Interesting anecdotes in the history of physics?

[sbrothy]

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.

Sorry for a little noise (it is a linguistics forum after all though).

I've always loved this story. Apochryphal or not. As Wolfgang Pauli was Austrian, one would assume he expressed it as "nicht einmal falsch".

If you want something said "succint, verbose for terse" German is a good language. They still love their abbreviations (I guess old habits die hard.) They still say "OrPo" and "KriPo" when meaning OrdnungsPolizei and KriminalPolizei, LKV / PKW for LastKraftWagen (truck) and PersonKraftWagen for car (although "auto" may have taken over in daily speech).

They are excused though as they have some extremely long words. :)

More scary though, a lot of political parties still go by weird acronyms with omnious overtones.

Incidentally, I think we Danes are the only people who use the "bil" ([bi:l]) of "automobil(e)" in daily speak, as opposed to all other countries who use "auto". Thanks to some obscure vote in a paper or something. I couldn't find the reason in English.

I'll see if I can dig it up...

EDIT: Found this one, if nothing else:

List of German Abbreviations


EDIT2: Heh, "Stabi": Staatsbibliothek. (State Library) :P

 

[pinball1970]

Sorry for a little noise (it is a linguistics forums afterall though).

I've always loved this story. Apochryphal or not. As Wolfgang Pauli was Austrian, one would assume he expressed it as "nich enmail falsch".

If you want something said "succint, verbose for terse" German is a good language. They still love their abbreviations (I guess old habits die hard.) They still say "OrPo" and "KriPo" when meaning OrdnungsPolizei and KriminalPolizei, LKV / PKW for LastKraftWagen (truck) and PersonKraftWagen for car (although "auto" may have taken over in daily speech).

They are excused though as they have some extremely long words. :)

More scary though, a lot of political parties still go by weird acronyms with omnious overtones.

Incidentally, I think we Danes are the only people who use the "bil" ([bi:l]) of "automobil(e)" in daily speak, as opposed to all other countries who use "auto". Thanks to some obscure vote in a paper or something. I couldn't find the reason in English.

I'll see if I can dig it up...

There are different versions of the Pauli story, in another he was at a conference.

In English we say car, short for motor car. More formally in the police and military they say vehicle, I think in America also.

 

[Hornbein]

That should be nicht einmal falsch.

 

[sbrothy]

That should be nicht einmal falsch.

EDIT: As I admit below: you're completely correct. Typo on my part. Don't know why it was so hard to see! :)

Still, there a some differences between Austrian and German, not to mention Luxembürgich(?)

Hah, "Luxembürgish" alone is a googlewhack!

 

[Hornbein]

No wait... I don't see what I did wrong.....? Though I realize there a some differences between Austrian and German (not to mention Luxembürich(?)) Wasn't that exactly what I wrote?

Hah, "Luxembürgish" alone is almost a googlewhack!

I know basic German and "nich enmail falsch" is not correct. I dunno about Austria.

 

[sbrothy]

I know basic German and "nich enmail falsch" is not correct. I dunno about Austria.

EDIT: So yes, this must have come off as obnoxiously arrogant and incredibly bezzerwisserisch. Again, I apologize.

I think the whole point of the anecdote is about creative use of language. I wouldn't be surprised if some boundaries were pressed.

And yeah, I'm from Denmark. We had 4 German channels and one Danish. Guess where I learned my German. :) I was, in fact, 21 before it dawned upon me that "Sesam Straβe" wasn't German at all but in fact English and called "Sesamy Street". In my defense we didn't have many channels those days.

 

[sbrothy]

That should be nicht einmal falsch.

Oh, sorry! Now is saw what I did wrong! My apologies. I'll correct it immediately!

EDIT: All the way up. *sigh*.

EDIT2: Alright, that was a lot of noise for not very much information. I vote we leave this, if for nothing else my verbose, heartfelt and beautiful apologizes to @Hornbein

Sorry man.

 

[pines-demon]

Very short : Upon losing the use of his right eye, Leonhard Euler said

Now I will have less distraction.

_{I know I have said to avoid anecdotes of mathematicians but Euler did too much for physics to be excluded.}

 

[pines-demon]

Now I will have less distraction.

More context:

Highly respected at the Academy and adored at Catherine [the Great]’s court, Euler now held a position of great prestige and influence that had been denied him in Berlin for so long. He in fact was the spiritual if not the appointed leader of the Academy.

