It All Adds Up
Inside Atmane’s quantum physics obsession & discovering how the universe adds up
Frenchman details his biggest interest off the court
March 23, 2026
Andrew Eichenholz/ATP Tour
Terence Atmane studies quantum physics during his free time on the road.
By Andrew Eichenholz
Last year, Terence Atmane was at his parents’ home in the north of France for a visit. Up late one evening thanks to jet lag, the Frenchman was hanging out with their family cats when he turned on a documentary about physics featuring Morgan Freeman on Netflix.
“I just was watching this documentary on the TV, trying to help myself sleep,” Atmane told ATPTour.com. “At the end of the day, it didn’t help me to sleep because after I watched it, for the entire week, I watched everything I could watch about quantum physics.”
The 24-year-old lefty, who is into the fourth round at the Miami Open presented by Itau, enjoys using his free time to learn new things. Many fans know about Atmane’s Pokemon collection and in the future, developing proper cooking skills is on his radar. But currently, quantum physics is front and centre.
“I was starting to be really interested because I never really paid attention before about the world that we’re living in,” Atmane said. “So that’s pretty much how I started to be really interested in just some simple questions like, ‘What is life about at the end of the day and what is everything about? Are there any purposes? Is there anything that I should know before I die?’”
Atmane quickly realised that the more he studies quantum physics, the less he knows about the world around him.
“I started to read a lot of books about it. I also started to read a lot of biographies about physics and some physicists. The more I get to know all this kind of stuff, the more it starts to be really interesting,” Atmane said. “For example, I like to see people like Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, about what they did, why they did this, and what they did to discover and how they discovered all these kinds of things.
“The more I got to know this, the more I felt like I didn’t know anything. So that’s what I was trying to learn, and that’s what I’ve been learning for the past year now, and it’s truly fascinating.”
The No. 53 player in the PIF ATP Rankings landed on fans’ radar last August at the Cincinnati Open, where as the World No. 136 he advanced to the semi-finals with back-to-back Top-10 victories against Taylor Fritz and Holger Rune. After upsetting Rune, Atmane wrote “Fermi’s paradox?!” on the camera lens.
“I started to be really interested in all about paradoxes, questions, physics questions, and that’s how I came out last year in Cincinnati with the Fermi’s Paradox when I just tried to learn [about] this for a couple days before the tournament,” Atmane said. “I thought it was pretty funny to mention it on the camera. And I also did another one in Acapulco, but they didn’t put it online.
“It was something that Albert Einstein found back then. He found that in our universe, time equals space, and I think it was truly fascinating to get to know this kind of small information that doesn’t look super interesting at first, but when you really get into it, it’s thought to be truly fascinating.”
Terence Atmane takes notes on his quantum physics studies in a journal.” style=”width:100%;” src=”https://www.atptour.com/-/media/images/news/2026/03/23/23/01/atmane-quantum-physics-book.jpg”>
A look inside Atmane’s quantum physics journal.
This all started with Atmane watching an hour-and-a-half documentary about the solar system, gravitational forces, why it takes Earth 24 hours to make a full circle and how other planets impact Earth’s trajectory.
“[I thought about] how interesting it is to see that the solar system is not what we think. It’s not just some random planets doing some cycles around each other. It’s a whole movement. It’s a trajectory,” Atmane said. “The Earth is going really fast through space, so that was really interesting to get to know because I didn’t know it. I thought that everything was kind of in the same place, but it’s totally not true, and that’s where I started to be really interested.”
Now the Frenchman, who upset World No. 8 Felix Auger-Aliassime in the Miami third round Monday, travels with a small textbook to learn about quantum physics as well as a journal in which he makes notes and draws diagrams to help further his understanding of the material. Learning how everything in the universe adds up certainly keeps him busy off the court.
“Unfortunately I don’t have time to do a proper course, so I have to learn by myself,” Atmane said. “But I think [quantum physics and cooking] are the two big things that I really want to learn this year. I’ll try to keep this motivation and dedication about everything around me. That will be a very good challenge.”