Interesting anecdotes in the history of physics?

[pines-demon]

This anecdote is titled Farmyard Thermodynamics and it is about Walther Nernst (the one that formulated the Third law of thermodynamics):

In 1920, [Nerst] acquired Zibelle, an extensive estate in East Prussia. There were cows, pigs, a pond with carp, and a thousand acres of land, which included fields of cereals and other crops. Nernst pursued his new interest in farming with characteristic single-mindedness.

It is related that on a tour of inspection on a cold winter’s morning he entered the cowshed and was astonished to discover how warm it was. Why was it heated, he asked? The reply came that the heat was generated only by the cows, the result of metabolic activity. Nernst was dumbstruck and immediately resolved to sell his cows and invest instead in carp: a thinking man, he said, cultivates animals that are in thermodynamic equilibrium with their surroundings and does not waste his money in heating the universe. So the old system of ponds on the estate was stocked with carp, which did not noticeably heat the water of their pond.

Source: Gratzer, Walter. (2002). Eurekas and Euphorias: The Oxford Book of Scientific Anecdotes, Oxford University Press.

I think this book will be very appreciated in this thread, I will try to find a copy...

 

[difalcojr]

A little off-track here, but this is a science forum too. I did not know that firedamp was another, older name for methane. Coal mines are definitely the most dangerous underground mines to work because of methane pockets.
However, the high deaths toll that the Wiki source shows below are outrageous! Compare "fewer than 100" deaths annually in U.S. mines to the number in China. China's production in tonnage is not 50 times greater than the U.S. It's about 7-8 times more today in my projection from this video below comparing countries' annual coal outputs which only goes to 2018.



And from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
Coal mining accidents resulted in 5,938 immediate deaths in 2005, and 4746 immediate deaths in 2006 in China alone according to the World Wildlife Fund.[10] Coal mining is the most dangerous occupation in China, the death rate for every 100 tons of coal mined is 100 times that of the death rate in the US and 30 times that achieved in South Africa. Moreover, 600,000 Chinese coal miners, as of 2004, were suffering from Coalworker's pneumoconiosis (known as "black lung") a disease of the lungs caused by long-continued inhalation of coal dust. And the figure increases by 70,000 miners every year in China.[11]

Historically, coal mining has been a very dangerous activity and the list of historical coal mining disasters is a long one. In the US alone, more than 100,000 coal miners were killed in accidents over the past century,[1] with more than 3,200 dying in 1907 alone.[2] In the decades following this peak, an annual death toll of 1,500 miner fatalities occurred every year in the US until approximately the 1970s.[12] Coal mining fatalities in the US between 1990 and 2012 have continued to decline, with fewer than 100 each year.[13]

If these numbers are still the same today, then China does not prioritize human safety well from this analysis.

 

[difalcojr]

Better get this ore car of a thread back on track to historical anecdotes.

The mining textbook original classic, De Re Metallica, by Georgius Agricola, from Germany, written in 1556, was first translated into English by a mining engineer who became President in the U.S. Herbert Hoover served for one term only, 1929-1933. He and his wife, Lou Henry Hoover, both Stanford graduates, translated the Latin text in 1912. His lifetime was (1874-1964), so he was already ca. 37-38 when this was published. An engineer who became an unpopular president, as U.S. history shows it, but he and his wife's translation into English was very valuable too, as the history of science shows it.

Great book, lots of illustrations from original German woodcuts. Would make a great coloring book for kids. https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Se...allica&sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-topnav-_-Results

From the sleeve:
The book contains an unprecedented wealth of material on alluvial mining, alchemy, silver refining, smelting, surveying, timbering, nitric acid making, and hundreds of other phases of the medieval are of metallurgy.

Germans are known to be great miners, historically.

 

[pines-demon]

Today I bring wagers from the (recent) history of physics:

Thorne–Hawking bet (1974-c. 1988):
Contestants: Stephen Hawking vs. Kip Thorne
About: Cygnus X-1 is a black hole (Hawking against)
Prize: four year subscription to Private Eye for Harking, a year of Penthouse for Thorne.
Winner: Thorne

Thorne–Hawking–Preskill information bet (1997-2004):
Contestants: Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne, vs. John Preskill
About: if information of what enters a black is carried by the Hawking radiation (Thorne and Hawking against)
Prize: an encyclopedia of their choice
Winner: Preskill, (encyclopedia: Total Baseball, The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia)

Gross–Lane supersymmetry (1994–2017?):
Contestants: David Gross vs Ken Lane
About: LHC would not see supersymmetry (Gross against)
Prize: expensive dinner at Girardet’s, a three-star Swiss restaurant
Winner: Lane

Hawking–Kane on the Higgs (2002–2012):
Contestants: Stephen Hawking vs Gordon L. Kane
About: existence of the Higgs boson (Hawking against)
Prize: $100
Winner: Kane

Lisi–Wilczek Superparticle Bet (PF article) (2008-2015)
Contestants: Garrett Lisi vs Franck Wilczek
About: LHC will find supersymmetric particles (Lisi Against)
Prize: $1000
Winner: Lisi

Wager on supersymmetry (2000–2010):
Contestants: 20 physicists, (Nima Arkani-Hamed said no, I cannot find a detailed list)
About: "Do you think that in ten years from now, that is by noon C.E.T. June 21st, 2010, at least one supersymmetric partner of any of the known particles will be experimentally discovered?"
Prize: cognac bottles (price no less than $100)
Winner: Those who signed no.

