History Interesting anecdotes in the history of physics?

[Frabjous]

Some play darts.

According to John Ellis:

"Mary K. [Gaillard], Dimitri [Nanopoulos] and I first got interested in what are now called penguin diagrams while we were studying CP violation in the Standard Model in 1976... The penguin name came in 1977, as follows.
In the spring of 1977, Mike Chanowitz, Mary K and I wrote a paper on GUTs predicting the b quark mass before it was found. When it was found a few weeks later, Mary K, Dimitri, Serge Rudaz and I immediately started working on its phenomenology. That summer, there was a student at CERN, Melissa Franklin who is now an experimentalist at Harvard. One evening, she, I, and Serge went to a pub, and she and I started a game of darts. We made a bet that if I lost I had to put the word penguin into my next paper. She actually left the darts game before the end, and was replaced by Serge, who beat me. Nevertheless, I felt obligated to carry out the conditions of the bet.
For some time, it was not clear to me how to get the word into this b quark paper that we were writing at the time. Then, one evening, after working at CERN, I stopped on my way back to my apartment to visit some friends living in Meyrin where I smoked some illegal substance. Later, when I got back to my apartment and continued working on our paper, I had a sudden flash that the famous diagrams look like penguins. So we put the name into our paper, and the rest, as they say, is history."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_diagram

 

[Swamp Thing]

From "Rutherford: Recollections of the Cambridge Days" by Mark Oliphant...

 

[pines-demon]

Some play darts.

Some play football (soccer):

Before Niels Bohr became a physicist and in fact during his early career, he was also an avid football player, along with his brother Harald. Both Harald and Niels played for the university club Akademik Boldklub in Copenhagen while they were students at the university. At the time Akademik Boldklub was one of the best clubs in Denmark. Niels Bohr played goalkeeper while Harald was a striker. Harald was the more famous as a footballer, joining the club at 16 in 1903 and playing through his time at the university. Niels only played for Akademik Boldklub in the 1905 season, after which he further pursued his interest in physics. During one match against German club Mittweda, Niels did not react to a long shot and missed an easy save. Later he admitted that he was distracted by thoughts about a math problem and lost focus on the match.

Source: Charlie Wilcox

Note that Harald was also a professional mathematician, and went to the olympics to win a silver medal with the national team.

 

[pinball1970]

A famous one.

(Rudolf Peierls documents)

“A friend showed Pauli the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli's views. Pauli remarked sadly, 'It is not even wrong'



Peter Woit used the phrase for one of his books.

 

[pinball1970]

This was very prophetic.

“Perhaps one day we will have machines that can cope with approximate task descriptions, but in the meantime, we have to be very prissy about how we tell computers to do things.”

Richard P. Feynman

 

[Hornbein]

This was very prophetic.

“Perhaps one day we will have machines that can cope with approximate task descriptions, but in the meantime, we have to be very prissy about how we tell computers to do things.”

Richard P. Feynman

Feynman invented the concept of quantum computing.

And yes, I am very impressed with ChatGPT's ability to understand natural English. It all comes from billions spent on spy software, I expect.

 

[pinball1970]

Feynman invented the concept of quantum computing.

And yes, I am very impressed with ChatGPT's ability to understand natural English. It all comes from billions spent on spy software, I expect.

My point was things like GTPchat can churn out garbage and frame it as correct.
On the science stuff.
At least for now.

