Scientist Stephon Alexander: 'Infinite Possibilities' Unite Jazz And Physics

Physicist Stephon Alexander shares his love of science with his students at Brown University, and his love of jazz with musicians around Providence. Courtesy Ari Daniel

June 11, 20165:18 PM ET
ARI DANIEL

Stephon Alexander didn't always love music. When he turned 8, his grandmother, who was from Trinidad, forced him to take piano lessons in the Bronx. His teacher was, in a word, strict. "It felt like a military exercise to rob me of my childhood," Alexander recalls.

Several years went by like that. Until one day when Alexander's dad brought home an alto sax he found at a garage sale. "That became my toy. Music no longer for me was this regimented tedium," he says.

Alexander blasted away in the attic. He got good. In the 8th grade, his band teacher — who played the jazz scene by night — offered to help him get into the most prestigious music school in New York City. But he turned it down. "Because I wanted my music to be for fun," Alexander says. "I didn't want it to become a job."


And he never told his grandmother. Later on, in high school, Alexander discovered the subject that would become his career. Physics. He calls it the study of, "How the smallest things inform the largest things in our universe."

read more at: http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/06/11/481664722/scientist-stephon-alexander-infinite-possibilities-unite-jazz-and-physics?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=storiesfromnpr