Kaku–Horgan on Nobel on string theory (2002–2020):
Contestants: Michio Kaku vs journalist John Horgan
About: "no one will have won a Nobel Prize for work on superstring theory, membrane theory, or some other unified theory describing all the forces of nature” (Kaku against)
Prize: $2000
Winner: Horgan

Please be free to tell us of more wagers like these.

 

[pinball1970]

Today I bring wagers from the (recent) history of physics:

Thorne–Hawking bet (1974-c. 1988):
Contestants: Stephen Hawking vs. Kip Thorne
About: Cygnus X-1 is a black hole (Hawking against)
Prize: four year subscription to Private Eye for Harking, a year of Penthouse for Thorne.
Winner: Thorne

Thorne–Hawking–Preskill information bet (1997-2004):
Contestants: Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne, vs. John Preskill
About: if information of what enters a black is carried by the Hawking radiation (Thorne and Hawking against)
Prize: an encyclopedia of their choice
Winner: Preskill, (encyclopedia: Total Baseball, The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia)

Gross–Lane supersymmetry (1994–2017?):
Contestants: David Gross vs Ken Lane
About: LHC would not see supersymmetry (Gross against)
Prize: expensive dinner at Girardet’s, a three-star Swiss restaurant
Winner: Lane

Hawking–Kane on the Higgs (2002–2012):
Contestants: Stephen Hawking vs Gordon L. Kane
About: existence of the Higgs boson (Hawking against)
Prize: $100
Winner: Kane

Lisi–Wilczek Superparticle Bet (PF article) (2008-2015)
Contestants: Garrett Lisi vs Franck Wilczek
About: LHC will find supersymmetric particles (Lisi Against)
Prize: $1000
Winner: Lisi

Wager on supersymmetry (2000–2010):
Contestants: 20 physicists, (Nima Arkani-Hamed said no, I cannot find a detailed list)
About: "Do you think that in ten years from now, that is by noon C.E.T. June 21st, 2010, at least one supersymmetric partner of any of the known particles will be experimentally discovered?"
Prize: cognac bottles (price no less than $100)
Winner: Those who signed no.

Kaku–Horgan on Nobel on string theory (2002–2020):
Contestants: Michio Kaku vs journalist John Horgan
About: "no one will have won a Nobel Prize for work on superstring theory, membrane theory, or some other unified theory describing all the forces of nature” (Kaku against)
Prize: $2000
Winner: Horgan

Please be free to tell us of more wagers like these.

Hawking v Turok for gravitational waves, he won that one!

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/mar/18/stephen-hawking-gravitational-wave-bet-big-bang

 

[pinball1970]

A flat earth/round earth bet. This one does not read in the spirit of the Hawking, Thorne and Turok good natured mutually respectful wagers.

This got nasty!

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...modern-biology-got-suckered-by-flat-earthers/

 

[pines-demon]

I just found a funny anecdote about Paul Dirac:
During high school, Dirac liked riddles, but he answered them in a way that would eventually lead to the idea of thinking in antimatter. Here is one of the puzzles:

Three fishermen went fishing and camping overnight at a lake. After fishing all day, when evening came, they put the fish in a bucket and, tired, fell asleep in the tent. At midnight, one of the fishermen woke up and, tired of new whole escapade, decided to take one-third of all the fish, leave the tent quietly, and go home. When he counted the fish in the bucket, it turned out that the number of fish was indivisible by 3 . However, when he threw one fish back in the lake, the number was divisible by 3 , he took his one-third and went away. After a while, a second fisherman woke up and did the same, and then the third. The question was, how many fish were in the bucket?

Dirac's answer was:

-2

Source: Piela, L. (2006) Ideas of Quantum Chemistry.
I tried looking for the original source, and sources points out to: Paul Dirac and three fishermen, Kvant journal, No. 8 (1982), Academy of Science of the USSR. [Which I cannot find]
Petkovi, Miodrag. Famous puzzles of great mathematicians, says that it might be Fermi and not Dirac.

 

[Swamp Thing]

"The historical development of Quantum Theory", Mehra & Rechenberg

Background: The idea of spin had been published just a few weeks ago by Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit. Bohr read it but he was unconvinced; then he found Einstein at a party and they talked about it. Then as Bohr wrote in a letter to Ralph Kronig:

Einstein asked the very first moment I saw him what I believed about the spinning electron. Upon my question about the cause of the necessary mutual coupling between the spin axis and the orbital motion, he explained that this coupling was an immediate consequence of the theory of relativity. This remark acted as a complete relivation [sic, revelation] to me, and I have never since faltered in my conviction that we at last were at the end of our sorrows"
(Bohr to Kronig, 26 March 1926)

Credit: YouTube post by the channel Highly Entropic Mind, who wonders : "The problem is that back then they didn't have Dirac's equation, they didn't even have Schrödinger's, so how did Einstein see this? What reasoning led him to conclude this?"

Extracts from viewer replies:

At a time when everyone was grappling with the troubles of treating the electron as if it were actually orbiting the nucleus, it makes sense that Einstein, who loved thinking about this type of thing, would have spent a lot of time thinking about questions like "what does it look like from the electrons point of view?