 

[pines-demon]

@Frabjous just shared an interesting anecdote of Schwinger about the joyful activities he was carrying in his teen years: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/what-were-you-doing-at-16.1060202/

 

[pines-demon]

I just found out that Max Planck confronted Hitler circa 1933: Max Planck and Adolf Hitler James C. O'Flaherty

Early in the discussion, however, Planck began his intercession on behalf of [Fritz] Haber, even going so far as to say that without the latter's chemical process for obtaining ammonia from the nitrogen of the air "the previous war would have been lost from the beginning." To this remark Hitler retorted: "I have nothing at all against the Jews themselves. But the Jews are all Communists, and these are my enemies - is against these that I am fighting." Planck replied with the observation that, nevertheless, there were different kinds of Jews, some valuable to humanity, some not, but that among the first group were old families "of the best German culture." He then added that, after all, one had to
make distinctions. "That is not correct," fumed Hitler; "Jew is Jew; all Jews stick together like burrs. Where there is one Jew, immediately other Jews of all kinds collect. It was up to the Jews themselves to draw a dividing-line between the different kinds. But they have not done that, and therefore I must proceed uniformly against all Jews." Planck replied that it would be frankly a "self-mutilation" for the Germans to force valuable Jews to emigrate, thus losing their much needed scientific services to other countries.


But Hitler was no longer interested in even a semblance of rational discussion, for at this point he broke out into a torrent of generalities, and finally concluded with the revealing remarks : "People say that I am neurotic at times. That is a slander. I have nerves like steel." With that, says Planck, Hitler slapped himself vigorously on the knee, began to talk faster and faster, and finally worked himself up into such a rage that there was nothing left for Planck to do but to be silent and to withdraw.

 

[pinball1970]

Planck replied that it would be frankly a "self-mutilation" for the Germans to force valuable Jews to emigrate, thus losing their much needed scientific services to other countries.

Reminded me of this.

In 1934, David Hilbert, by then a grand old man of German mathematics, was dining with Bernhard Rust, the Nazi minister of education. Rust asked, “How is mathematics at Göttingen, now that it is free from the Jewish influence?” Hilbert replied, “There is no mathematics in Göttingen anymore."

 

[difalcojr]

That may have been all or part of this. From Eugene Hecht, "Physics", he writes:

"Amalie (Emmy) Noether (1882-1935) was an outstanding mathematician who did most of her work in abstract algebra. After a long struggle she won the right as a woman to lecture, without pay, at Gottingen University in Germany. It was in 1918 that she presented the results of an analysis dealing with symmetry that became a guiding principle for contemporary physics. Noether taught at Gottingen until 1933 when she came to the United States after the Nazis learned that she was Jewish and expelled her from Germany."

 

[pines-demon]

That may have been all or part of this. From Eugene Hecht, "Physics", he writes:

"Amalie (Emmy) Noether (1882-1935) was an outstanding mathematician who did most of her work in abstract algebra. After a long struggle she won the right as a woman to lecture, without pay, at Gottingen University in Germany. It was in 1918 that she presented the results of an analysis dealing with symmetry that became a guiding principle for contemporary physics. Noether taught at Gottingen until 1933 when she came to the United States after the Nazis learned that she was Jewish and expelled her from Germany."

If I remember correctly between his expulsion from university and going to US. She continued to receive and teach students at home.

 

[pines-demon]

When Arthur Compton working in the Manhattan Project found that they have demonstrated chain reaction, he called James B. Conant, chairman of the NDRC saying

– The Italian navigator has landed in the New World.
– How were the natives? (Conant asked.)
– Very friendly.

A play of words between the discovery the New World in 1492 and the date being 1942. The Italian navigator is probably Enrico Fermi.

To celebrate Eugene Wigner brought a bottle of Chianti in a basket, members of the lab signed their name in the basket.

Everything was a secret still. Laura Fermi noticed that his husband Enrico was receiving a lot of congratulations and wanted to know why.
Physicist Leona Woods said to her:

–He has sunk a Japanese admiral!
–You are making fun of me (protested Laura)

When Laura asked her husband:

– Enrico, did you really sink a Japanese admiral?
– Did I? (replied Enrico)
– So you didn't sink a Japanese admiral?
– Didn't I?

He could not say more.

