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Join us for a discussion with debut author Karmela Padavic-Callaghan and Seven Rasmussen about Entangled States: A Life According to Quantum Physics.

About the Book: 

“I see physics everywhere,” Karmela Padavic-Callaghan writes. “It offers itself to me when I try to make sense of all the paths my life did and did not take, it reassures me when I try to reconcile all the identities that I feel describe me.”

Now a science writer in New York, Karmela uses physics to meditate on building a life in a new country, on being nonbinary in a field dominated by cishet men, and on cause, effect, future, and destiny. Each chapter examines a moment in Karmela’s life through the lens of a physics concept. Padavic-Callaghan writes conversationally about seeing themselves in Freddie Mercury’s queer masculinity and power, what it means to be a queer teacher to young people, and overall how  “Queerness, as I have come to understand it, is always future-oriented, always a state of becoming.”

About the Author: 

Karmela Padavic-Callaghan is a scientist, a journalist, and an educator based in New York City. A staff writer at New Scientist, they report on physics, materials science, and quantum technology. They hold a PhD in theoretical condensed matter physics and atomic, molecular and optical physics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Their research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including Physical Review Letters and New Journal of Physics. Their popular science writing has been featured in such publications as Wired, Scientific American, Aeon, Slate, and MIT Technology Review.

About the Moderator: 

Seven Rasmussen is an astrobiologist, author, and science communicator whose work has been featured widely in the media, including Popular Science, Wired, Nature, Scientific American, Inside Higher Ed, Science, and Space.com. Their next book, Cloudy With a Chance of Starships, comes out from Princeton University Press in August.