Dr Jacob Ngaha is claiming the title of the first Māori quantum physicist. His science looks at the behaviour of matter such as atoms and energy such as light, considered the building blocks of nature and Ngaha is seeking out the parallels with Te Ao Māori.
Ngaha (Waikato-Tainui, Ngāti Maniapoto,Ngāti Kahu) explains quantum physics like this: “If we have, say, a planet going around the sun, we can calculate a lot of things and so those rules work for very big things and those rules we are comfortable with.
“After a while, we realised that, actually, if you move down into a smaller world, so, instead of a planet going around the sun, we’re looking at an electron moving around a nucleus. We’re looking inside of an atom and those same rules don’t really apply and it’s those rules we use that are called quantum physics.”
But quantum physics wasn’t Ngaha’s first career choice and he accidentally fell into that field in his last years of high school.
“I really liked maths but I wasn’t very good at it, and so I found with physics, especially quantum physics, it was like doing maths but I could kind of sit back and, if we had a problem, I could think about it and I could visualise it in my head,” he said.
“Quantum physics is still relatively new. It’s only maybe just over 100 years old since it was first really discovered and formalised, so there’s still some work that needs to be done to create a link and I think one of the important things to help create that link is to get more Māori into this space.”
Ngaha envisions working with Māori astronomer Professor Rangi Mātāmua to develop a big bang theory reaction in the future.
“I really want to get a good, firm grasp of maybe some mātauranga Māori because I’m still learning that myself. I have the mātauranga pūtaiao (science education), mātauranga quantum physics but want to have a wānanga (discussion) with him to see how those things can link together.”
