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Hari Padmanabhan
Hari Padmanabhan

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Jul 30

How electrons break into pieces inside one-dimensional matter

What makes a cow a cow? A cow has four limbs, a pair of horns, a tail, and eats grass (among other things). What makes an electron an electron? An electron is arguably defined by two traits — its charge (the stuff that makes up electricity), and its spin (the…

Electron

5 min read

How electrons break into pieces inside one-dimensional matter
How electrons break into pieces inside one-dimensional matter

Mar 20

The human view of the arrow of time

In Kurt Vonnegut’s classic war novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, we follow the journey of Billy Pilgrim, a poorly trained, fatalistic soldier in the United States army in World War II. On the night of his daughter’s wedding, Billy is abducted by aliens in a flying saucer, and taken to a distant planet…

Time

9 min read

The human view of the arrow of time
The human view of the arrow of time

Mar 21, 2021

Reflections on science and the human endeavor

In the pandemic summer of 2020 I found myself introspecting about something important to me — why do I do science? In an attempt to answer this question, I dove into the history of science, science funding, and my childhood, and wrote this essay. This article first appeared in Economic…

Science

6 min read

Reflections on science and the human endeavor
Reflections on science and the human endeavor

Feb 14, 2021

Making carbon magnetic

The story of my first scientific paper. Rummaging through some old notebooks, I found notes from my first ever research project, done as an undergraduate researcher. Once I recovered from the burst of nostalgia, with the added perspective of six years of graduate school, I realized that I was then…

Chemistry

5 min read

Making carbon magnetic
Making carbon magnetic
Hari Padmanabhan

Hari Padmanabhan

Postdoctoral researcher at Harvard, studying the physics of materials.

Following
  • Barack Obama

    Barack Obama

  • Nassim Nicholas Taleb

    Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  • Venkat Viswanathan

    Venkat Viswanathan

  • Nathan C. Frey, PhD

    Nathan C. Frey, PhD

  • Kaushik Viswanath

    Kaushik Viswanath

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