On the fourth floor of the Hubble space telescope offices in Baltimore, one finds at the helm of the science division an unrepentant romantic padding around the hallways in tennis shoes. He hangs prints of pre-Raphaelite artwork on his walls, and on his bookshelves, among gray tomes about biochemical reagents, cataclysmic variables and radioactive beta decay, he stations a proud little doll with a shock of electric blond hair -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Le Petit Prince.
One cannot know Mario Livio without learning something about the Little Prince. After all, he is the hero of one of the scientist's favorite books, and Livio is, in a way, his flesh-and-blood counterpart in the field of astrophysics -- 5 feet, 8 inches of ferocious enthusiasm, a first-class champion for mingling math and physics with art and philosophy: Le Petit Astronomer.
For more than a decade, Livio has organized international conferences, produced scientific papers and shepherded a team of young astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute on the Homewood campus of the Johns Hopkins University. As head of science for the institute, he has been in the leadership of one of the most significant projects in the history of astronomy.
But as he goes about his work, the diminutive 57-year-old also spends many hours ruminating and writing about art and beauty. Most recently he has been investigating the powers of phi, the so-called Golden Ratio -- 1.6180339887 ... -- whose ancient, almost mystical properties have found a beguiling application in everything from the design of galaxies to the structure of leafy plants.
"I am," he confesses, "something of an anomaly."
His two books -- The Accelerating Universe: Infinite Expansion, the Cosmological Constant, and the Beauty of the Cosmos and the just-published The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, The World's Most Astonishing Number -- are also anomalies of science writing. Peppered with references to Shakespeare, Spinoza, Keats, Van Gogh, Botticelli and St. Augustine, the texts seek to explain some of the most technical concepts in astrophysics and mathematics with observations that breach the divide between heart and mind.
Discussing angular momentum and the structure of galaxies, author Livio suddenly stops: "Now I am asking you," he writes, "isn't this absolutely BEAUTIFUL!" Like a philosopher, he asks, "Why do we fear death but not fear the time before we were born?" In a discussion of gravitational energy, he pauses over the critical omega symbol in an equation -- "Determining the value of omega," he writes, "is almost like a fulfillment of Shakespeare's wish in Henry IV: 'Oh God! That one might read the book of fate!'"
That such a man fits nicely within the leadership of a world-renowned astronomical venture is not an accident. Besides being a top-notch scientist, veterans at the institute point out, Livio has a personal touch that ferrets out the best ideas from astronomers on staff and strikes a major chord when he speaks to science-averse audiences.
"It's a real gift for a scientist to go into a technical discussion and have someone identify what are the most interesting problems and ways of solving them," says Robert Williams, the institute's former director. "Mario has that gift. He is full of ideas."
Universal beauty
"The essence of Mario -- his enthusiasm and passion -- make him a P.R. person's dream," says Ray Villard, public information manager for the Hubble. "A crew from 60 Minutes was here recently, and they hit him with one of these hard questions: 'The Hubble Telescope is a $7 billion project -- is it worth it?' Mario didn't even hesitate: 'It has given us the Universe!' He was just spectacular. He's like our Cal Ripken. You've gotta send him into the game."
Although Livio is respected as an authority on cosmic jets (gushing matter from the core of galaxies), and his own research on supernovas contributed to clarifying current concepts about the expanding universe, he has increasingly devoted his time to writing and public speaking. Reaching untutored audiences has become an important goal.
He has been, after all, a firsthand observer of some of the most astonishing astronomical events of the past decade. He stood alongside Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy at the institute in July 1994 when the comet named after them slammed into Jupiter. He helped gather astronomers from around the world a few years ago to discuss the then implausible idea that the universe was not only expanding but accelerating in its expansion, being propelled by a mysteriously unknown force they could only call dark energy -- then joined distinguished colleagues grappling anxiously with the resulting challenge to fundamental physics. ("We live in a preposterous universe," declared Michael Turner, a University of Chicago astrophysicist. "Dark energy: Who ordered that?")
The excitement he has felt at such moments in Hubble history, he believes, must be shared with the public.
"There is a reason why they teach Shakespeare in school," he says. "Of course, you could live your everyday life without ever hearing about Shakespeare, but you know this is such an important part of the intellectual endeavors of mankind over the years that everyone should experience at least one Shakespeare play. The same is true here, yes?
"Yes, you could go to the supermarket and to the mall and about your business otherwise without hearing that our universe is expanding or accelerating. But we know this is an important part of human knowledge, and I want not just the people who happen to observe these phenomena to know about this. I would like everybody to know about this!"
Science is such a heartfelt vocation to Livio that certain "problems" strike him like a personal affront. The notion that the universe might not be balanced in a steady state of expansion/contraction, as once believed, but infinitely expanding at an ever-increasing rate, is one such problem. Questions about whether there might be an unknown force causing the expansion or whether the universe has less mass than otherwise suspected has thrown astrophysics into flux. They have also forced Livio to confront one of his deepest beliefs -- that the universe is beautiful, in part, because it adheres to certain simple, fundamental laws.
"On the face of it, this looks very, very ugly," he says, "because suddenly we think 65 percent of the energy of the universe is in this form of 'dark energy' that propels the acceleration. And 65 percent is a very peculiar number. It is not one that comes out of something very simple. It's something I have struggled with."
His wrestling resulted two years ago in The Accelerating Universe, a book in which he argues that good scientific theories should have an underlying aesthetic. They should be symmetric, simple and Copernican. That is, the universe is essentially the same in any direction; a few laws can explain very complex phenomenon; and, any valid theory of the universe must not consider human beings as central to its existence.
