By Alex Obando

S. James Gates, Jr., a member of President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), explained advanced string theory and theoretical physics to staff and students on Tuesday and Thursday.

Gates spoke Tuesday at the Black Cultural Center and that speech was open to students belonging to the Multicultural Scholars Program. His talk Thursday took place in Sharpless Auditorium and was open to the entire community.

Gates is a self-proclaimed man of many hats, the first of which could be an army cap. His father’s position in the army meant that he attended six schools in six years before settling in Orlando, Fla. for high school.

"School wasn’t interesting until I got to MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology], then it got very interesting, almost too interesting,” Gates said.

Gates eventually exchanged the army cap from childhood with a graduate’s cap. During his time at MIT, he claims that his lack of drug experimentation in college was not because he felt there was anything intrinsically wrong with drugs, but because he was already high off his physics studies.

His acute understanding of physics allowed him to approach he new and experimental field of super symmetry, about which his professors were not that knowledgeable.

Super partners consist of a part of the universe yet to be observed by scientists. Super symmetry relates elementary particles with a given spin to opposing particles called super partners, differing by half a unit of spin. Much of super symmetry work also provides a basis on which string theory may exist.

In addition to his work for PCAST, Gates is currently the John S. Toll Professor of Physics and the Director of the University of Maryland’s Center for String and Particle Theory.

At this point, his graduation cap transforms into a thinking cap. As a theoretical physicist, speculation consumes much of his work time. In fact, he claims to use mathematics as an “extrasensory perception organ.”

Surprisingly, with the thinking cap still in place, Gates now dons an artist’s beret. Not only has Gates explored super symmetry extensively, but also he developed a new way to represent supersymmetrical structures through colorful graphs called Adinkras.

Originally, “Adinkra” is a West African word for symbols with a hidden meaning. These shapes prove aesthetically pleasing, but as they morph, they construct numerous calculus equations.

His scientific research led him to be appointed to PCAST, allowing him to explain to President Barack Obama and other high-ranking officials how science could be useful for the structure and function of society. An example of PCAST’s work can be found in their prediction that 30,000 to 90,000 people may die of the H1N1 virus.

Gates transitions to the sleek hat of a media personality while he appears in TV documentaries. Finally, he returns home to be a father of three and husband of one. How can one person balance so many responsibilities? According to him, he lives by the “Juggler’s Principle”: get the ball closest to the ground and throw it as high as possible.

Deborah Saunders, the administrative assistant at the Office of Multicultural Affairs, noted the relationship between Gates’ extremely organized mathematical structures and traditional Kente cloth from Ghana. That overlap of science and art encompasses James Gates’ life work — perhaps the two have much more in common than ever before thought.

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