Extra:
Two year laters, after learning about what really happened from an official report Laura adds:

It was not easy reading. I struggled with its technical language and its difficult content until slowly, painfully, I worked my way through it. When I reached the middle of the book, I found the reason for the congratulations Enrico had received at our party. On the afternoon of that day, December 2,1942, the first chain reaction was achieved and the first atomic pile operated successfully, under Enrico’s direction. Young Leona Woods had considered this feat equivalent to the sinking of an admiral’s ship with the admiral inside. The atomic bomb still lay in the womb of the future, and Leona could not foresee Hiroshima.

Source: The First Reactor

 

[Hornbein]

My granddad was head of the machine shop in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He decided to go on a fishing trip in northern Ontario. He went into a rustic bar. There he received a telephone call. He had been followed the whole time.

My uncle Tom served in a submarine. He knew something was up and deduced it was an atomic device.

Richard Nixon scheduled airplane flights in New Guinea. On the ship back to the USA he made a pile playing poker.

After the Hiroshima bomb the Js tortured an American pilot to get more info. He told them that the bomb was based on the electromagnetic force between protons and electrons, and that Tokyo was the next target. They believed him. That may have played a big role in the surrender.

 

[pines-demon]

Feynman's beautiful 1966 letter to his PhD student:

Dear Koichi [Mano],

I was very happy to hear from you, and that you have such a position in the Research Laboratories. Unfortunately your letter made me unhappy for you seem to be truly sad. It seems that the influence of your teacher has been to give you a false idea of what are worthwhile problems. The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. A problem is grand in science if it lies before us unsolved and we see some way for us to make some headway into it. I would advise you to take even simpler, or as you say, humbler, problems until you find some you can really solve easily, no matter how trivial. You will get the pleasure of success, and of helping your fellow man, even if it is only to answer a question in the mind of a colleague less able than you. You must not take away from yourself these pleasures because you have some erroneous idea of what is worthwhile.

You met me at the peak of my career when I seemed to you to be concerned with problems close to the gods. But at the same time I had another Ph.D. Student (Albert Hibbs) whose thesis was on how it is that the winds build up waves blowing over water in the sea. I accepted him as a student because he came to me with the problem he wanted to solve. With you I made a mistake, I gave you the problem instead of letting you find your own; and left you with a wrong idea of what is interesting or pleasant or important to work on (namely those problems you see you may do something about). I am sorry, excuse me. I hope by this letter to correct it a little.

I have worked on innumerable problems that you would call humble, but which I enjoyed and felt very good about because I sometimes could partially succeed. For example, experiments on the coefficient of friction on highly polished surfaces, to try to learn something about how friction worked (failure). Or, how elastic properties of crystals depend on the forces between the atoms in them, or how to make electroplated metal stick to plastic objects (like radio knobs). Or, how neutrons diffuse out of Uranium. Or, the reflection of electromagnetic waves from films coating glass. The development of shock waves in explosions. The design of a neutron counter. Why some elements capture electrons from the L-orbits, but not the K-orbits. General theory of how to fold paper to make a certain type of child’s toy (called flexagons). The energy levels in the light nuclei. The theory of turbulence (I have spent several years on it without success). Plus all the “grander” problems of quantum theory.

No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.

You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself – it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of your naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher’s ideals are.

Best of luck and happiness.

Sincerely,

Richard P. Feynman.

 

[pines-demon]

Newton demise in finance, from last Veritasium video:

Just ask Isaac Newton. In 1720 Newton was 77 years old, and he was rich. He had made a lot of money working as a professor at Cambridge for decades, and he had a side hustle as the Master of the Royal Mint. His net worth was £30,000 the equivalent of $6 million today. Now, to grow his fortune, Newton invested in stocks. One of his big bets was on the South Sea Company. Their business was shipping enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. Business was booming and the share price grew rapidly. By April of 1720, the value of Newton's shares had doubled. So he sold his stock. But the stock price kept going up and by June, Newton bought back in and he kept buying shares even as the price peaked. When the price started to fall, Newton didn't sell. He bought more shares thinking he was buying the dip. But there was no rebound, and ultimately he lost around a third of his wealth. When asked why he didn't see it coming, Newton responded,

I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.

