RodrigodLA

I remember the day (undergraduate school in Guatemala) when the book by Feynman and Hibbs met me. It was at a small library for students that dreamed of pursuing physics as a career or better to say, students that did not want to learn the usual topics of engineering, medicine, law and all that.

I ask the librarian if it was possible to go outside with the book for a cup of coffee. She gave us her blessing. (Isabel. Thanks to her I read a lot of books with calm and passion. Over the course of 3 years I think she considered me as a nightmare. Many books borrowed at the same time.)

I talked too much. To many questions. I was nervous. The only thing that the book said to me: «you are not ready for this, maybe in the future».

I got used to this sentence for many other books.

Fortunately for me, couple years later, I met them again. Different library and now Isabel was Valerio (and others). The library was bigger and host a service for a lot of people from Italy and around the world. It was outstanding, all of them eager to read these type of books.

The coffee was also different. Capo in b (the b stands for bicchiere and capo for  cappuccino). If you spend some time in Trieste, you will learn this very quickly.

I was astonished with the personality of these books. They always said to me: «I doesn’t matter if you are ready or not, you must… otherwise you will go home tomorrow». I was nervous again but now they answer me all the stupid and smart questions with patience. They taught me a lot and their content was daily discussed and challenged in every corner of the building.

You may wonder, how is it possible that books that are in a small library in Guatemala are also in a library in Italy? This is possible thanks to Carlos Salvadó. His signature is present in the first page of the books. I do not know the details of how this happen. The only thing I know is that these (advanced) books change the course of some young people in Guatemala like me.

Oh well…

These days I picture myself teaching these subjects in Guatemala. With no job opportunity, no funding, no interest, no … , it is not easy to do so.

However, this does not stop me of doing it virtually and therefore I wrote a note on this subject (secretly, my aim is to teach in full detail the no-boundary proposal by Hartle and Hawking in the context of AdS/CFT at the undergraduate level).

You can check the note.

Use it with caution!