Einstein's intuition about the connection between relativity and the behavior of electrons, coupled with Bohr's willingness to entertain new ideas, set the stage for further exploration and eventually led to significant advancements in our understanding of quantum mechanics.

 

[Swamp Thing]

Dirac's answer was... -2

Can we think of a scenario where that makes sense?
Maybe instead of a bucket, we have a person who has physical custody of the fish, but isn't enforcing fairness in distribution. He gives fish to anyone who asks, and agrees to owe fish if he has run out. So he owes two fish to the last guy.

 

[pinball1970]

Can we think of a scenario where that makes sense?
Maybe instead of a bucket, we have a person who has physical custody of the fish, but isn't enforcing fairness in distribution. He gives fish to anyone who asks, and agrees to owe fish if he has run out. So he owes two fish to the last guy.

I didn't read it like that first time. What's the actual breakdown?

-2 throws one so -1 which makes -3 which is divisible by 3?

Then what

 

[pines-demon]

I didn't read it like that first time. What's the actual breakdown?

-2 throws one so -1 which makes -3 which is divisible by 3?

Then what

-3, take a third of the fish and leave, there are -2 fish again in the bucket and so on.

Can we think of a scenario where that makes sense?
Maybe instead of a bucket, we have a person who has physical custody of the fish, but isn't enforcing fairness in distribution. He gives fish to anyone who asks, and agrees to owe fish if he has run out. So he owes two fish to the last guy.

Well you can go full Dirac into the analogy. There are two electrons, the first physicist wants a positron. He collides the two electrons against a target to produce a positron-electron pair. He takes the positron, and as now the number of electrons (3) is divisible by three, the first physicist also takes the extra electron.
You may repeat this as many times as you want.

 

[pinball1970]

-3, take a third of the fish and leave, there are -2 fish again in the bucket and so on.

Yeah that's what I thought till I tried to write it out as an operation.

If you class the minus fish as objects rather than a mathematical operation it works.

3, take a third of the fish and leave, there are -2 fish again in the bucket and so on

-2 throw one away gives -3, divide by 3 then take one. One what? A minus fish?
Or take one away from minus 3?

That gives minus 4. -3 -1 = -4 unless you mean take away a minus fish?
-3- -1= -2
Also what is "throw one away" mathematically?
@PeroK

 

[pines-demon]

Yeah that's what I thought till I tried to write it out as an operation.

If you class the minus fish as objects rather than a mathematical operation it works.


-2 throw one away gives -3, divide by 3 then take one. One what? A minus fish?
Or take one away from minus 3?

That gives minus 4. -3 -1 = -4 unless you mean take away a minus fish?
-3- -1= -2
Also what is throw one away mathematically?
@PeroK

I just see this operationally:

• Count the number of fish (-2)
• If the number of fish is not divisible by 3, remove (substract) a positive fish (-3)
• If it is divisible by 3, it can be divided equally in three integer parts (-1,-1,-1)
• Remove that third of the quantity and leave.

Hopefully we will be back with more anecdotes by tomorrow

 

[phinds]

Hopefully we will be back with more anecdotes by tomorrow

Yes ! Enough with the damned fish ! That whole story was fishy anyway.

 

[pinball1970]

Farewell and thanks for all the fish but we must move on.
Agreed.

Source, wiki. 2005, British climate scientist James Annan proposed bets with global warming denialists concerning whether future temperatures will increase. Two Russian solar physicists, Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev, accepted the wager of US$10,000 (equivalent to $14,000 in 2022)[10] that the average global temperature during 2012–2017 would be lower than during 1998–2003.[11] The bet ended in 2017 with a win to Annan. Mashnich and Bashkirtsev did not honour the bet.[12] Previously, Annan first directly challenged Richard Lindzen. Lindzen had been willing to bet that global temperatures would drop over the next 20 years. Annan says that Lindzen wanted odds of 50–1 against falling temperatures. Lindzen, however, says that he asked for 2–1 odds against a temperature rise of over 0.4 °C.[13] Annan and other proponents of global warming state they have challenged other denialists to bets over global warming that were not accepted,[14] including Annan's attempt in 2005 to accept a bet that had been offered by Patrick Michaels in 1998 that temperatures would be cooler after ten years.[15] Annan made a bet in 2011 with Doctor David Whitehouse that the Met Office temperature would set a new annual record by the end of the year. Annan was declared to have lost on January 13, 2012.[16]

 

[pinball1970]

Oops, climate change...

Bet you wish we would have stuck with the fish eh?

 

[pines-demon]

Speaking of global warming eh? Well, let us go back then to the divine judge of thermodynamics: Lord Kelvin.

Kelvin was seriously annoyed when he did not find a piece of chalk for his lectures, specially when he was carrying out a long calculation. After two failed lectures without chalk, he ordered his assistant:

McFarlane, I told you to get plenty of chalk, and you haven't done it. Now have a hundred pieces of chalk on this ledge tomorrow; remember, a hundred pieces; I will count them!

Donald McFarlane, Kelvin's assistant tried to be very careful. He brought several boxes of chalk and set the white sticks on the shelf parallel to each other, separated each by 5 cm. The next day:

Thomson came in, put up his eyeglass, looked at the display, smiled sweetly, and, turning to the applauding students, began his lecture.

