiza Prison from where he should never have gone.

But today, open windows of clean air and hope that I want to talk about the other side of this malandra. Today, I want to talk about Dr. Juan Martín Maldacena. On May 2 in Italy, the National Institute of Nuclear Physics will give you the Galileo Galilei Medal. Experts say that at 50, he has already received the highest honors. Only the Nobel is missing. Telephone in Sweden.

Maldacena is honest, hardworking, supportive and a genius we do not recognize. Ask your child's school if anybody knows Maldacena and many will ask which football team they play. That's how it goes.

It's very good that we fill Lionel Messi pride and his magic gambetas. But we must also become enthusiastic and become idols or social heroes, as examples to follow, to Messi of science.

That's why I do not get tired of repeating the epic of Juan Maldacena who lived close to my home in Caballito. I do it as a kind of bet on self-help. To raise our spirits and not allow us to win the Budúes, Lazaros, Cristóbal or Cristinas.

Juan Martín Maldacena was the first Latin American to receive the "Lorentz Medal" awarded by the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences of the Netherlands. Everyone says that's the prelude to the Nobel Prize. And they provide a numerical argument: of the 21 scientists who received this medal, 11 went on to the Nobel Prize.

Maldacena is a giant of neurons and gray matter. I've been since June 1999. Twenty years ago, I wrote the first article about Maldacena playing the title "El Einstein de Caballito". I told myself, half jokingly and half seriously, that the new Albert Einstein lived close to my home.

You will think that I am crazy, that a flea was shot at me. But I tell you the truth and nothing but the truth. In addition, I repeat it in case you do not hear: the new Einstein lived close to my home.

You do not believe me? Do you want me to give you more information? Maldacena is 50 years old recently. He was born in Caballito and was able to cover several newspapers around the world because he won the Yuri Milner Award, a fundamental physics of three million dollars. Have you heard correctly?

Three million dollars. I give you information to compare. The Nobel Prize gives one million two hundred thousand dollars. Another interesting fact: much of this award has become a generous gift to the Balseiro Institute, where it always returns to train students. But that's not all.

At age 30, Juan receives one of the greatest scientific distinctions of Budapest and makes the cover of the New York Times. Who tells me? We could make a movie called: "Juan, from Caballito to Budapest".

Or rather, at Harvard, because at Harvard, this former neighborhood neighbor of Caballito is at the peak of excellence in education. He is the youngest professor in life in Harvard history.

Let me tell you this bright story that should make us swell the chest of pride of the Argentines. It is a way to overcome both irrationality and hatred that sometimes sows the daily reality. A way to balance so much bad news.

I am talking about Juan Martín Maldacena, on which we should climb on the highest podium and give him a huge gold medal. Maldacena is the creator of a revolutionary theory that has made him the darling of modern physics and one of the most popular scientists on the planet. Many scientific publications are wondering if we are not in the presence of a new Albert Einstein.

This is precisely what his great discovery has to do with this universal emblem of knowledge. Juan has formulated a new theory that better explains how it is formed and how the universe works. A little bit, right?

I repeat: how is he trained and how does the universe work. And often, I can not program the TV remote. This theory was called "The conjecture of Maldacena" and managed to unify theories that seemed irreconcilable: the theory of relativity of Einstein and that of quantum mechanics.

That's why I tell him that the new Einstein was born close to my home in Caballito. And because he's a professor at the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the Princeton Institute of Advanced Studies, the same one in which Einstein worked and died.

Until the age of 15, he lived on Avenida La Plata and Guayaquil. Juan is the product of the upward social mobility of a typical middle clbad family capable of sending his son to college. Luis, an engineer and Carmen, an English translator, Juan's parents were also able to give higher education to his two other daughters.

From this dream of "My son doctor" of Florencio Sánchez to this utopia of progress, namely that our children are better and happier than us. Juan studied two years in exact sciences at the University of Buenos Aires. And then in our scientific mecca of the Balseiro Institute of Bariloche.

I insist on this proposal: I think stories like this deserve to be told because they help us to keep up the morale in the midst of so much waste of insecurity and mega-corruption in impunity. It's like a way of saying we can. If we ever could, we could. As the motto of the wonderful Argentine expedition of Atlantis says: "Let the man know that man can".

It is exciting to remember when he was awarded the "Javed Husain" prize, in Hungary, before 2,000 scientists, one more than the other. I was 30 years old. And the biggest scientific centers in the world wanted to sign it on their campus. Just pronounce this name and among the greatest intellectuals, you know, you are talking about Argentina.

CNN and Time Magazine are betting on him as a future leader. And when did the Olympic tour go? I try to explain it with simple words because I realized that I am a humble and ignorant mortal.

My former neighbor of Caballito has recounted and unified the "theory of relativity" which describes the operation of objects as big as stars, galaxies or the universe itself with the theory of quantum mechanics that badyzes the behavior of infinitesimal worlds such as electrons or quarks. It's where I come from and I'm not because my brain is exploding.

Juan is a practicing Catholic and was decorated by John Paul II, as was the late Stephen Hawking, with whom he also worked and became a member of the Academy of Pontifical Sciences for years.

Live between complex equations, molecules, the cosmos and black holes. Works in a 5-dimensional space called hyperbolic. Write down everything in paper and pencil and the computer only leaves it to answer mail and surf the internet. But Juan misses the mountains of Bariloche he climbed and our folk music, with guitar and bbad drum.

With his neurons, Juan knew how to generate unusual things. In a very important convention bringing together these higher minds, one from the University of Chicago changed the lyrics of "Macarena" to "Maldacena".

Remember? "Give joy to your body, Maldacena" and all joined the chorus of the most popular song of contemporary history in the United States, which was the basis of Bill Clinton's election campaign. Give joy to your Maldacena theory, the boys sang. Give joy to Argentina, Maldacena, we could sing in those times of anger.

Even if an unbeliever says: Maldacena will sing well if he lives around the corner. It's a heavenly and white Einstein. Those who deliver the Nobel already know.

"Boudou en prison", by Alfredo Leuco