 

[pines-demon]

About Pyotr Kapitsa and the Crocodile.

After graduating, Kapitsa wanted to join the Cavendish lab but Rutherford was not convinced, saying that it would be difficult to accommodate one more scientist between the 30 in the lab. In return Kapitsa, inquired on the accuracy of the experiments carried in the lab. Rutherford responded 2 to 3%. Kapitsa quickly replied that one would "hardly be noticed because [he] would come within the experimental error". Rutherford liked his response and recruited him.

Years later when Kapitsa asked Rutherford why did he accept, Rutherford said ‘I can ’t think why, but I'm very glad that I did.’

During his time with Rutherford, Kapitsa wrote a letter to his mom after his first publishable result:

Today the Crocodile summoned me twice about my manuscript. . . . It will be published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, which is the greatest honour a piece of research can achieve here. . . . Only now have I really entered the Crocodile’s school . . . which is certainly the most advanced school in the world and Rutherford is the greatest physicist and organiser. It is only now that I have felt my strength . Success gives me wings and I am carried away by my work.

The "Crocodile" was Rutherford, in Kapitsa's words:

In Russia the crocodile is the symbol for the father of the family and is also regarded with awe and admiration because it has a stiff neck and cannot turn back. It just goes straight forward with gaping jaws— like science, like Rutherford

After many years, the artist Eric Gill was commissioned by Kapitsa to add a carving of a crocodile to a wall in the façade of the Mond Laboratory in Cambridge. See picture.

 

[pines-demon]

Lord Kelvin vs Darwinism

I am amazed to find this story about how Lord Kelvin entered the debate on the age of the Earth and almost broke Darwin's theory of evolution.

In the 19th century, after much work from study of rocks, geologist James Hutton showed that Earth had to be at least millions up to even hundred millions years old. This pleased Darwinists as the theory of evolution (from 1859) required an amazing large period of time for species to reach the current state.

Then Lord Kelvin decided to enter the game in 1862. After having set the foundations of thermodynamics, Kelvin calculated the age of Earth based on its approximate temperature and composition. He found that Earth could only be 40 millions years old at best. When biologists and geologists contested, he reduced the number to 20 million.

This produced a lot of controversies in biology and geophysics. It took until 1904, when a proper theory of radioactivity was already available, for Rutherford to enter the stage, in a magnificent lecture on his works on the dating of rocks. He describes the lecture as such:

I came into the room which was half-dark and presently spotted Lord Kelvin in the audience, and realised that I was in for trouble at the last part of my speech dealing with the age of the Earth, where my views conflicted with his.

To my relief, Kelvin fell fast asleep, but as I came to the important point, I saw the old bird sit up, open an eye and cock a baleful glance at me.

Then a sudden inspiration came, and I said Lord Kelvin had limited the age of the Earth, provided no new source [of heat] was discovered. That prophetic utterance referred to what we are now considering tonight, radium! Behold! The old boy beamed upon me.

Accustomed to the British sense of diplomacy, Rutherford cleverly argued that it was not Kelvin's fault, but that he had found a "new source of energy" as if Kelvin had predicted radioactivity. It would take until 1956 for geochemist Clair Patterson to figure out that the age of Earth is 4.5 billion years old, enough time for evolution to take its time.

Extra: After Rutherford lecture, Kelvin found a new argument against such a long age of the Earth by calculating the age of the Sun. But then this was also squashed by "Kelvin's predicted" nuclear fusion.

Source: Rutherford's Timebomb (nzherald)

 

[pinball1970]

Oppenheimer wrote a recommendation to the Chairman of the Physics Department at UC Berkeley suggesting he offer a position to Feynman for after the war, :

"He is by all odds the most brilliant young physicist here, and everyone knows this. He is a man of thoroughly engaging character and personality, extremely clear, extremely normal in all respects, and an excellent teacher with a warm feeling for physics in all its aspects. He has the best possible relations both with the theoretical people of whom he is one, and with the experimental people with whom he works in very close harmony.

