Physicists From The United States

"It is a fallacy of human perception to see patterns that aren’t there, and to see order where there is none."

"The fact that self-interest can work against the common good is far-reaching, and no general solution is known."

"The laws of probability are mighty powerful, and they never sleep. If this were more widely understood there’d be a lot less crowing about good luck, and a lot less guilt about bad luck. And we’d have a more civilized world. Some things really do happen by chance, and there is little we can do to change that."

"There may be people who know more than you, and can therefore do a better job of predicting the odds. If you can find one to help you out, do so. But steer clear of phoney prophets, like astrologers, palmists, and readers of crystal balls. (We may have lost some readers on that sentence. Polls continue to show that an appalling and disturbing fraction of Americans still believe in that baloney.)"

"In our modern societies, in the United States and elsewhere, there are simply too many ways to stop things, and too few to keep them going. As recently as forty years ago, in this author’s direct memory, that wasn’t true. (If the Interstate Highway System were to be proposed now, it wouldn’t stand a chance.)"

"It is always a good strategy for two players to join forces (or conspire) against the third, and to settle their own differences when he has been done in. With suitable variations, that lesson applies to games with more and more players, to say nothing, alas, of life."

"Relativistic quantum theory predicts that particles having must come in pairs with opposite charges but identical masses (and identical lifetimes if unstable). One member of the pair is called the particle, the other the antiparticle. Which is called by which name is a matter of history and convenience. It turns out that there are other kinds of "charge" in addition to electric charge; for example, so-called . The necessity of particle-antiparticle paris obtains for charges of any kind. Thus, not only is there an antiproton to the proton, there is an antineutrino to the neutron. The neutron is electrically neutral but it has baryon number charge."

"Enrico Fermi was the great magnet at . His grasp of physics, and both, was awesome. He took his teaching seriously. We’ve all encountered lecturers who cover up trivialities in layers of formalism and obfuscation. Fermi, the other way around, always got to the heart of things even in the most truly complex situations and exposed it with simplicity and clarity. He was almost too lucid. We could follow and marvel at his tricks and shortcuts but we often stumbled when left to our own devices."

"Isidor Rabi, on a leave from in the early 1960s, came to Princeton as a visitor to its history department. On several occasions during that year, when the elevated conversation in the history department got to be too much for him, he would drop into my office to “talk physics.” We had already by that time developed a sage-rookie relationship. “What are you up to these days?” he would begin. But when I started to tell, he would cut me and all other theorists of my generation short as mere scribblers and launch into tales of the golden days of his generation, when giants trod the earth. So they had, I knew. After all, he got started in physics as quantum mechanics was being born. This put-down was conveyed with great good humor and I was not at all discomfited; indeed I relished the barbs and the tales."

"Everyone acknowledges that there are crucial tests to be made and information to be found in the com­ing round of experimentation; so that, given only the resources needed to exploit the visible scien­tific opportunities, we surely face very exciting times. Moreover, the proponents acknowledge, even if everything goes as expected, that there will remain much more to be known than can be revealed in the next round of experimentation. In­deed, there are very stirring visions about what may lie out there beyond the immediately foreseeable do­mains of direct, experimental at­tack. The trouble, however, is this: they conceive that these farther reaches may lie forever beyond direct exper­imental investigation and that, for what can be reached, we may alrea­dy have the basic framework in hand."

"We develop a for computing sums over random surfaces which arise in all problems containing (like , three-dimensional etc.). These sums are reduced to the exactly solvable quantum theory of the two-dimensional Liouville lagrangian. At D = 26 the string dynamics is that of harmonic oscillators as was predicted earlier by dual theorists, otherwise it is described by the nonlinear integrable theory."

"We have no better way of describing elementary particles than quantum field theory. A quantum field in general is an assembly of an infinite number of interacting harmonic oscillators. Excitations of such oscillators are associated with particles. The special importance of the harmonic oscillator follows from the fact that its excitation spectrum is additive, i.e. if E1 and E2 are energy levels above the ground state then E1 + E2 will be an energy level as well. It is precisely this property that we expect to be true for a system of elementary particles."

"can be understood in a very simple way by means of the Peierls argument. Namely, while the energy of the string is proportional to its length, the entropy of it also grows linearly (since the number of random curves grows exponentially with their lengths). Thus at a certain temperature the entropy takes over and infinitely long strings begin to dominate. That means liberation."

