Holy Blood, Holy Grail: Lee Smolin

[arivero]

Lee Smolin's advisor was
Sydney Coleman, whose advisor was
Murray Gell-Mann, whose advisor was
Victor Friedrich Weisskopf, whose advisor was
Max Born, whose advisor was
Carl Runge, whose advisors were
two, Karl Weierstrass (waw Gudermann, waw Gauss)
& Ernst Kummer, whose advisor was
Heinrich Scherk, whose advisors were
two, Heinrich Brandes (waw Lichtenberg (waw Kaestner) & Kaestner)
& Friedrich Bessel, whose advisor was
Carl Gauss, whose advisor was
Johann Pfaff, whose advisor was
Abraham Kaestner, whose advisor was
Christian Hausen, whose advisor was
Johann Wichmannshausen, whose advisor was
Otto Mencke, whose thesis was
Thomae Hobbesii Epicureismum historice delineatum sistit, around 1668.



(Well, The lineage of Mencke covers 27991 descendants, about one third of the total of the http://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/html/search.phtml )

 

[selfAdjoint]

My heavens! That gives me a true feeling for the weight of history! Now what is Smolin's Erdos number? I'll bet it's a low one.

 

[marcus]

and all this time I thought he was just this scrappy kid from Brooklyn

 

[arivero]

Three, via Theodore A. Jacobson and Mark Kac, according mathematical reviews.

In any case the real weight of history falls upon Sommerfeld descendants, because Sommerfeld comes from Felix Klein, then descending both from Mencke and Leibnitz.

See http://www.physcomments.org/wiki/index.php?title=Genealogy::nobel

But who was Otto Mencke? He was a slightly older colleague of Leibnitz, born in 1644 according Google, and both were the founders of the first scientific journal in Germany.

It is very funny that his thesis were about Epicureism, because as we know Epicurus was an advocate of atomism.

 

[arivero]

But well, note the title of the thread... we need a DaVinci plot here around. Let's check out protagonists:

Otto Mencke was born 22 Mars 1644 in Oldenburg. After gimnasium at Bremen, he got Baccalaurat in 1662 and Magister in 1664, both at Leipzig. In 1680 he travels to Holland and England, meeting J. Wallis. Most websources tell that he read in 1668 the above thesis -surely for professorship appointment?- but a single webpage gives, with a question mark, another work for Mencke, 1666: Micropolitiam id est rempublicam in microcosmo conspicuam sistit

For sake of comparison, Leibniz was born 21 July 1646, got baccalaureat in 1663 (title also in atomic theory: disputatio metaphysica de principio individui), magister in 1664, did phi.l habilitation with some math disertations around 1666, and finally got Doctor degree in 1667 -with a thesis in jurisprudence-.

 

[arivero]

Ok, now:

In some financial difficulty, Barrow began his return journey at the end of 1658. On the journey home the ship docked at Venice where it caught fire and all Barrow's possessions were lost. He then headed back through Germany and Holland, arriving in Cambridge in September 1659.

So our friend Mencke was 15 years old when a strange, cultivated, paranoid vagabond, who hath undertake to doe something upon Archimedes which shall awaken all the world, and has barely escaped from being burn in his ship (accidental or not?), crosses Germany.

 

[arivero]

and all this time I thought he was just this scrappy kid from Brooklyn

Er, sure Marcus? Smolin's B.A was at Hampshire College. Perhaps you are thinking on the people from Bronx High School (Cooper, Schwartz, Glashow, Weinbergm Hulse and... yep, Politzer).

 

[marcus]

Er, sure Marcus? Smolin's B.A was at Hampshire College. Perhaps you are thinking on the people from Bronx High School (Cooper, Schwartz, Glashow, Weinbergm Hulse and... yep, Politzer).

