Antonio Padilla

Padilla held research positions at the University of Oxford and the University of Barcelona before joining the University of Nottingham.^[4] He is active in science communication, and is a recurring presenter on the YouTube series Numberphile and its sister channel, Sixty Symbols.^[4]

In 2016, he and collaborator Nemanja Kaloper of the University of California, Davis received the Buchalter Cosmology Prize for their work on the cosmological constant problem.^[2] Kaloper and Padilla devised a new strategy; this involved rewriting Einstein's equations to 'effectively cancel out the input from quantum fluctuations' and treat the cosmological constant as an average of the matter contribution over all of space and time.^[5] This produced a 'relatively small cosmological constant', but also predicted that universe expansion will eventually reverse direction.^[5]

In 2022, Padilla released Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them, which explains the role played by vast and ultra-small numbers in contemporary physics.^[6][7] The book was developed from a series of public lectures delivered by Padilla to raise money for a friend to receive cancer treatment abroad. Topics covered include the theory of Graham's number.^[8]

• University of Nottingham home page
• Numberphile videos