Another anecdote, I found is about his method of picking students for examination. Kelvin loved oral examinations, he used to pick up random names from a box and call students for questioning near the end of his lectures. Depending on how they answered, he classified the questioned students of the day into one of three receptacles, depending on how adequate was the answer. Those who had the right answer, had their names added to the receptacle of the "blessed", while the names of those that did very badly were thrown in the receptacle of the "damned". Students referred to the whole thing as the Divina Comedia. For students that were not picked it was a true spectacle (what was he going to ask? would the student survive divine judgment?). The receptacles were relabelled Purgatory, Heaven and Hell respectively to reflect the mood of the show.

McFarlane recorded a story in which a student came to Kelvin office very enthusiastically to discuss a problem of dynamics. At some point, McFarlane went away to look for some notes, he was suspicious coming back as he saw the student very close to the Divina Comedia. After a while, the student left. McFarlane decided to check all the names in the box and could not find the name of the inquiring student. The student must have felt very smart, knowing that he was safe from judgment the next day...
However, McFarlane writes:

I just made a new ticket for him and put it on top of the other tickets, the next day Sir William called him, the very first time.

Source: Lord Kelvin, by Andrew Gray (1908)

 

[pines-demon]

We have told many stories about the wit of von Neumann and Dirac. Here is a quick one about Freeman Dyson.

Jeremy Bernstein was a young student when he joined the the Institute of Advance Studies (Princeton) to work under Marvin (Murph) Goldberger, they were trying to grapple with a problem of electrodynamics, and asked Dyson for help:

It was early in the morning–by Institute standards. Most people worked at night and were not seen until the afternoon. Murph had come-up with a nasty looking integral equation. It doesn't matter much what that is except that it was very nasty. He had divided the terms into two groups; one was labelled $G(x)$, for ‘good of $x$’, and the other was labelled $H(x)$, for ‘horrible of $x$’. We were standing at the blackboard, staring morosely at horrible of $x$, when Dyson came in with his morning cup of coffee. He studied our equation. Murph asked,

Freeman, have you ever seen one like this?

Dyson said 'no', but that he felt particularly strong that morning. He copied down our equation and disappeared. In about twenty minutes he was back with the solution.

It was rediscovered by other people later and bears their names, but I saw what seemed to me, and still seems to me, like an incomprehensible conjuring trick. Over the years I have watched Dyson solve many different kinds of mathematical problems, and I cannot imagine what it must be like to be able to think with that rapidity and clarity in mathematics. Does everyone else appear to be going in slow motion? It is something that surely cannot be taught, at least to me. But I have learned enough mathematics to get pleasure and delight every time I see it happen.

I know now what to call my integrals.

From our previously mentioned ref: Eurekas and euphorias

 

[Swamp Thing]

Mathematician G.H. Hardy had an ongoing feud with God. Once, after spending a summer vacation in Denmark with Harald Bohr, he found he’d have to take a small boat across the tempestuous North Sea to return to England. Before boarding, he sent Bohr a postcard that said “I have proved the Riemann hypothesis. — G.H. Hardy.”

When Bohr excitedly asked about this later, “Oh, that!” Hardy said. “That was just insurance. God would never let me drown if it meant I’d get undue credit.”

 

[pines-demon]

Mathematician G.H. Hardy had an ongoing feud with God. Once, after spending a summer vacation in Denmark with Harald Bohr, he found he’d have to take a small boat across the tempestuous North Sea to return to England. Before boarding, he sent Bohr a postcard that said “I have proved the Riemann hypothesis. — G.H. Hardy.”

When Bohr excitedly asked about this later, “Oh, that!” Hardy said. “That was just insurance. God would never let me drown if it meant I’d get undue credit.”

Going forward (physics not math history)

I love all the math anecdotes, and I sincerely love this one of Hardy. However, it is time that I say here (I have already told others in private) that we should try to keep this thread on topic. It is about anecdotes in the history of physics and not maths. I do not mind if we sometimes we make a reference to a mathematician that worked in physics (like Euler, von Neuman and such), but I would like to have less of the pure mathematicians. I think that if we want to also to have anecdotes about mathematicians, we could create a new thread. I am trying to focus on physics anecdotes because for some reason I find them harder to find with respect to the mathematician anecdotes. I hope everybody is ok with this.

Mentors: If it is not too much effort, I would love to help split the math anecdotes into another thread.

 

[pines-demon]

Mathematician G.H. Hardy had an ongoing feud with God. Once, after spending a summer vacation in Denmark with Harald Bohr, he found he’d have to take a small boat across the tempestuous North Sea to return to England. Before boarding, he sent Bohr a postcard that said “I have proved the Riemann hypothesis. — G.H. Hardy.”

When Bohr excitedly asked about this later, “Oh, that!” Hardy said. “That was just insurance. God would never let me drown if it meant I’d get undue credit.”

Now going back to business but keeping the topic; here I leave you a couple of anecdotes I could find about sailing.

Shubnikov plantinum travel
Lev Shubnikov (from the Shubnikov-de Haas effect and type-II superconductivity, who died in Stalin Great Purge) joined the yacht club in his university years. During this time, some students from chemistry convinced Shubnikov to be the captain of the university's yacht, for a trip to the bay of Finland (without having the proper permit). After a long time passed, they were not coming back and people started talking about shipwreck.

