Re^8: Organizational Culture (Part VII): Science

Very interesting!

World Class physicists are extremely rare on this side of the planet. :( Australia had Mark Oliphant during WW2 and claims Dark Energy discoverer and Nobel Prize winner Brian Schmidt, even though he was born and raised in USA. I'll give the Kiwis the legendary Ernest Rutherford, though his nationality was officially British.

> Britain in contrast centralized most in "Oxbridge"

Some prominent Oxbridge physicists:

Paul Dirac
Roger Penrose
Stephen Hawking (no Nobel prize though!)

Heisenberg developed Matrix mechanics. Schrödinger developed Wave mechanics. Dirac showed they were equivalent. And predicted antimatter. Dirac was quite a character, excruciatingly awkward in social situations. His Cambridge friends defined a unit called a "dirac", one word per hour. I love the way he criticised J. Robert Oppenheimer's interest in poetry: "The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way. The two are incompatible." :)

> you can meet and "get physical" with Olivia Newton-John in your "backyard"! Just realized her mother was born Born

Max Born was her grandfather. Wow, that's a huge surprise!

Schrödinger hated Matrix mechanics so intensely that he spoiled a romantic getaway inventing Wave mechanics. Matrices are rarely used in Physics, so most working physicists gleefully switched to the Schrödinger wave equation. Though it worked well, nobody knew what was actually waving, how to interpret Psi? Schrödinger tried to interpret its modulus squared as a charge density, but was unsuccessful. When it was later successfully interpreted (by Max Born!) as the probability amplitude, Schrödinger was horrified, saying later "I do not like quantum mechanics, and I am sorry I ever had anything to do with it". :)

Comment on Re^8: Organizational Culture (Part VII): Science

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Re^9: Organizational Culture (Part VII): Science by LanX (Saint) on Sep 19, 2021 at 11:25 UTC
> Some prominent Oxbridge physicists: to avoid misunderstandings, I didn't say there aren't. Just that German (speaking) universities had much more diversity and competition in the 19th century, which played well into the 20th. Germany had 47 universities around 1800, whereas Britain only had four. ... had to compete with each other, which produced a much different outcome Update To keep this in context, "Germany" (i.e. Greater Prussia) was only united in 1871 and still was a very federalist construct with multiple kings and dukes. Cheers Rolf _{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :) Wikisyntax for the Monastery}	[reply]
Re^9: Organizational Culture (Part VII): Science by LanX (Saint) on Sep 19, 2021 at 14:52 UTC
> Dirac was quite a character, excruciatingly awkward ... one word per hour. Apparently he was quite vocal in religious matters. According to Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli said once: > Es gibt keinen Gott und Dirac ist sein Prophet. (There is no God and Dirac is his Prophet.) xD There are plenty of funny anecdotes surrounding these blokes, they've spend often time together on conferences or traveling. FWIW The University Göttingen lists Dirac among "their" 40 Nobel laureates because of his frequent visits. (Success is sexy ;) Needless to mention that most leaders of the Manhatten project where former PhD students or assistants of Max Born in Göttingen, including Oppenheimer and Teller. Steven Hawkings is another generation, I read his bestselling book and hope he was a better physicist than author. At least he made it into an episode of Star Trek and he's often referenced in the Big Bang Theory. Cheers Rolf _{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :) Wikisyntax for the Monastery}	[reply]
Re^10: Organizational Culture (Part VII): Science by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop) on Sep 19, 2021 at 22:10 UTC
> Needless to mention that most leaders of the Manhattan project where former PhD students or assistants of Max Born in Göttingen, including Oppenheimer and Teller Yes, I find this era fascinating. So many quirky personalities! Enrico Fermi was another giant of this era, not only a brilliant theoretical and experimental physicist, but, by all accounts, a very kind and warm person (unlike Teller ;-). Sadly, many of them (including Fermi) died far too young of radiation-related illnesses. I remember watching Oppenheimer, an excellent BBC TV series with some great acting performances, especially by Sam Waterson in the lead role. Though it also covered Oppenheimer's (communist) political affiliations, most of the series centres on the antics of a bunch of brilliant European theoretical physicists thrown together to work on the Manhattan Project in the middle of the New Mexico desert. :)	[reply]
Re^11: Organizational Culture (Part VII): Science by LanX (Saint) on Sep 19, 2021 at 22:56 UTC
> I remember watching Oppenheimer, Oh me too, when I was a kid. I probably missed many essentials, need to find it again. I remember the scene tho, where the General (Colonel?) is flabbergasted to find out that Oppenheimer has a Christmas tree in his living room ... xD Cheers Rolf _{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :) Wikisyntax for the Monastery} update the mini-series is available on youtube.	[reply]
Re^12: Organizational Culture (Part VII): Science by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop) on Sep 21, 2021 at 02:00 UTC
Re^13: Organizational Culture (Part VII): Science by LanX (Saint) on Sep 21, 2021 at 11:06 UTC
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