The Twittering Minister

Imagine posting a message on a blog or on the microblogging site Twitter about a government official and having him respond directly back to you within an hour. That's what happened yesterday when writer P D Smith (who reviews for the Guardian and maintains various blogs) posted a "tweet" about Lord Paul Drayson, British Science Minister and race car driver. While Drayson was preparing for a big race in France he saw the tweet, posted back and kept the conversation going. Smith's account of what transpired is posted here: The Man from the Ministry The story has appeared in various news venues including: The Times Online: Science Minister Takes to Twitter

Physics in Philadelphia

[This is an advanced excerpt of an article I will be publishing in June, called Philadelphia: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Physics (to appear in Physics in Perspective).]

Philadelphia's downtown district, called Center City, is laid out in a grid pattern with four squares. Interestingly, three of these squares, Logan, Franklin and Rittenhouse, have some association with physics.

James Logan was secretary to William Penn when Pennsylvania was founded. He was a lover of books and interested in all manner of scholarly topics, including physics. In 1709 Logan purchased a copy of the first edition of Newton’s Principia, and later he also acquired copies of the second and third editions, thus playing a pivotal role in introducing Newton’s work to the colonies. During a trip to London in 1710, Logan witnessed Newton performing an experiment before an audience at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Benjamin Franklin made monumental contributions to the physics of electricity. In 1746, the London merchant and Fellow of the Royal Society Peter Collinson sent Franklin a package containing a glass tube used in electrostatic experiments and an article by the Swiss naturalist Albrecht von Haller describing current knowledge in the field, which sparked Franklin’s interest and led him to embark upon an intensive investigation of electricity. Franklin went on to define the concept of positive and negative charge, to establish that electrical attraction and repulsion of materials can act over a distance and not only by contact, and to enunciate the idea of conservation of charge. The most famous of Franklin’s experiments, however, was his lightning-kite experiment in 1752 in which he proved that lightning consists of an electrical discharge.

David Rittenhouse, as a child, demonstrated great mathematical and scientific aptitude, studying Newton’s Principia in English translation, building mechanical devices, and establishing his reputation as a maker of clocks and instruments on the family farm in Norriton, about twenty miles north of Philadelphia. His primary scientific field of study was astronomy, and in 1767 he built an orrery (solar system model) using Kepler’s laws as a guide. In 1769 he gained recognition as a leading member of the American Philosophical Society by using a refracting telescope he had made to measure the exact time of the transit of Venus. He also constructed the first diffraction grating.

So we see that three of Philadelphia's squares have a connection with physics. The next time you are in Philadelphia and find yourself passing Logan's Square's fountain, watching Franklin Square's carousel, or enjoying the sculpture in Rittenhouse Square you may wish to think about the accomplishments of their namesakes.

The Passing of a Great Historian of Science

I was saddened to read that one of the great historians of science, Martin J. Klein of Yale University, passed away yesterday at the age of 84. He was a very down to earth and generous man, and was gracious in offering advice for one of my books. The first volume (of a planned two volume set) of a biography he wrote about physicist Paul Ehrenfest is a classic. (He never completed the second volume because he it was becoming too depressing for him to dwell on Ehrenfest's tragic final years.) Klein was also instrumental in the Einstein papers project and was the first recipient of the Pais Prize for the History of Physics. I remember him as a kindly, gray-mustached figure who was almost always surrounded by adoring former students.

Essay Contest Results

The results of the "Nature of Time" essay competition have been posted.

There are many luminaries among the winners, including first-place winner Julian Barbour, an independent researcher who lives near Oxford.

If you are interested in reading any of the winning essays, including my own essay "The Garden of Forking Paths" (which I am delighted to announce has won a fourth juried prize) here is a link:

The Nature of Time Essay Competition Results

The Mystery of Time: An Essay Contest

The nature of time is one of the deepest mysteries.  In a new paper, submitted to an essay contest for the Foundational Questions Institute, I offer my own thoughts on this riddle:

The Garden of Forking Paths:  Time as an Expanding Labyrinth

Einstein's Last Assistant

Dr. Bruria Kaufman, Einstein's last research assistant at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, turns 90 years old this year. She has had an extraordinary career, including collaborations with an amazing number of well-known scientists from various fields.

As a young researcher, she worked with Lars Onsager, a famous statistical physicist and Nobel-Prize-winning chemist, and John von Neumann, the Hungarian mathematician who was one of the great geniuses of the 20th century and helped invent the computer. She then spent time working with Einstein during his final days.

At the age of 27, during the 1955 Jubilee (50th anniversary) of relativity in Bern, she had the sad task of delivering Einstein's final paper on unified field theory. Her brilliant mentor had just passed away.

These varied areas of research are impressive in and of themselves. But then she collaborated with and married Zellig Harris, the founder of structural linguistics who advised Noam Chomsky. So she had yet another career as a prominent linguist.

Harris died in 1992, at the age of 82. In 1996, Kaufman married Nobel laureate physicist Willis Lamb, who was 83 at the time. She had known him from years earlier. Lamb was famous for having discovered the quantum phenomenon known as the Lamb shift, one of the earliest indications of virtual particles in the vacuum. They collaborated, later divorced, and Lamb recently died.

It is hard to think of a living scientist who has had a more diverse career than Dr. Kaufman.

Quantum Musicians

A common metaphor in quantum mechanics relates the standing wave vibrations of electrons in atoms to the harmonics of plucked guitar strings. Apparently that image has resonated with some of the offspring of quantum theorists who have chosen musical careers.

A pioneer of this trend was Olivia Newton-John, the English-born Australian musician who captivated audiences in Grease and Xanadu. Her maternal grandfather was none other than one of the principal founders of quantum mechanics, Goettingen physicist Max Born.

In more recent years, the band Eels has attracted a loyal following. Its founder, (aka "Mr. E") is Mark Everett, son of Hugh Everett, developer of the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. He was recently featured in the BBC documentary "Parallel Lives, Parallel Universes."

Albert Baez, an X-ray pioneer, passed away last year. You can guess who his famous daughter, a prominent folksinger, is.

Then there are Brian May, guitarist and songwriter of the classic rock band Queen, and Brian Cox of the UK Synthpop Band D:ream. They have started a kind of reverse trend. May has become an astrophysicist and chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University and Cox has become a physicist at CERN.

Quantum harmonies are more than just a metaphor these days!