Shubnikov eventually appeared to tell the story. It turns out that the students stoled platinum from the university in order to escape Russia and live abroad. Finland authorities caught them in the shore, but the chemistry students convinced them to deport them to Germany instead. Shubnikov ended up without money in Germany working in industries and photography until he eventually contacted the consulate to allow him to go back.

Dirac vs Tamm
Shubnikov and his wife (Olga Trapeznikova) eventually became physicists and went to the UK to work under De Haas. During this time they met with a lot of scientific celebrities and also sailed from time to time. One day, Trapeznikova recalls a story about Paul Dirac and Igor Tamm during a boat trip:

..the boat we got was huge and unruly. We didn’t sail too far from the shore. That’s when Dirac opened up. He has a nerd’s look but was a source of much trouble. Tamm was rowing and could not make the boat go straight, no matter how hard he tried. Dirac was teasing him relentlessly. Eventually Tamm got angry and pretended to go to sleep. Then the two of them (I was not participating, obviously) started pouring water on poor Tamm and soaked him completely. Things escalated to a wrestling match, and so it went...

Einstein the sailor

Einstein loved yachthing since he was young. One time, his friends even gave him a yacht as a gift called the Tümmler ('porpoise' in English) when he reached 50. According to Einstein, sailing was apparently one of the things that allowed him to forget about the world (even if he only discussed physics during his trips and performed calculations on relativity on the boat).

However, Einstein had two problems with sailing. First he was not very good sailor and he did not know how to swim, nor liked to wear a lifejacket. Biographist Ronald W. Clark said:

on more than one occasion he had to be towed away after his mast fell.

And Leon Watters, friend of Einstein, said:

while we were engaged in an interesting conversation I suddenly cried out ‘Achtung!’ for we were almost upon another boat. He veered away with excellent control and when I remarked what a close call we had had, he started to laugh and sailed directly toward one boat after another, much to my horror; but he always veered off in time and then laughed like a naughty boy

Photo from AP. Description:

Professor Albert Einstein began an Adirondacks vacation, July 3, 1936, with a nine-hour sailing lark that really wound up as a towing operation with a reporter's speed boat on the pulling end. The mathematician is shown leaning against the mast of his boat at Saranac Lake, New York. (AP Photo)

Sources:

• Reminiscence about Shubnikov by Trapeznikova
• Albert Einstein and yachting by some yachting website

 

[phinds]

we should try to keep this thread on topic.

Trying to keep a thread on topic here on PF is like trying to head cats. Good luck with that.

 

[pines-demon]

On Pauli

For unknown reasons we have avoided Wolfgang Pauli for so long (mentioned once?). Here is a (first) rundown of funny quotes by Pauli:

During a seminar by Eugene Guth, Pauli interrupted:

Guth, whatever you know I know

After a lecture by Albert Einstein, Pauli quipped:

You know, what Einstein says is not so stupid!

He made also a deal with Hendrik Casimir:

I will make a bargain with you: don’t comment on my driving and I won’t comment on your physics.

Victor Weisskopf went to work with Pauli as an assistant. During their first encounter, Weisskopf recalls:

Finally, he lifted his head and said,

Who are you?

I answered,

I am Weisskopf. You asked me to be your assistant.

He replied,

Oh, yes. I really wanted Bethe, but he works on solid state theory, which I don’t like, although I started it.

Solid state physics indeed was later rebranded as condensed matter physics because Pauli started calling it the Schmutzphysik (the dirty physics). When Weisskopf showed him his solution to the problem he gave him, Pauli responded:

I should have taken Bethe after all.

When Niels Bohr, Hendrik Kramers and John Slater proposed a failed theory that energy was not conserved during scattering (BKS theory), Pauli called it the Kopenhagener Putsch (Copenhagen coup). The experiments failed to confirm BKS theory and Pauli mocked it, proposing the Bhor Institute to

fly its flag at half mast on the anniversary of the publication of the work of Bohr, Kramers and Slater.

During the Wu experiment proposal to show that parity is not conserved in physics, Pauli tried to bet against Weisskopf:

Mrs. Wu is wasting her time. I would bet you a large sum that parity is conserved.

When the results came in, Pauli said:

I could never let it out that this is possible. I am glad that we did not actually do the bet because I can risk to lose my reputation, but I cannot risk losing my capital.

He also said to this:

I cannot believe God is a weak left-hander.

And who could not forget when Pauli read a paper and said:

This paper isn't right. It is not even wrong!

In 1958, Pauli went sick of cancer and was hospitalized in the well-adequate room 137. It is said that there he said before his death:

Ich weiss viel. Ich weiss zu viel. Ich bin ein Quantengreis. (I know much. I know too much. I am a quantum ancient.)

 

[Swamp Thing]

trying to herd cats. Good luck with that.

A quantum control problem?

https://arxiv.org/pdf/0910.2350.pdf

 

[pines-demon]

On Pauli (part 2)

I found so much material yesterday that this deserves a part 2 (comment if you want some more).

About Rudolf Peierls, Pauli said:

He talks so fast that by the time you understand what he is saying he is already asserting the opposite.

When he postulated the neutrino, Pauli repented:

I have done a terrible thing: I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected.

During a conference, Ehrenfest and Pauli had a small confrontation:

On that occasion Ehrenfest stood a little away from Pauli, looked at him mockingly and said:

Herr Pauli, I like your article better than I like you!