Unfortunately, however, there were setbacks on a personal level. A cataract in his left (good) eye, which already began to bother him in Berlin, now became increasingly worse, so that in 1771 Euler decided to undergo an operation. The operation, though successful, led to the formation of an abscess, which soon destroyed Euler’s vision almost entirely. Later in the same year, his wooden house burned down during the great fire of St. Petersburg, and the almost blind Euler escaped from being burnt alive only by a heroic rescue by Peter Grimm, a workman from Basel. To ease the misfortune, the Empress granted funds to build a new house (the one shown in Figure [from another source] with the top floor having been added later). Another heavy blow hit Euler in 1773 when his wife Katharina Gsell died. Euler remarried three years later so as not to be dependent on his children.

In spite of all these fateful events, Euler remained mathematically as active as ever, if not more so. Indeed, about half of his scientific output was published, or originated, during this second St. Petersburg period, among which his two “bestsellers,” Letters to a German Princess and Algebra.

The joke payed, he improved his productivity.

From: W. Gautschi, "Leonhard Euler: His Life, the Man, and His Works", SIAM Review, 50 (2008), doi: 10.1137/070702710

 

[pines-demon]

PARENTAL PROHIBITIONS

Curiosity driven geometry

Étienne Pascal was a French tax officer and father of the famous mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal. He decided that he will teach his son himself. He wanted Blaise to learn many languages first so Étienne decided to hide all his mathematics books from the house until Blaise reached adulthood (15). This prohibition sparked in Blaise so much curiosity in math, that by the age of twelve he was already proving theorems of geometry by himself. Étienne realizing that his son was good at it, relented a gave Blaise a copy of Euclid's Elements.

Law studies leads to major law

John Powell Hubble was an American insurance executive, father of the famous astronomer Edwin Hubble. He promoted his son to excel in many domains, Edwin quickly became a great athlete (winning track and field competition and leading the University of Chicago basketball team), good with languages and good with math and sciences. After Edwin earned a bachalor of sciences from University of Chigago, John was very sick and made his son promise to not waste time and go into law school. Edwin wanted to go into astronomy, but did not want to challenge his father and went into Oxford to study jurisprudence. During his studies, Edwin had to return to take care of his family while his father was sick. After John's death, Edwin decided to go to work at University of Chicago's observatory and pursue his studies in astronomy. Edwin's law making eventually made it into Hubble's law.

From plumber to Einstein

Leonard Susskind was born into a poor family in Bronx, NY. His father was a plumber, so he had to work as a plumber too. His father wanted him to become a technician so that they could also offer heating services. Susskind had very bad grades, except in math. He took a contest and was accepted into City College of New York as an engineer. While studying he still had to work with his father. However during this time, teachers discovered how good he was in theoretical sciences and encouraged him to go into physics. At some point he had to tell his father that he was going to be a physicist, his father replied

Hell, no, you ain’t going to work in a drugstore.

Susskind replied,

No, not a pharmacist, a physicist.

His father asked

What’s a physicist?

Susskind replied

Like Einstein.

Susskind mother started to worry and said

We’re going to be broke.

His husband looked at her with a plumbing pipe in his hand and said,

Shut up—he’s going to be Einstein.

No more questions asked after that.

 

[pines-demon]

THE ESSENTIALS

We were missing the founding anecdotes of physics, here are three classics:

Bath epiphany

Roman architect Vitruvius (1 century BC) records a famous story about Archimedes (two centuries before) in De Architectura (Book IX):

Hiero, after gaining the royal power in Syracuse, resolved, as a consequence of his successful exploits, to place in a certain temple a golden crown which he had vowed to the immortal gods. He contracted for its making at a fixed price, and weighed out a precise amount of gold to the contractor. At the appointed time the latter delivered to the king's satisfaction an exquisitely finished piece of handiwork, and it appeared that in weight the crown corresponded precisely to what the gold had weighed.

But afterwards a charge was made that gold had been abstracted and an equivalent weight of silver had been added in the manufacture of the crown. Hiero, thinking it an outrage that he had been tricked, and yet not knowing how to detect the theft, requested Archimedes to consider the matter. The latter, while the case was still on his mind, happened to go to the bath, and on getting into a tub observed that the more his body sank into it the more water ran out over the tub. As this pointed out the way to explain the case in question, without a moment's delay, and transported with joy, he jumped out of the tub and rushed home naked, crying with a loud voice that he had found what he was seeking; for as he ran he shouted repeatedly in Greek, "Ευρηκα, ευρηκα." ["Eureka eureka!"]

Taking this as the beginning of his discovery, it is said that he made two masses of the same weight as the crown, one of gold and the other of silver. After making them, he filled a large vessel with water to the very brim, and dropped the mass of silver into it. As much water ran out as was equal in bulk to that of the silver sunk in the vessel. Then, taking out the mass, he poured back the lost quantity of water, using a pint measure, until it was level with the brim as it had been before. Thus he found the weight of silver corresponding to a definite quantity of water.

