Physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed is one of the most compelling figures in science today. He works on some of the most ambitious scientific ideas of our time; he tells childhood stories worthy of an action movie; and he has an enthusiasm so unabashedly geeky that it loops back around the other side and becomes hip. As compelling as Arkani-Hamed is, an article about him does not write itself. In “Visions of Future Physics,” published in Quanta magazine in September 2015, Natalie Wolchover pulls it off.