I am not a research physicist or a mathematician. I trained in biomedical science and I work as a lawyer. What I bring is the discipline of reading primary literature carefully and explaining difficult things precisely. Every page cites its sources. If you find an error, email me and I will correct it and record the correction.
Who I am
My name is Matt Southwell. I hold a Bachelor of Biomedical Science with Honours and a Bachelor of Laws with Honours, both from Monash University, and I work as Senior Legal Counsel in telecommunications, based in Melbourne, Australia.
Those two trainings are the whole point. Biomedical science taught me how to read a scientific paper and follow an argument back to the evidence it actually rests on. Law taught me to state a thing precisely and never claim more than the source supports. Neither makes me an expert in general relativity or number theory. Both make me careful.
What this site is
TLDRscience explains the big ideas of mathematics, physics and biology, each at three depths on the same page. Level 1 is for a curious twelve-year-old. Level 2 is for someone who has just finished school. Level 3 is pitched at an undergraduate. You choose the depth; the words change, the topic does not. Most pages carry an interactive model you can pull apart to see the idea move.
The writing is the point. The aim is not to be first to a search result but to be the clearest explanation you find, and an honest one about where a field is settled and where it is not.
What I can and cannot offer
I can offer a careful, sourced reading of what the literature says, written for a general reader and checked against the primary work rather than a chain of summaries. I cannot offer original research or the judgement of a specialist who has spent a career inside a field. Where the science is unsettled or contested, I say so on the page rather than smoothing it over. Where I have leaned on a specific paper, it is listed in the Sources section at the foot of that page.
How it is made, and how errors get fixed
The methodology page sets out how topics are chosen, how the three levels are pitched, and which sources I treat as primary. If you spot a mistake, please tell me: I keep a public corrections log and will record what changed and when. You can reach me at corrections@tldrscience.net.