Martin White

Want to jet around the world and appear on the line up of music festivals? A career in physics might just be the key, according to Physicist Martin White.

Few students who are weighing up career options would imagine that a Physics degree could lead to a ‘crazy, jet-setting lifestyle’. But that is exactly how Associate Professor Martin White describes his career since completing a degree in Physics at Cambridge University in the UK.

Martin’s career has taken him around the world and placed him on the bill at a music festival alongside the Pet Shop Boys and Grace Jones, when he was invited to Latitude Festival to speak about cosmology and dark matter.

It has all been quite the ride for someone who grew up in a small town in Cornwall where few of his parents’ generation ever considered enrolling in university.

Martin attended a government primary school that was constantly at risk of closure due to low student numbers; he and his twin brother were two of six students in their year level. He speaks with fondness and nostalgia about a childhood where there was little pressure from his parents and teachers, but he was encouraged to follow his interests.

“I was always fascinated by the night sky. There was little light pollution where I lived so we had spectacular views of the sky. From quite a young age, I was obsessed with how the universe was born, and I still am,” he said.

Martin’s teachers and principal recognised his skill in maths and passion for science and provided him with opportunities to learn and extend himself. To his surprise, when he arrived at secondary school he was two years ahead of his peers.

Eventually, he gained a place at Cambridge where he met his Australian wife. They moved to Melbourne in 2010 and he now works at the University of Adelaide and as a Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics.

Martin co-leads the GAMBIT collaboration, an international team that performs global fits of beyond-Standard Model physics models, including models of dark matter, and is a project leader in a second international team, the DarkMachines consortium, who develop new applications of machine learning in dark matter research. As Deputy Dean Research at Adelaide for the Faculty of Sciences, he is transplanting these techniques to a broad range of scientific disciplines.

He also performs research into particle physics phenomenology and particle astrophysics and is a member of the ATLAS collaboration, where he conducts experimental searches for weakly interacting massive particles.

However, Martin says there is far more to his job than research and complex equations. When he retires, he plans to write a book about the adventures he has had travelling, appearing at music festivals and flooding French hotel rooms. It is all far removed from his childhood when overseas travel was a distant dream, or from the stereotypical life of a scientist in a laboratory.

Martin encourages more young people to consider studying physics, an area which he says is ripe with employment opportunities for future graduates. And while he might have been precociously good at maths from a young age, he does not believe this is a prerequisite for a career in physics.

“Students are fearful of maths and I wonder whether we are teaching maths the best way possible. Young people shouldn’t be afraid of maths but should see it as something they can do if they put in the work.

“No one believes they could play a piano concerto without lessons and practice, but for some reason, they expect you can be good at maths without putting in the time to learn and practice.

For Martin, having peers who are equally interested in science was a driving force in his success. Of his tiny class at school, two others have pursued high level scientific careers, his twin as a theoretical particle physicist and another classmate as an astrophysicist.

More than anything, Martin enjoys the opportunity his career pathway has provided him to be at the forefront of scientific discovery.

“A few years ago I worked in a team and it looked like we had discovered something beyond the Standard Model in particle physics. It was such a special experience. I wasn’t even really disappointed when it didn’t turn out as we had hoped. It’s just so exciting to be involved in this research.”

Martin hopes his work with the Centre will provide opportunities for new discoveries and advances in our understanding of dark matter.