[...]

I feel that he would be a great strength for our department, tending to tie together its teaching, its research and its experimental and theoretical aspects. I may give you two quotations from men with whom he has worked. Bethe has said that he would rather lose any two other men than Feynman from this present job, and Wigner said, "He is a second Dirac, only this time human."

 

[pinball1970]

"CONDITIONS

1.You will make sure:

a.that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;

b.that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;

c.that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.

2.You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego:

a.my sitting at home with you;

b.my going out or travelling with you.

3.You will obey the following points in your relations with me:

a.you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;

b.you will stop talking to me if I request it;

c.you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.

4.You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior."

Albert Einstein’s list of demands to his wife of 11 years, Mileva Maric. 1914.

 

[pinball1970]

Last one,. Dirac and Feynman overheard at a conference in 1962.

F: I am Feynman.

D: I am Dirac.

(Silence)

F: It must be wonderful to be the discoverer of that equation.

D: That was a long time ago.

(Pause)

D: What are you working on?

F: Mesons.

D: Are you trying to discover an equation for them?

F: It is very hard.

D: One must try.

 

[pines-demon]

"CONDITIONS

1.You will make sure:

a.that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;

b.that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;

c.that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.

2.You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego:

a.my sitting at home with you;

b.my going out or travelling with you.

3.You will obey the following points in your relations with me:

a.you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;

b.you will stop talking to me if I request it;

c.you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.

4.You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior."

Albert Einstein’s list of demands to his wife of 11 years, Mileva Maric. 1914.

I've never read a true historical analysis on this, but in the NatGeo TV miniseries it is depicted as if this was when Einstein wanted to force divorce on Mileva, so he was being extra pricky. Nevertheless not the best way to treat somebody that close.

Extra: he managed to divorce Mileva by promising to transfer her all the monetary reward from the Nobel Prize. Mileva accepted and when the time came, she divorced and went to buy three apartments in Zurich.

 

[Hornbein]

I've never read a true historical analysis on this, but in the NatGeo TV miniseries it is depicted as if this was when Einstein wanted to force divorce on Mileva, so he was being extra pricky. Nevertheless not the best way to treat somebody that close.

Extra: he managed to divorce Mileva by promising to transfer her all the monetary reward from the Nobel Prize. Mileva accepted and when the time came, she divorced and went to buy three apartments in Zurich.

He wrote that letter a few months before their separation. They were divorced five years later. Maybe the law required that period. The Nobel Prize came two years after the divorce.

Subsequently their relations were good. When Einstein visited Zurich he stayed with Mileva, shocking behavior at the time.

 

[Hornbein]

Oppenheimer wrote a recommendation to the Chairman of the Physics Department at UC Berkeley suggesting he offer a position to Feynman for after the war, :

"He is by all odds the most brilliant young physicist here, and everyone knows this. He is a man of thoroughly engaging character and personality, extremely clear, extremely normal in all respects, and an excellent teacher with a warm feeling for physics in all its aspects. He has the best possible relations both with the theoretical people of whom he is one, and with the experimental people with whom he works in very close harmony.

[...]

I feel that he would be a great strength for our department, tending to tie together its teaching, its research and its experimental and theoretical aspects. I may give you two quotations from men with whom he has worked. Bethe has said that he would rather lose any two other men than Feynman from this present job, and Wigner said, "He is a second Dirac, only this time human."

Feynman was in charge of the women manning the adding machines.

 

[pinball1970]

He wrote that letter a few months before their separation. They were divorced five years later. Maybe the law required that period. The Nobel Prize came two years after the divorce.

Subsequently their relations were good. When Einstein visited Zurich he stayed with Mileva, shocking behavior at the time.