After this experiment, he likewise dropped the mass of gold into the full vessel and, on taking it out and measuring as before, found that not so much water was lost, but a smaller quantity: namely, as much less as a mass of gold lacks in bulk compared to a mass of silver of the same weight. Finally, filling the vessel again and dropping the crown itself into the same quantity of water, he found that more water ran over for the crown than for the mass of gold of the same weight. Hence, reasoning from the fact that more water was lost in the case of the crown than in that of the mass, he detected the mixing of silver with the gold, and made the theft of the contractor perfectly clear

Validity of the story: unlikely. First, where did Vetruvius got that story from? Secondly, it has been questioned if such an experiment could have been done in antiquity. Archimedes would have needed to be very precise in his measurements. Galileo himself who invented the hydrostatic balance during the Renaissance based on Vitruvius account was very skeptical of the story. Which leads me to the next story.

Leaning tower experiment

Vicenzo Viviani student and biographer of Galileo records a fascinating experiment to prove the law of falling bodies. Galileo wanted to test the Aristotelian idea that heavier bodies fall faster than lighter bodies. He went to the leaning Tower of Pisa and carried an experiment throwing two spheres of different materials, one heavier than the other.

Viviani writes in 1642 after the dead of Galileo:

And then, to the dismay of all philosophers, very many conclusions of Aristotle were by him (Galileo) proved to be false through experiments and solid demonstrations and discourses, conclusions which up to then had been held for absolutely clear and indubitable; as, among others, that the velocity of moving bodies of the same material, of unequal weight, moving through the same medium, did not mutually preserve the proportion of their weight as taught by Aristotle, but all moved at the same speed; demonstrating this with repeated experiments from the height of the Campanile of Pisa in the presence of the other teachers and philosophers, and the whole assembly of students; and also that the velocity of a given body through different media kept the reciprocal proportion of the resistance or density of the said media, a point which he deduced from the very obvious absurdities which would (otherwise) follow as a consequence and against reason.

Validity: probably not by Galileo. There are several arguments against the validity of the story (1) Galileo did no write about it (2) none of the other students of Galileo that would have helped him wrote about it (3) being a public demo, why nobody wrote about it? (4) the balls would have taken 3 seconds to fall, would that be enough to see a difference? Actually this did not stop another student of Galileo, Vincenzo Reinieri to try the experiment in 1641 (one year before the death of Galileo) throwing a cannonball and a wooden ball, but got an inconclusive answer (he clearly did not understand Galileo's work, he discussed with Galileo about it but there is missing correspondence).

Apple blown

For the last one we have more records. It is about the famous Isaac Newton and his law of universal gravitation. The retelling from 1835 goes like this

We owe the great discovery of Newton to a very trivial accident. When a student at Cambridge, he had retired during the time of the plague into the country. As he was reading under an apple tree, one of the fruit fell, and struck him a smart blow on the head. When he observed the smallness of the apple, he was surprised at the force of the stroke. This led him to consider the accelerating motion of falling bodies; from whence he deduced the principle of gravity, and laid the foundation of his philosophy

Validity: embellished. The anecdote above is a later retellling that can be found even in textbooks. What did people close to Newton heard?

William Stukeley, well acquainted with Newton describes the situation more closely (1726 a year after the event) from his memoirs:

we went into the garden, & drank thea under the shade of some apple trees, only he, & myself. amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind.

why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground,

thought he to himself: occasion'd by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a comtemplative mood:

why should it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earths centre? assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. there must be a drawing power in matter. & the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earths center, not in any side of the earth. therefore dos this apple fall perpendicularly, or toward the center. if matter thus draws matter; it must be in proportion of its quantity. therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple.

No blow to his head, and mostly thought apples.

References:

• Ed. by R. L. Numbers and K. Kampourakis, Newton's apple and other myths about science, Harvard University Press
• Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, (Gutenberg Project link)
• V. V. Raman, Where credit is due The Leaning Tower of Pisa Experiment, Phys. Teach. 10, 196–198 (1972)
• Isaac D'Israeli, Curiosities of Literature (1835)
• William Stukeley, Memoirs of Isaac Newton's life (1752) [Archived from The Newton Project]

 

[pines-demon]

On the physicist's death changed war policy

At the end of the 19th century, Mendeleev had predicted that chemical elements could be ordered according to his table. The Periodic Table was a success and predicted new elements. However the table was arranged by atomic weight. This was a problem because isotopes have different weights.

