Everything falls into place. Gravity. Death. Life. Three forces that shape our existence, yet they remain mysteries we are still trying to understand.

Christ lag in Todes Banden is one of Bach’s earliest cantatas. Perhaps even the earliest. He returned to it through his life, revising and reshaping it so much that it’s difficult to tell which parts of the original survive. Unfolding as a series of variations on an Easter chorale by Martin Luther, that would have been so well known to Bach’s congregation, its vivid imagery traces a trajectory of life triumphing over death, .  

We might think gravity is one mystery we’ve solved. But Claudia de Rham has spent her entire life playing with it in her quest to truly understand both its feeling and fundamental nature. She is Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London.