Paul Ginsparg ’77, JF ’81, RI ’09, a professor of physics and of computing and information science at Cornell University, is best known for the on-line system he created for the distribution of scientific research results. This system, known as arXiv.org, earned him a MacArthur fellowship in 2002. The Benjamin White Whitney Scholar at Radcliffe, Ginsparg is widely known as an e-media visionary.

What is the most challenging aspect of being a Radcliffe fellow?

Having to readjust to real-world life and obligations after only ten months of being pampered as a Radcliffe fellow.

Which aspect of your work do you most enjoy?

To be able to stare at the ceiling and contemplate things that in principle have never been considered before, at least not in our recorded history.

What is your most treasured possession?

I belatedly realized that it was my lumbar support cushion, left on a Red Line train in April when I exited too hastily at Kendall Square. I called the T lost-and-found immediately, but although the train was still en route it was never retrieved. The company from whom I purchased it in the mid-1990s is now defunct, and I’m still hunting for that precise design that worked for me.

Which trait do you most admire in yourself?

My ability to remember daily details from twenty-five years ago better than what happened yesterday.

Who is your muse?

Currently, my eight-year-old daughter and five-year-old son. It is a continual source of inspiration to try to understand the world through their eyes and to reflect on all the differences from my own childhood experiences not so long ago.

What do you consider your greatest success?

Getting to spend a mid-career decade in academic exile in beautiful New Mexico; moreover, getting married and starting a family against all demographic odds.

Tell us your favorite memory.

On the knife edge at Capitol Peak near Aspen, with a 1,500-foot drop on the left and a 2,500-foot drop on the right, I was warned to keep looking to the left because the other side was too frightening.

Who are your heroes?

People who employed generally available information to intuit something fundamental about the world, sometimes in sharp conflict with prevailing opinion: Eratosthenes, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein.

Describe yourself in six words or fewer.

Incisive and discerning despite permanent jetlag.

What would your colleagues be surprised to learn about you?

That I haven’t been cognitively impaired for the past two decades, that I played pickup basketball with the current US president at Harvard twenty years ago, Rosebud.

Where in the world would you like to spend a month?

Assuming that “the world” means space-time, I’d like to spend a month somewhere on the planet 3.5 billion years ago, properly equipped to survey the origins of life here.

Whose tunes do you enjoy?

My popular tastes are frozen in my pre-family days of over a decade ago: Collective Soul, Dave Matthews Band, B-Tribe, Smashing Pumpkins, Alison Krauss . . . . With respect to the abovementioned loss of my formerly treasured possession, the old Kingston Trio tune “Charlie on the MTA” comes to mind (coincidentally starting at Kendall Square station . . . “never returned”). In this regard, I also speculate about A. J. Deutch’s 1950 short story “A Subway Named Mobius,” in which the topology of the Boston subway system becomes so complex that a train vanishes, lost in some fourth-dimensional properties of the network.

Name a pet peeve.

Right-wing ideologues or, more generally, people who adhere to a manifestly incorrect worldview, despite all logic and observational evidence to the contrary.

If your life became a motion picture, who should portray you?

Sacha Baron Cohen.

What is your fantasy career?

Successful scientist. (I’m still trying.)

Top: Ginsparg in the moment of what is now his favorite memory. Bottom: his muses. Photos courtesy of Paul Ginsparg.