At the beginning of the 20th century, atomic physics was being developed and Rutherford was carrying his experiments to understand the atom(ic nucleus). Before just Rutherford could publish, Antonious van der Broek, an economist not at all trained in physics published the idea that the position of the elements in the table had something to do with the charge.

Is with this idea that the protagonist of today anecdote appears. A British physicist, Henry Moseley, set out to study matter using X-rays, finding the Moseley's law in 1913 which confirmed the Van der Broek and Rutherford's ideas and associated an atomic number to elements based on frequency. It is said that Moseley was a candidate for the Nobel Prize for this discovery.

However, during World War I, Moseley wanted to join the army. He was told:

We need engineers, not physicists.

He insisted and was admitted. Moseley tragically died in action in 1915 during the famous Gallipolli campaign where the British fought the Ottomans.

Rutherford was deeply shocked, he said that

Moseley was one of the best of the young people I ever had, and his death is a severe loss to science.

and wrote in an article in Nature (Nature 96, 33–34; 1915) :

It is a national tragedy that our military organization at the start was so inelastic as to be unable, with a few exceptions, to utilize the offers of services of our scientific men except as combatants on the firing line. The loss of this young man on the battlefield is striking example of the misuse of scientific talent.

The British government learned the lesson and during World War II military organizations assigned scientists to behind-the-lines work (leading to famous scientific war projects).

Moseley only published 8 papers.

From:

• Miral Dizdaroglu, Henry Moseley: A Patriotic Scientist Who Changed the Periodic Table, NIST (2024)
• Title based on M Wong, Physicist's death changed war policy, Nature 524, 415 (2015)

 

[Frabjous]

A thread with a link to a bunch of Physics Today quantum articles
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/physics-today-article-collection.1067882/#post-7142069

 

[pines-demon]

Ehhh! Maldacena!
I usually do not care much about string theory but this is so odd it had to made it to the list of anecdotes. When the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence (adS/CFT) was found by Juan Maldacena (1997) it was well received by the string theory community. To celebrate, at the Strings '98 conference at Santa Barbara, California; Jeffrey A. Harvey composed and sang with other scientists the following song with the tune of Macarena:

You start with the brane¹
and the brane is BPS²
Then you go near the brane
and the space is adS³
Who knows what it means
I don't I confess
Ehhhh! Maldacena!

Super Yang Mills⁴
With very large $N$.⁵
Gravity on a sphere
flux without end
Who says they're the same
holographic⁶ he contends
Ehhhh! Maldacena!

Black holes used to be
a great mystery
Now we use D-brane
to compute D-entropy⁷
And when D-brane is hot
D-free energy⁸
Ehhhh! Maldacena!

M-theory is finished⁹
Juan has great repute
The black hole we have mastered
QCD we can compute¹⁰
Too bad the glueball spectrum
is still in some dispute¹¹
Ehhhh! Maldacena!​

The New York Times provides some footnotes:

1. One of the latest crazes in superstring theory: a membrane-like object that can come in up to 9 dimensions.
2. Bogomol'nyi–Prasad–Sommerfield (named after three physicists): a specific type of supersymmetric brane (see note 4) important to Dr. Maldacena's conjecture.
3. So far the conjecture only works in a special, saddle-shaped universe called anti-de Sitter space.
4. Yang-Mills is the type of field underlying quantum chromodynamics (or QCD), the theory of the strong force. Dr. Maldacena simplified his calculations by attributing a quality known as supersymmetry to the field.
5. $N$ is the number of ''colors'' in the field theory. In QCD, quarks come in red, green and blue.
6. Maldacena's four-dimensional field theory can be thought of as a holographic projection of a higher-dimensional string theory.
7. Recently, physicists have used things called Dirichlet-branes (see note 1) to verify a prediction made by Dr. Stephen W. Hawking and Dr. Jacob Bekenstein: that a black hole's entropy (a measure of disorder) is proportional to the area of its horizon (the surrounding region from which nothing can escape).
8. One can also use D-branes to compute a thermodynamic quantity called free energy.
9. A bit of sarcasm. No one, including Dr. Maldacena, believes M-theory is anywhere near completion.
10. On a practical level, Dr. Maldacena's method may be used to simplify difficult calculations in quantum chromodynamics (see note 4).
11. Glueballs are particles made entirely from gluons, the carriers of the strong force. The glueball spectrum is the range of masses and spins (and other quantities) that these particles can assume. Whether calculations of the spectrum are reliable is still uncertain. If not, physicists may be dancing another tune at Strings '99 in Potsdam, Germany.

Added extra wikilinks.

Source: G. Johnson, New Dimension in Dance: Thinking Man's Macarena, The New York Times (1998)