Thus, he insists, good theories must not be ugly; they must be beautiful.
A confessed "art fanatic" whose library includes hundreds of portfolio art books, Livio used his own book to propose what is probably the first cosmological aesthetic principle.
While some of his colleagues, such as John Bahcall, former president of the American Astronomical Society, say Livio "appropriately emphasizes aesthetic factors ... in making new discoveries," others have not been so certain.
"It doesn't ring a bell with me," said Hubble astronomer Williams. "But then this is the essence of beauty, isn't it? That it's in the eye of the beholder?"
Scientific method
How Le Petit Astronomer came to such an appreciation for art and philosophy remains something of a mystery. It is not obvious even to him.
Born in Romania at the end of World War II, Livio moved to Israel at the age of 5 with his grandmother to escape persecution of Jews. His father and mother had left for France for the same reason shortly after Livio was born. His father remained in France to become an author and editor of the magazine of the Cannes Film Festival. Although they never lived together, the astronomer now believes he may have arrived at his love for art and writing by way of his father's genetic influence.
The other great influence -- philosophical ideas -- he suspects may come, in part, from his experiences in war. As a young man, Livio joined the Israeli military, as almost all young people are required to do. A pacifist, he opted to be trained as a medic and joined a special unit that could be dropped into front-line war zones.
"There is one such unit in the Israeli army, and in the context of that unit, I participated in three wars," he says. "In particular, during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, we were the only medical unit on the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal. It was not an insignificant time in my life. In that war alone I treated 554 people, including 120 enemy soldiers."
The war interrupted his studies in theoretical astrophysics at Tel Aviv University, and when he returned to school, he says, preparing for his Ph.D. seemed pointless.
"I had seen so many die," he says, "some of whom had been students I attended class with, who were preparing for their lives as well. For a long while I could not bring myself to do research. I would start and then say, 'Wait, suppose I solve this problem with the accretion disc ... but what about these people who died by the thousands?'"
It is this philosophical side, melded with an affection for art and science, that continues to bring out the voice of Le Petit Prince in Le Petit Astronomer.
Saint-Exupery's classic tale, first published in 1943, tells the story of a pilot forced to land in the desert and his meeting with a Little Prince who describes his journey from planet to planet, examining lives that often seem meaningless. And yet the Little Prince tells such imaginative stories that, for the pilot, existence flowers with fresh appeal.
"What is essential," the Little Prince tells the pilot, "is invisible to the eye."
It is this thing that is invisible to the eye to which Livio has devoted many hours in the past two years: mathematics. And not just mathematics, but the unifying thread of mathematics in art, architecture, music, botany, astronomy and nearly all of nature.
Art of the equation
"Somehow underlying even the most complex things that we see, there may be something that is more basic, usually mathematically based, that can explain it all," he says. "This is a feature of my work. I am not trying to explain one particular object but to find something more fundamental that can explain a whole host of phenomena."
His infatuation with the mathematics behind one number in particular -- phi, or 1.6180339887 ... -- has just given rise to his second book. This mysterious, never-ending series of digits has been his latest compulsion to fathom. Tracing his fascination with this so-called Golden Ratio back to the time of Pythagoras and Euclid, Livio has investigated its odd relation to the shapes of pyramids, sunflowers, mollusks, galaxies, architecture, even art masterpieces. Weekends, evenings and vacations for the last two years have been devoted to research, all aimed at a query that still makes his blood pulse: Is the universe, by its very nature, mathematical?
Something essential, he is convinced, is invisible to the eye.
"The Golden Ratio occupies a very interesting place in mathematics," he says. "But it also appears in a whole host of natural phenomenon. For example, if you look at leaf arrangements in plants, they are arranged about the stem according to this number. If you look at the structure of galaxies with billions of stars, they are arranged somehow by this number. If you look at some shells, spirals, pentagons, quasi-crystals -- this number plays a role.
"There have been those who were convinced that this was something that was God-given. Let's suppose, for instance, that you are truly a religious person, and this number appears in all these ways; you have to say: 'This must be a God-given number.' Of course, if you are a pure scientist, like myself, you say: 'Look, I want to understand why this number appears so often, and are some of these misconceptions?'"
In the process of answering, Livio has created a literary tour through what one reviewer, Sir Roger Penrose, the highly regarded mathematician from Oxford University, has called "the amazing world of mathematics and its relationship to the physical world, as viewed from ancient to modern times."
"God," Livio concludes, "is indeed a mathematician."
Star among the stars
Finally at the crest of his career, because of his age and stature in the profession, Livio feels freed from the pressures to publish a certain number of scientific papers every year -- the usual bane of academia. Today he can afford to attend to his muse, to pursue the big questions that have engaged him since he first became an astronomer in Israel 30 years ago.
He has thought about another book --the nature of light, perhaps -- and has taken a particular interest in the search for life in other parts of the universe.
Again, Le Petit Astronomer turns to Le Petit Prince to explain the fascinations.
"All men have the stars," the Little Prince tells the pilot, as he leaves to return to his planet. "But they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. ...
"But all these stars are silent. You -- you alone -- will have the stars as no one else has them. In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night. ... You -- only you -- will have stars that can laugh!"
As he tells this, one of his favorite stories, his eyes are alight.
The question finally must be posed straight-out: Is Mario Livio -- Hubble scientist, administrator, hard-nosed scientist -- deep down a romantic?
"Yes, of course," he says, simply -- with no apologies.