Fritz London about BEC

A funny quote about Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC) from Fritz London's article (Nature, 1938):


About the same time, Erwin Schrödinger explicitly said that BEC will never be realized experimentally, since required temperatures are way too low (I cannot find an exact quote, please tell me if you came across it somewhere!)

However, in 1995 BEC in dilute atomic gases was observed in a number of labs [1, 2, 3]. In 2001 Eric Cornell, Wolfgang Ketterle and Carl Wieman shared a Nobel prize for that.


Take care,

Misha

Naming kids is hard

Last year chemistry Nobel laureate Dudley Herschbach was giving a plenary talk at the Faraday Discussions conference. After the talk he got a question somehow related to angular momentum algebra and started his answer with

"You know, I love angular momentum. I even blame my parents for not naming me 'Angular momentum'!"

What puzzles me a bit is the whole 'naming kids' business. I can understand that guys far from math don't name children using indeces or primes, although 'Anna-double-prime' or 'John-three' looks and sounds great. But if people stick with the name of the mother/father while naming their dauther/son they should use something of that sort. Vladimir-prime Vladimirovich Putin, for instance.

Math is like love

There is a famous quote by R. Drabek:

"Math is like love - a simple idea but it can get complicated."

Does anyone know who this guy Drabek was (or is)? It looks like wiki has no idea about him, I cannot figure out even his first name.

Thanks for collaborating :-)

Misha

All models are wrong

My research deals a lot with different analytic models. Here are two quotes about that, a long one:

"Unfortunately, models are rarely exact. The semblance of sophistication inherent in the model and used to develop parameter estimates frequently masks their deficiencies. Models are only approximate, and their predictions when the parameter estimates are based on analysis of plant performance must be considered as approximate. Validation of the model and the parameter estimates using other operating conditions will reduce the likelihood that the conclusions have significant error."

Perry's Chemical Engineers' Handbook


But there is no need in long quotes since we have a short one that captures everything:

"Essentially all models are wrong, but some are useful."

George Box


Take care,

Misha

Nice quote from the past

"Every attempt to employ mathematical methods in the study of chemical questions must be considered profoundly irrational and contrary to the spirit of chemistry... if mathematical analysis should ever hold a prominent place in chemistry – an aberration which is happily almost impossible – it would occasion a rapid and widespread degeneration of that science."

Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, 1830

Two quotes from Paul Dirac's letters

I certainly loose it if I don't write it up somewhere. These two quotes picked from letters to Manci Balázs, entirely describe Dirac's childhood:

i) 'I did not know of anyone who liked someone else – I thought it did not happen outside novels', 7 March 1936

ii) 'I found it to be the best policy as a child [...] to make my happiness depend only on myself and not on other people', 9 April 1935


Take care,

Misha

In fifty words or less

In his book “Indiscrete thoughts” famous Italian-born American mathematician Gian-Carlo Rota mentions that Stan Ulam was used to say “Whatever is worth saying can be stated in fifty words or less”.

Well, these days he would probably adjust it a bit:

“Whatever is worth saying can be stated in 140 symbols or less”

)

An infinite number of mathematicians...

via

For this day

Echte Männer essen keinen Honig, sie kauen Bienen.

The Monte-Carlo method

I was actually not aware of the fact that the Monte-Carlo method of integration was proposed by Stan Ulam working on Manhattan project at Los Alamos. I also like his aphorism, which I came across of here:

"My late friend Stan Ulam used to remark that his life was sharply divided into two halves. In the first half, he was always the youngest person in the group; in the second half, he was always the oldest. There was no transitional period."

Citations for 07.09.2008

Probably it might be a good idea to make something like bash.org, but for aphorisms and interesting citations... Here there are a few I came across this week:

• Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them. John von Neumann

• There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.  W. Somerset Maugham

•  Teach the Students You Have - not the ones you wish you had. If you get annoyed at students for being insufficiently prepared, or not as smart as you, you'll become a grumpy old fart, just like some of the lousy teachers you had. John Baez

"Work. Finish. Publish."

This was an advice of Michael Faraday to his younger colleague William Crookes. The second statement, "finish", is probably the most difficult part. Here it does not mean "stop collecting the experimental data", or "switch off the computer and do no extra calculations" (...since we have enough for a paper). It is really hard to came up with some closed-form investigation, with an exciting story you have nothing to add to. Most likely, if this is done, the third step, "to publish", needs only a bit of routine work...

Ambitions

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

Mark Twain

There are thousands of his aphorisms here.

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

An exciting article by William Deresiewicz:

"Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers"

via Daniel Lemire's blog

Daniel also picks up a cool phrase: "It’s no coincidence that our current president [Bush], the apotheosis of entitled mediocrity, went to Yale."

"Как бы я осушил научное болото"

Имеюсь в виду, естесственно, не я, а Андрей Казанский, написавший одноименную статью в газету.ру.

Очень понравилась цитата: "старость ученого наступает тогда, когда он начинает считать, что его наука умрет вместе с ним"

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