Pedro Vieira: Seeking simple beauty in a complex cosmos

Pedro Vieira doesn’t simply study physics. He feels it.

He feels it when he performs Samba de Gafieira, a Brazilian partner dance that combines the energy of South American street music with the elegance of ballroom choreography.

He feels it in an altogether different way when practising yoga, in finding moments of stillness and connectedness with his physical self.

And he feels it when he puzzles out cosmic mysteries on the floor-to-ceiling blackboard of his Perimeter Institute office.

“Samba has a flow, like yoga or physics,” explains Vieira, who holds the Clay Riddell Paul Dirac Chair at the Institute. “You get into a mode where things are cruising, and you’re not thinking anymore. That’s when the magic happens.”

The magic he seeks in physics is simplicity; he creates simple, stripped-down versions of the universe, or “toy models,” to illuminate fundamental truths about the workings of the universe. Vieira focuses on simplifying problems to their essence and then adding the complexities of our real universe gradually into increasingly complex models. 

"Finding the right toy model is the real challenge,” he says “It needs to be simple enough to solve but rich enough to teach us something profound.”

Now 42, Vieira was one of the youngest faculty members ever recruited to Perimeter when he joined in 2009. He still speaks with youthful exuberance about his research, and surrounds himself with colleagues and students who share his zeal for discovery.  
He approaches scientific puzzles with the same playful spirit of friendly competition as he embraces when pursuing his favourite hobby outside of research, trading-card game Magic: The Gathering.  

“I’m not aggressive – I play slowly and methodically until I crush my opponent,” he says of his game strategy. “I suppose it’s a reflection of how I approach problems in physics too.”

Vieira indeed takes a methodical, meticulous approach to quantum field theory, leading him to make significant developments and earning him accolades including the Gribov Medal from the European Physical Society, the Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize in Physics, and the New Horizons in Physics Prize from the Breakthrough Prize Foundation in 2020. 

Born and raised in Portugal, Vieira was an incurably curious child who fed his brain with an undergraduate at the University of Porto followed by a PhD at École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He was captivated by the beauty he saw in elegant mathematical proofs and equations.

“When you find a beautiful idea and convey it to others, it’s like opening a portal to the Platonic world of truth,” Vieira said. “You know it’s true when you find it. That moment of understanding, when the light chimes in and everything makes sense, is the best feeling.”

He now aims to share that feeling with colleagues and students at Perimeter with a regular group discussion he leads called “Beautiful Papers.” At each biweekly gathering, attendees discuss a different paper from a physics journal, past or present, that exhibits the kind of beauty that inspires Vieira. 

Theoretical physics is an intellectual pursuit, but Vieira doesn’t just know when an idea is beautiful – he feels it. 

“Beauty in physics is often about understanding the simplest possible rules to describe everything,” he said. “It’s ambitious, but that’s what we’re seeking. For us, less is more.”