In his defense, Einstein was born in 1879, social norms were different.
Also, things always get tetchy at the end of a relationship, even today.

 

[pines-demon]

[Picture Stern holding a cigar on his left hand while performing an experiment, Gerlach holding a cigar on his right hand]

Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach were heavy smokers (see pictures above). When performing their famous Stern-Gerlach experiment that (retrospectively) proved the non-classical nature of the electron spin, they had a bad time at observing the silver atoms that hit the screen, but their addiction saved the day. In the words of Stern:

After venting to release the vacuum, Gerlach removed the detector flange. But he could see no trace of the silver atom beam and handed the flange to me. With Gerlach looking over my shoulder as I peered closely at the plate, we were surprised to see gradually emerge the trace of the beam. . . . Finally we realized what [had happened]. I was then the equivalent of an assistant professor. My salary was too low to afford good cigars, so I smoked bad cigars. These had a lot of sulfur in them, so my breath on the plate turned the silver into silver sulfide, which is jet black, so easily visible. It was like developing a photographic film.

After that they continued to bring cigars to the lab when performing the experiment.

The cigar experiment was reenacted in 2002: Stern and Gerlach: How a Bad Cigar Helped Reorient Atomic Physics

 

[Swamp Thing]

The Discovery of Electron Spin : A Talk By S.A. Goudsmit
https://www.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl/history/spin/goudsmit.html

When the day came I had to tell Uhlenbeck about the Pauli principle - of course using my own quantum numbers - then he said to me: "But don't you see what this implies? It means that there is a fourth degree of freedom for the electron!" ...
...
Then I asked him: "What is a degree of freedom?"
...

And that was it: the spin; thus is was discovered, in that manner. Of course we told Ehrenfest about it and then summer was over and I went again to Amsterdam and various episodes followed. ( .... ) The one thing I remember is that Ehrenfest said to me: "Well, that is a nice idea, though it may be wrong. But you don't yet have a reputation, so you have nothing to lose".

 

[pinball1970]

The physicist Robert Oppenheimer was a polymath, fluent in eight languages and interested in a wide range of interests, including poetry, linguistics and philosophy. As a result, Oppenheimer sometimes had trouble understanding other people's limitations. For instance, in 1931 he asked a University of California Berkeley colleague Leo Nedelsky to prepare a lecture for him, noting that it would be easy because everything was in a book that Oppenheimer gave him. Later on, the colleague came back befuddled because the book was entirely in Dutch. Oppenheimer's response? "But it's such easy Dutch!"

 

[pines-demon]

When going to the US, Enrico Fermi had a rough understanding (if any) of English. During the construction of the Chicago Pile-1, the first nuclear reactor, many measuring devices had whimsical names like Roo, Piglet and Heffalump, as seen directly from Fermi's handwritten measurements: Fermi and Pooh: A strange mix (Physics Today). It turns out that Fermi was trying to get better at English from elementary books like Winnie-the-Pooh.

 

[pinball1970]

My mathematics teacher told us this story.

"Carl Friedrich Gauss was a special mathematician. The story goes that, in school, at the age of 8, he was able to add up the first 100 numbers extremely quickly. I like to think of the teacher as having used this trick many times to keep the class busy for long periods while he took a snooze. He knew that he was in for a long quiet period as the class slaved away. Even if one of them got an answer, the teacher could ask them to check it to take up more time. But he hadn’t bargained on this precocious 8 year old.

In a flash Gauss came out with 5050. But not only could he calculate the sum of the first 100 numbers that quickly, he could also justify the correctness of his answer."

If you do not know the answer he paired them up to get sums of 101 x 50.

I never once thought this story was not true, why make up a story about Gauss being a mathematical genius?
He was a mathematical genius and was probably pretty good at 8!

The below article uses the word "apocryphal." Perhaps @fresh_42 knows?

https://www.theguardian.com/science...e-it-carl-friedrich-gauss-money-saving-expert