To which Pauli very calmly replied:

That is funny, with me it is just the opposite!

In a letter to George Gamow (see picture) discussing Werner Heisenbergs unification theory, Pauli draws an empty square. The text says:

Comment on Heisenberg's radio advertisement:
"This is to show the world, that I can paint like Titian:"
[Empty square]
Only technical details are missing.
W. Pauli

Alternatively, Pauli sometimes signed as Die Geissel Gottes (the scourge of God).

Pauli suffered from the Pauli effect, a phenomena where experiments stopped working when he was nearby. Otto Stern is said to have barred Pauli from entering his lab. During a visit to the Institute of Advanced Studies, the Princeton cyclotron spontaneously combusted creating a large fire.
Another story by George Gamow, says that:

A mysterious event that did not seem at first to be connected with Pauli's presence once occurred in Professor J. Franck's laboratory in Göttingen. Early one afternoon, without apparent cause, a complicated apparatus for the study of atomic phenomena collapsed. Franck wrote humorously about this to Pauli at his Zürich address and, after some delay, received an answer in an envelope with a Danish stamp. Pauli wrote that he had gone to visit Bohr and at the time of the mishap in Franck's laboratory his train was stopped for a few minutes at the Göttingen railroad station. You may believe this anecdote or not, but there are many other observations concerning the reality of the Pauli Effect!

This even worked on practical pranks, according to Peierls:

At one reception this Pauli effect was to be parodied, and a chandelier had been suspended carefully by a rope which was to be released when Pauli entered, causing the chandelier to crash down. But when Pauli came, the rope became wedged on a pulley and nothing happened—a typical example of the Pauli effect

And on more ordinary objects. During the inauguration of the C.G. Jung Institute of psychology, Jung invited Pauli. During the ceremony a vase fell making a lot of noise. Pauli says in a letter to Jung:

When that amusing "Pauli effect" of the overturned vase occurred, on the occasion of the founding of the Jung Institute, I had the immediate and vivid impression that I should "pour out water inside" (— to use the symbolic language that I have acquired from you).

According to Léon Rosenfeld:

There was this famous Pauli effect, you see. After the lecture by [Walter] Heitler, Pauli went to the podium and started criticizing and pacing to and fro; he said,

at large distances we know that it’s not varied because there we have the van der Waals forces; at short distances we know it’s not varied because there we have the constant forces; why should there be a region in which it has any sense?

At that time Pauli was going towards Heitler who was sitting in a chair on one extremity of the podium, and, as Pauli went towards him with that question, the back of the chair collapsed and Heitler fell over backwards.

In another account:

He was now quite near to Heitler. The latter leaned back suddenly, the back of the chair gave way with a great crash, and poor Heitler tumbled backwards (luckily without hurting himself too much).

Casimir adds to the chair story:

Gamow was the first to shout: ‘Pauli effect’. Sometimes I wonder whether Gamow (a noted farceur) had not done something to the chair beforehand.

 

[Hornbein]

That big Chinese vase was full of water, creating a flood. It inspired Pauli to write an article about Fludd, a natural philosopher.

 

[pines-demon]

On Pauli (part 3 the dirty left over crumbles)

Pauli really did not like solid state physics. As said in part 1 he called the Schmutzphysik (dirty physics). In the 1960s many departments changed to condensed matter. In this field Pauli has also more sayings about it.

On semiconductors:

one shouldn't work on semiconductors, that is a filthy mess; who knows whether any semiconductors exist

On the problem of surfaces:

God made the bulk; the surface was invented by the devil.

Pauli commenting on the PhD work of Rudolf Peierls on thermal conduction in solids:

the residual resistivity is caused by dirt and one should not dwell in dirt...
[...] you should find more sensible questions to be answered; I find that you recently have concerned yourself too much with small issues

Wolfgang Paul who invented the ion trap met Pauli, Paul said:

Finally I meet my imaginary part!

Actually, Pauli interest in physics as a student started with the anomalous Zeeman effect:

How can one look happy when he is thinking about the anomalous Zeeman effect?

which he explained by postulating the spin.

Let us end this series on Pauli with a quote of his:

The best that most of us can hope to achieve in physics is simply to misunderstand at a deeper level

Picture: Pauli (left), Ehrenfest (right) on a boat (added per recent boat anecdotes).

 

[Swamp Thing]

"who knows whether any semiconductors exist"

What did he actually mean? Did he think that the explanation for crystal detectors, for example, would turn out to be something uninteresting or trivial? Did he feel that studying the role of "contaminants" in increasing the conductivity of pure materials could never be anything but trial and error, unworthy of real physicists?

 

[pines-demon]

What did he actually mean? Did he think that the explanation for crystal detectors, for example, would turn out to be something uninteresting or trivial? Did he feel that studying the role of "contaminants" in increasing the conductivity of pure materials could never be anything but trial and error, unworthy of real physicists?

Yes I guess it lacked precise predictions. Even with a full band theory of conduction (invented about the same year, the quote is from 1931 in a letter to Peierls) the predictions had to account for a large range of values for conductivities (by several orders of magnitude). Pauli might be joking or being overly theatrical but I guess that at that time anybody was able to make some erroneous theory and still be considered to be in the ballpark, so it was not a worthy pursuit (at least for theoreticians).