I am not thinking about high school. I know people from Bronx High, it's great. I am thinking about a scrappy gradeschool kid from Brooklyn who hasnt even thought about high school. It's just my feeling of where Smolin comes from, it is not a biographical FACT. you can ignore it. Brooklyn is more of a symbol than a place. the kid plays "stickball" in the street. that is sidewalk baseball with a broomstick and a tennis ball

 

[arivero]

a scrappy gradeschool kid from Brooklyn... indeed a good image, Marcus.

 

[marcus]

thanks!
well, I don't know him so i don't know if he has that in him.

I like a lot of your historical imagery too.
It is too bad that Salman Rushdie doesn't know anything about
the quest for knowledge of Gravity
it would make a good novel, compressing time from 1640, say, up to...
well compressing about 4 centuries.
Actually I have never read much Rushdie.
I like Hundred years of solitude by Marquez. It is about Obsession and the intellectual comedy. Old Jose Arcadio trying to take a photograph of God by having the camera go off (with flashpowder) at random moments when Jose Arcadio himself is not in the room (but maybe God is)
What one quickly realizes is that despite all the exciting advances there is no progress.

and the two of us, or at least I may speak for myself, actually believe there is progress? Yes I certainly do. But still one could write about 400 years of obsession with the same people investigating at all times and it could be funny. and maybe true.

you are actually thinking of Barrow traveling thru German at the time of Leibniz and that ancestor: Otto Somebody? Space is relentlessly evasive and one is always too late to witness the passage of time.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Well Neil Stephenson has his trilogy about Hook, Newton and Liebniz (Qicksilver, Confusion, and The System of the World).

Doesn't Mencke have a comet named after him?

 

[Janitor]

...
Max Born, ...

Whose granddaughter is Olivia Newton-John.

 

[arivero]

you are actually thinking of Barrow traveling thru German at the time of Leibniz and that ancestor: Otto Somebody? Space is relentlessly evasive and one is always too late to witness the passage of time.

Well, the fact of the travel in 1559 is confirmed in the bibliographies. After his ship was burnt in Venice, he become paranoid and then preferred to go back by land via Germany and Holand. Risky biographers even suggest he was afraid of being involved in a papist vs. luteran conjure. So if I am not actually thinking of it, at least I have read about it :-)

As for Mencke commet, I can not tell...

Mencke's way to fame was as the first editor of a scientific journal in Germany, the one where Leibnitz articles were published.

 

[arivero]

Well Neil Stephenson has his trilogy about Hook, Newton and Liebniz (Qicksilver, Confusion, and The System of the World).

I read Quicksilver, and I was dissapointed enough to not to buy the next chapters. I expect for a professional book writer to show a imagination better than mine (Marcus example, Cien años de soledad, scores a lot in this way). But at the same time I read Quicksilver, I was also reading some studied on alchemy and some sparce notes on Newton age, and I felt that Neil was not working enough hard from the material he had.

 

[Kalimaa23]

Hehe, funny thing this scientific family tree.
One of my professors (and potential thesis-adviser) did his thesis with someone who had De Broglie as adviser. Talk about lineage! :tongue2:

 

[marcus]

that's nice for you, Dimitri

Well, the fact of the travel in 1559 is confirmed in the bibliographies. After his ship was burnt in Venice, he become paranoid and then preferred to go back by land via Germany and Holand...

My dates for Isaac Barrow are 1630-1677
Your date for the travel probably means 1659

 

[arivero]

My dates for Isaac Barrow are 1630-1677
Your date for the travel probably means 1659

Indeed 1659 yes

 

[arivero]

Hehe, funny thing this scientific family tree.
One of my professors (and potential thesis-adviser) did his thesis with someone who had De Broglie as adviser. Talk about lineage! :tongue2:

Dimitri, please invite yourself -and/or your teacher- to my wiki page
http://www.physcomments.org/wiki/index.php?title=Genealogy::nobel
if he has good gossip about de Broglie scientific tree. It is not easy, because he was a man of humanities.

Actually, it seems that nobel prizes (and discoveries!) accumulate in these sci families so it is perhaps a good idea to choose advisors between them. Said that, let me to stress that De Broglie branch is a rebelious one.

