"[L]et me refer to my original work. Naturally, if a student has been hammering away ever since 1979... he must have accumulated a lot of litter, much of which, perhaps, should have long since been swept away. But the fates are not to be bribed either by pother or importunity. Out of 1,000 men who are called, one (probably the ratio is much smaller) is chosen to do glorious scientific work. The others? Their lot is failure. They may be equally or even more industrious, they may have equal or even greater brain power—the other 999 exist merely to make the illustrious one in whom they culminate, possible. After that, the world will say to each in words of poetic brevity: "The man has done his duty, the man can go." And they do, pretty quickly, to a gentler lethe, flowing between the banks of amaranth and asphodel. Gentlemen, I am one of the 999 about to be forgotten."
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Physicists from the United StatesMembers of the American Philosophical SocietyBrown University facultyScientists from Cincinnati
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Carl Barus
(February 19, 1856 – September 20, 1935) was an American physicist and the maternal great-uncle of the American novelist Kurt Vonnegut. He was dean of the Brown University Graduate Department from 1903 until his retirement in 1926. In 1905 he became a corresponding member of Britain, a member of the First International Congress of Radiology and Electricity at Brussels, and a member of the Physical Society. Beginning in 1906 he was on the advisory board of physics at the Carnegie Institution in W
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