As said before Pauli did not like solid state physics for being messy and as shown in the other quotes, he did not like much what Peierls was doing (Pauli was against much of Peierls' PhD thesis). It is good that Peierls did not listen to Pauli, thanks to him we understand much more about holes and doping.


Edit: reading Early history of the physics and chemistry of semiconductors-from doubts to fact in a hundred years by Busch, it seems that it was the general feeling. It also says that a year before Pauli's quote, Bernhard Gudden made a review claiming something along the same lines:

In 1930 Gudden published a new review article on the electrical conduction of semiconductors [39]. In his opinion no chemically pure substance would ever be a semiconductor. The observed properties were believed to be due entirely to impurities, and he came to the conclusion, that

semiconductors in the scientific sense of the word - if they exist at all -are by far scarcer than originally assumed.

[39]: Gudden's paper can be found here (in German)

 

[Swamp Thing]

S. Chandrashekhar's colleagues had a nickname for him: S. Candlestickmaker.

One John Sykes published a spoof article purportedly published by Candlestickmaker in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society.
https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1972QJRAS..13...63C

On the imperturbability of elevator operators: LVII

S. Candlestickmaker
(a) Institute for Studied Advances
Old Cardigan, Wales
(b) Institute for Physical Theory
Nipomo, CA 93444

Abstract:
In this paper the theory of elevator operators is completed to the extent that is needed in the elementary theory of Field’s. It is shown that the matrix of an elevator operator cannot be inverted, no matter how rapid the elevation. An explicit solution is obtained for the case when the occupation number is zero. In an earlier paper (1) the simultaneous effect of a magnetic field, an electric field, a Marshall field, rotation, revolution, translation, and retranslation on the equanimity of an elevator operator has been considered. However, the discussion in that paper was limited to the case when incivility sets in as a stationary pattern of dejection; the alternative possibility of overcivility was not considered. The latter possibility is known to occur when a Marshall field alone is present; and its occurrence has been experimentally demonstrated by Shopwalker and Salesperson (2) in complete disagreement with the theoretical predictions (3). The possibility of overcivility when no Marshall field is present has also been investigated (2); and it has been shown that with substances such as U and I it cannot occur. It is therefore a matter of some importance that the manner of the onset of incivility be determined. This paper is devoted to this problem.
The research reported in the paper has in part been suppressed by the Office of Naval Research under Contract A1-tum-OU812 with the Institute for Studied Advances.

John Sykes recalled later:

 

[pines-demon]

S. Chandrashekhar's colleagues had a nickname for him: S. Candlestickmaker.

I did not expect this from Chandra, it is very funny.

You inspired me to do the difficult search of looking for nicknames. I could not find another thread with physicists nicknames, and Google is very bad when you type "nicknames". I had to go into many sources, here we go:

• Hans Bethe: the Battleship (I think wartime nickname during Manhattan Project)
• Niels Bohr: Uncle Nick (wartime nickname during Manhattan Project), the Big Oracle (in comparison with professor Fritz Reiche who was called the little oracle)
• Jean Le Rond d'Alembert: Chancellier du Parnasse (Chancellor of Parnassus, by poet Nicolas Gilbert)
• Paul Dirac: Tiny (by his family and wife)
• Paul Ehrenfest: Red Professor (by students, due to his politics), Faust (in analogy to Pauli's Mephistopheles, see below). The neutrino is "Gretchen".
• Albert Einstein: der Depperte (the dopey one, by his family).
• Richard Feynman: Great Explainer, GLY (glycine, by the RNA Tie Club), Mosquito Boat (wartime nickname during Manhattan Project)
• James Franck: Strudelkopf (hothead, by Bohr)
• Galileo Galilei: the Wrangler (during his studies)
• George Gamow: Molecule inspector (by Hungarian colleagues), ALA (alanine, RNA Tie Club), Joe (a joke related to cowboys, by Bohr)
• Maria Goeppert-Meyer: Onion Madonna
• Stephen Hawking: [Little] Einstein (by school)
• Werner Heisenberg: White Jew (mostly by enemies, for having embraced relativity)
• Igor Kurchatov: the General (by Soviet colleagues)
• Lev Landau: YaB (in correspondence with his Soviet colleagues)
• James Clerk Maxwell: Dafty (at school)
• Lise Meitner: German Madame Curie (by Einstein)
• Emmy Noether: Mother Algebra (by the faculty, her students were often referred as the Noether boys)
• Kamerlingh Onnes: the Gentleman of Absolute Zero
• Wolfgang Pauli: Zweistein (Einstein II, by his students at ETH), Conscience of Physics (by Victor Weisskopf), God's whip (by Ehrenfest), the terrible Pauli, and Mephistopheles (by the Bohr Institute). See also his own signature in #130.
• Ruby Payne-Scott: Tinker-bell (because she called her students with a bell)
• Rudolf Peierls: Páinka (Russian for good child, by Landau)
• Ernest Rutherford: the Crocodile (by Kapitsa). See post #77.
• Leo Szilard: Generaldirektor (by colleagues)
• Madame [Chieng-Shiung] Wu: Gee Gee (given at Berkley).
• Thomas Young: Phenomenon Young
• Anton Zeilinger: Mr. Beam
• Field Club: Kurt Symanzik, Harry Lehmann and Wolfhart Zimmermann (authors of LSZ formula, given by Pauli)
• The Martians: for von Neumman, Teller, Wigner and all the other Hungarians in the Manhattan Project
• Princeton String Quartet: David Gross, Jeffrey Harvey, Emil Martinec, and Ryan Rohm
• The three musketeers: Jonny (George Gamow), Dymus (Dmitri Ivanenko), and Dau (Lev Landau) [by the University of Leningrad]. The group latter added the Abbot (Matvei Bronstein) and multiple others becoming the "Jazz Gang".
• Via Panisperna boys
  • Enrico Fermi was the Pope
  • Franco Rasetti "Cardinal Vicario"
  • Orso Mario Corbino was "Padreterno" (God Almighty)
  • Ettore Majorana was "Il Gran Inquisitore" (The Grand Inquisitor)
  • Emilio Segrè was "Basilisco" (Basilisk).
  • Edoardo Amaldi was "Fanciulletto" (young boy)
  • BrunoPontecorvo was "Cucciolo" (puppy dog)