EDITED: surprise! Vive la France: http://tel.ccsd.cnrs.fr/documents/archives0/00/00/68/07/

 

[marcus]

Dimitri, please invite yourself -and/or your teacher- to my wiki page
http://www.physcomments.org/wiki/index.php?title=Genealogy::nobel
...

Whoa! I see Martin Bojowald is there!

In the line Sommerfeld/Heisenberg/Kastrup/Bojowald

that is a nice tree, Alejandro.

I like Sommerfeld especially because he found the fine structure constant 1/137.036..
to find such a distinguished pure dimensionless number in nature is no small thing.


I would like to see a book which chronicles the gradual discovery by humans of the basic proportions in nature (like the speed of light and 1/137)

what a surprise to find Bojowald there. He is only 31 this year. who knows?

 

[selfAdjoint]

[quoter=Marcus]what a surprise to find Bojowald there. He is only 31 this year. who knows? [/quote]

What does his age have to do with it? We know he got his Ph.D. because we read his thesis. So if his advisor descends from Encke then so does Martin. Gaudeamus igitur!

 

[marcus]

[quoter=Marcus]what a surprise to find Bojowald there. He is only 31 this year. who knows? [/ q uote]

What does his age have to do with it? We know he got his Ph.D. because we read his thesis. So if his advisor descends from Encke then so does Martin. Gaudeamus igitur!

just to continue comment, I see from the "geneology" chart that
Sommerfeld has 5 Nobel descendents

Max Born, on the other hand, has 4 Nobel descendents

Niels Bohr has 1, Max Planck has zero.

From that generation, the chart only shows four lines. It seems that from that generation the Sommerfeld line and the Max Born line are the most distinguished--------I note that Bojowald is a Sommerfeld descendent and Lee Smolin descends from Born.

The Wiki chart is to some extent about earning the Nobel prize in theoretical physics. It shows that this type of success may run in certain "families" or be associated with lineage.

this, as I see it, is why it might be of interest to know someone's age

BTW I see that Richard Feynman was a descendent of Sommerfeld (to whose family Bojowald belongs).

It looks like Wiki has misspelled "Erlangen" the university where Sommerfeld got his degree.

 

[arivero]

just to continue comment, I see from the "geneology" chart that
Sommerfeld has 5 Nobel descendents
Max Born, on the other hand, has 4 Nobel descendents
Niels Bohr has 1, Max Planck has zero.

the list is not definitively exhaustive, yet.

Using the web and some chemistry genealogies, I have been able to trace back the american branch of I I Rabi. It goes up to a Dutch, de Volder (1643-1709), professor at Leiden. Yep, also involved in the age of calculus.

So now only the Enrico Fermi branch is a "widow branch". Any pointers? Some italian there?

 

[marcus]

the Sydneyfest

We have to honor Sydney Coleman in this thread

Lee Smolin gets his noble lineage by way of Coleman

Lee Smolin's advisor was
Sydney Coleman, whose advisor was
Murray Gell-Mann, whose advisor was
Victor Friedrich Weisskopf, whose advisor was
Max Born, whose advisor was
Carl Runge, whose advisors were
two, Karl Weierstrass (waw Gudermann, waw Gauss)
& Ernst Kummer, whose advisor was
Heinrich Scherk, whose advisors were
two, Heinrich Brandes (waw Lichtenberg (waw Kaestner) & Kaestner)
& Friedrich Bessel, whose advisor was
Carl Gauss, whose advisor was
Johann Pfaff, whose advisor was
Abraham Kaestner, whose advisor was
Christian Hausen, whose advisor was
Johann Wichmannshausen, whose advisor was
Otto Mencke, whose thesis was
Thomae Hobbesii Epicureismum historice delineatum sistit, around 1668.

they just had this big celebration for Coleman called the Sydney fest
where it seemed like nearly everybody at the party was some kind of laureate. Peter Woit was there and reported

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/archives/000171.html