Aiglon College Graduation Speech 2016
Distinguished Guests,
Faculty of Aiglon College and Graduands,
It is a great pleasure and an honour for me to give this year’s Graduation speech.
I have agonized quite a bit about what I should be telling you today. And what I shouldn’t. Then I decided to reformulate completely my speech a few days ago.
With all this, I came to the conclusion that,today, I will share with you, a few reflections about life – nothing earth-shattering - just a few reflections.
I will necessarily draw from the one life-experience I am familiar with, mine, and from my work in fundamental scientific research.
First of all, what is my connection with Aiglon College?
In brief, two proud alumni in my family,
and an appreciation for this great school.
My story with Aiglon goes back to the mid 1990’s, when one day, my wife, Vatsala, told me that we were going up to Villars, to visit an extraordinary school with an excellent teaching staff, for our two young children, Jas aged 10 and Natisha aged 12 who has dyslexia. I was skeptical at first but thought that I should just go with the flow and - of course - I couldn’t resist a trip to Villars. We were overjoyed when our children were admitted to Aiglon College.
After spending 7 challenging years at Aiglon College, our children successfully graduated in 2004 and 2005. Our daughter Natisha is now a primary school teacher in London, also working with children with dyslexia, and our son is a Doctor of Physics from Oxford, now working as an economist for the United Nations in Geneva.
What is my background?
I’m an experimental particle physicist, working at CERN in Geneva. I was born in Kenya. My family moved to the UK in a wave of migration from East Africa in the late 1960’s! My story is not unique. Many have been uprooted and have had to start all over again.
Now let me share with you my first reflection: Passion, and discovering your passion
Achievement beyond the ordinary, in any area of life, requires passion. Anyone will tell you this much, even your graduation speaker. The reason is simple: we excel in things we love, we achieve new heights, walk new paths, help others, when we really like what we do. I guess this is kind of obvious. The real question is how to discover one’s passion.
In my case, it was a physics teacher in Birmingham who ignited my passion. He took pride in all his students doing well, as I am sure your teachers here at Aiglon have done throughout your education here.
One day, in the late 1960’s, on a visit to the Birmingham science museum I saw a cloud chamber in operation. In a cloud chamber vapour trails are formed by traversing charged particles that are produced when cosmic rays smash into Earth’s upper atmosphere. In fact such particles are bombarding you all as you sit comfortably in this hall.
The visit encouraged me to find out more – in fact what are we made of?
Leaving school to go to university, it seemed that I had discovered my passion, without even being conscious of it, apassion for scientific enquiry.
So, what are you passionate about? And if you have not found your passion – keep looking for it! Expose yourself to new things, new ideas, new ways of doing things, for, once you find that passion, you will truly make a difference.
Quests, discoveries, difficulties – 2nd and third reflections
The next two reflections come from how we dealt with difficulties that we faced in the search for the Higgs boson, and new physics.
Twenty-five years ago, in 1990, with a few colleagues I led the conception and then the construction of the CMS experiment that is housed in a cathedral-sized cavern 100 m underground at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. The CMS experiment is one of the most complex scientific instruments ever built.
Imagine you were standing in our universe, moments after its birth. And someone had given you a camera. The pictures would tell you what was its composition and the laws that governed its behavior at the time. The laws are the same today. CMS is like a gigantic 15000 ton, 100 Mpix 3-D digital camera, that takes 40M pictures a second, of events that were occurring in our universe a fraction of a nanosecond after the Big Bang.
It took 20 years of painstaking work of 3500 scientists and engineers from over 40 countries, all with a similar passion, all working together across borders, to discover the Higgs boson. The Higgs boson is the quantum of a field that pervades our universe. It is in this room. Fundamental particles interact with this field and acquire mass. Mass is what gives our universe substance, allowing atoms to exist, allowing us to exist.
We choose to do fundamental sciences out of curiosity. Through the ages progress in these sciences, in particular physics, has given us paradigm shifting technologies such as electricity, electronics, medical imaging, genomics, the World Wide Web to name a few. These have revolutionized the way we live, our comforts at home, the way we travel, the way we do business, the way we communicate, and the way we do scholarship.
It is in the very nature of fundamental scientific research that profound questions are posed - questions concerning the inner secrets of Nature.
Nature is unforgiving in yielding its secrets.
So this leads me to my second reflection, taken from Oliver Cromwell: “think it possible you may be mistaken”.
We are not allowed to brush over inconvenient facts or observations, or to be satisfied with under-performing methods or instruments. When probing Nature it is worth recalling that our ultimate judges are not our peers, nor our governments, but Nature itself. So we have to constantly question what we do, and test our actions for correctness that stands the test of time. For these reasons I still find the words “think it possible you may be mistaken” to bea powerful guiding principle in my life - be it scientific, technical or personal.
Discoveries are not without relentless high drama. So my third reflection concerns moments in the CMS experiment when we had to make critical decisions. My recipe - simply put - just decide to dothe right thing,for it is never too late to do the right thing.
During the construction of the CMS experiment, over a period of two decades, we had several setbacks, technical difficulties, and disappointments - moments where we had to redesign our instruments from scratch, rethink our scientific strategy. We were constantly under the pressure, short of time and short of funds. Hard decisions had to be made, the right decisions had to be made thathave stood the test of time. But the most important consideration was that it was never too late to do the right thing.
Believe it or not, the two reflections that I have just presented to you, apply to all aspects of daily life, and not only to the seemingly lofty pursuit of scientific enquiry.
Disappointments
Lastly, I would like to make sure that I do not leave you with the impression that even though you have identified your passion, and even if you have decided to do the right thing, and even if you’re aware that you may by mistaken, you have a one-way ticket to happiness and success. I am afraid there will be disappointments along your life’s path.
So let me talk about disappointments, and resilience.
Let me share with you one example from my life (and there have been several). In 1974, upon the completion of my undergraduate studies in physics I was delighted to be offered a place for a Doctorate in Particle Physics at several universities and I eagerly accepted a place at Cambridge, and turned down all the others. Just before term was about to start, I received a letter from Cambridge informing me that my place had been revoked. The excuse, shortage of funds!!!
I was left out in the cold. I felt very downhearted and to be honest, it was a low point for me. I even thought about going into another profession!! It seemed that this story would not have a happy ending.
At the time, it was Imperial College that came to my rescue and saved the day. They put me through university clearing, which was successful, and I was awarded a place to do my doctorate. This started my 40-year association with Imperial College, one that I have enjoyed ever since. I have no regrets about not going to Cambridge in 1974. In the end, it all worked out well.
So my fourth reflection is the following. None of us wants to experience disappointments. But, they are a part of life’s journey, probably a necessary part of life’s journey. Of importance is the manner in which you overcome them, how you pick yourself up, so that out of disappointment emerges a clearer and a more rewarding path forward.
Graduands, in a short hour from now you will officially graduate from Aiglon College (rest assured that I do not intend talk for an hour). You will take away with you the best moments from the College – having forged lasting bonds of friendship, learning the value of resilience, steadfastness, and determination.
From your 1stday at University, your 1st day in a new job, or for that matter your 1st day in any new venture – you will be immersed in … life!
Life is beautiful. It is made better
when lived with passion
when we just do the right thing, and even more so,
when we consider that we just might be mistaken,
And remember – difficulties and disappointments are what make us enjoy life even more – once they are overcome.
Let me end by heartily congratulating you all on this very special of days. You all should be immensely proud of your academic and sporting achievements.
Doors are about to open, and I am sure you already have expectations, and fears, but also hopes and dreams.
Never give up on your passions and dreams foryou might just end up realising them.
Thank you.