If source not indicated it is probably a name by the press. In the end, I excluded pseudonyms, maybe for another time.

I excluded also evident nicknames like Oppie for Oppenheimer, Dick for Feynman, Jancsi (Johnny) for Von Neumman, or Manya for Marie Curie. I also excluded all the "Father/Mother of [field]" and all the nobility names (Lord Kelvin, Lord Rayleigh, Count Rumford and so on).

 

[Swamp Thing]

That was a more innocent time, when people could poke fun (even very gentle fun) at long, foreign-sounding names.

 

[pines-demon]

I just remembered this video by Leonard Susskind speaking about his friendship with Richard Feynman:


I never found these anecdotes in Feynman's books but are quite joyful and silly. About his father-son relationship:

And one day, we were walking. We were in France, we were in Les Houches. We were up in the mountains, 1976. And Feynman said to me,

Leonardo...

The reason he called me "Leonardo" is because we were in Europe, and he was practicing his French.
And he said,

Leonardo, were you closer to your mother or your father when you were a kid?

I said,

Well, my real hero was my father. He was a working man, had a fifth-grade education. He was a master mechanic, and he taught me how to use tools. He taught me all sorts of things about mechanical things. He even taught me the Pythagorean theorem. He didn't call it the hypotenuse, he called it the "shortcut distance."

And Feynman's eyes just opened up. He went off like a lightbulb. And he said that he had had basically exactly the same relationship with his father. In fact, he had been convinced at one time that to be a good physicist, it was very important to have had that kind of relationship with your father. I apologize for the sexist conversation here, but this is the way it really happened. He said he had been absolutely convinced that this was necessary, a necessary part of the growing up of a young physicist.

Being Dick, he, of course, wanted to check this. He wanted to go out and do an experiment. Well, he did. He went out and did an experiment. He asked all his friends that he thought were good physicists,

Was it your mom or your pop that influenced you?

To a man, they were all men, and to a man, every single one of them said, "My mother." There went that theory, down the trash can of history. But he was very excited that he had finally met somebody who had the same experience with his father as he had with his father. And for some time, he was convinced this was the reason we got along so well. I don't know. Maybe. Who knows?

Maybe it should be Léonard in French, but nevermind...

Also there is the sandwich anecdote :

I remember once he told me a story about a joke the students played on him. I think it was for his birthday. They took him for lunch to a sandwich place in Pasadena. It may still exist; I don't know. Celebrity sandwiches was their thing. You could get a Marilyn Monroe sandwich. You could get a Humphrey Bogart sandwich. The students went there in advance, and arranged that they'd all order Feynman sandwiches. One after another, they came in and ordered Feynman sandwiches.

Feynman loved this story. He told me this story, and he was really happy and laughing. When he finished the story, I said to him,

Dick, you know, I wonder what would be the difference between a Feynman sandwich and a Susskind sandwich.

And without skipping a beat at all, he said,

Well, they'd be about the same. The only difference is a Susskind sandwich would have a lot more ham.

"Ham" as in bad actor. Well, I happened to have been very quick that day, and I said,

Yeah, but a lot less baloney.

The truth of the matter is that a Feynman sandwich had a load of ham, but absolutely no baloney.

There are a couple more anecdotes in the video about discussion between Feynman, Sidney Coleman, Susskind and some philosopher of the mind; and also the anecdotes on how he solved some liquid helium problems and came up with the parton model, using only intuition.

 

[pines-demon]

In the passing of Peter Higgs (1929-2024), here I share Higgs's Nobel interview where we said he was unaware that he had gotten the prize until later that day:


It is worth also looking back to the day the Higgs boson was confirmed, check Pinbal1970's post in the Higgs thread. Surely we will get more and more Higgs-related anecdotes in the coming days.

 

[Swamp Thing]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_de_Hevesy#World_War_II_and_beyond

Prior to the onset of World War II, Max von Laue and James Franck had sent their gold Nobel Prize medals to Denmark to keep them from being confiscated by the Nazis. After the Nazi invasion of Denmark this placed them in danger; it was illegal at the time to send gold out of Germany, and were it discovered that Laue and Franck had done so, they could have faced prosecution. To prevent this, de Hevesy concealed the medals by dissolving them in aqua regia and placing the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. After the war, he returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The Nobel Society then recast the medals using the recovered gold and returned them to the two laureates.