A right to understand the universe

In The End of Science (1996) John Horgan relates a conversation he overheard in the course of a meeting of scientists that he was covering as a journalist.

He heard a young British physicist, Neil Turok, talking to David Schramm, of Fermilab and the University of Chicago.

"Turok confided to Schramm that he was so concerned about the intractibility of questions related to dark matter and the distribution of galaxies that he was thinking of quitting cosmology and entering another field. 'Who says we have any right to understand the universe, anyway?' Turok asked plaintively."

Twelve years after Horgan told the world about his question, last year, Turok was one of three winners of the annual TED Prize.

TED stands for "Technology, Entertainment, Design," (though the range has broadened even beyond those three fields since) and the award appears to be given in recognition of one's ability to "emerge from the trenches we dig for a living, and ascend to a 30,000-foot view, where we see, to our astonishment, an intricately interconnected whole."

A TED Prize winner gets to make a wish at the awards ceremony, and the TED Prize website tells me that the "wishes have led to collaborative initiatives with far-reaching impact."

All of which is preface to this: Turok seems to have found a way to resolve his ennui about dark matter and related puzzles. He has turned much of his attention to more earthbound and human oriented matters, though he has kept using his distinctive skill set, the one that presumably led to his presence at that conference and his conversation with Schramm in the first place.

Turok's TED wish? He told the awards ceremony attendees, "My wish is that you help us unlock and nurture scientific talent across Africa, so that within our lifetimes we are celebrating an African Einstein."