"Based at Princeton University, Polyakov was chosen from a shortlist of three, which included string theorist of the and a trio of researchers – of the , of the and of Stanford University. The shortlist and ultimate winner were chosen by a panel comprising nine physicists – seven of whom are string theorists and one a topological-insulator pioneer. Not surprisingly, string-theory naysayer of Columbia University is not pleased. “The [ceremony] was largely a string theory hype-fest…,” he wrote on his blog . Meanwhile in a very different dimension of the , Lubos Motl is elated and writes “Sasha Polyakov is a giant because he is a string-theory pioneer and because he has cracked many phenomena in gauge theories.” Motl also makes a confession of sorts about what he discovered while alone in Polyakov’s office…"

"Alexander Polyakov, a now at Princeton University, caught a glimpse of the future of in 1981. A range of mysteries, from the wiggling of strings to the binding of s into s, demanded a new mathematical tool whose silhouette he could just make out. ... In his paper he sketched out a formula that roughly described how to calculate averages of a wildly chaotic type of surface, the “.” His work brought physicists into a new mathematical arena, one essential for unlocking the behavior of theoretical objects called strings and building a simplified model of quantum gravity. Years of toil would lead Polyakov to breakthrough solutions for other theories in physics, but he never fully understood the mathematics behind the Liouville field. Over the last seven years, however, a group of mathematicians has done what many researchers thought impossible. In a trilogy of landmark publications, they have recast Polyakov’s formula using fully rigorous mathematical language and proved that the Liouville field flawlessly models the phenomena Polyakov thought it would."

"In 1943 fear that the German war machine might use s was abating and among s another fear was taking its place - that of a postwar nuclear arms race with worldwide proliferation of nuclear weapons. Manhattan Project scientists and engineers began to discuss uses of in the postwar world. Niels Bohr, Leo Szilard, James A. Franck and others launched a concerted effort to lay groundwork for international control of the technology. Realizing the devastation nuclear weapons could cause and that they could be made and delivered much more cheaply than conventional weapons of the same power, they tried to persuade policy makers to take into account long range consequences of using atomic bombs and not base their decisions on short range military expediency alone. They met with little success. The scientists' main message, unheeded then and very relevant now, is that worldwide international agreements are needed to provide for inspection and control of nuclear weapons technology. Their memoranda and reports remain as historic documents eloquently testifying to their concern."

"Emmy Noether proved two deep theorems, and their converses, on the connection between and s. Because these theorems are not in the mainstream of her scholarly work, which was the development of modern abstract algebra, it is of some historical interest to examine how she came to make these discoveries. The present paper is an historical account of the circumstances in which she discovered and proved these theorems which physicists refer to collectively as . The work was done soon after . The failure of local energy conservation in the general theory was a problem that concerned people at that time, among them David Hilbert, Felix Klein, and Albert Einstein. Noether's theorems solved this problem. With her characteristically deep insight and thorough analysis, in solving that problem she discovered very general theorems that have profoundly influenced modern physics."

"Enrico Fermi lived from 1901 to 1954, a period of great progress in physics and a period in which opportunities for women to study and work in institutions of higher learning increased significantly in Europe and North America. Though there are a few examples of women who made important contributions to physics in the 18th century such as and , it was only in Fermi's time that the number began to increase significantly. It is remarkable that almost immediately after they gained entrance to laboratories and universities, among them appeared women of great creative ability who made lasting contributions to physics. This talk is mainly about some of these whose scientific lives are not as well known as their contributions deserve — Emmy Noether, , , . Additionally, some outstanding women whose work played a role in Enrico Fermi's life in physics are noted - , , , and ."

"Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard worked together at in 1939-40, just after was discovered, to ascertain the feasibility of a nuclear chain reaction, and then on the construction of the first nuclear reactor. Szilard believed a nuclear bomb could be built, and that the Germans may be doing so, but Fermi was sceptical. The Anglo-American project to build a bomb began late in 1941 after brought the to the attention of U. S. physicists. Szilard recalled "On matters scientific or technical there was rarely any disagreement [but] Fermi and I disagreed from the very start of our collaboration about every issue that involved not science but principles of action in the face of the approaching war. If the nation owes us gratitude — and it may not — it does so for having stuck it out together as long as was necessary." As the war with Germany was drawing to a close and the successful construction of the atomic bombs was well underway, these two men took opposing positions regarding use of the bombs."

"Although she was primarily a particle theorist, her most important work may well be her contribution to our understanding of superconductivity. She was a trailblazer for and, in her retirement, led the effort to chronicle the contributions of women to physics in the 20th century."

"Invoking the simple principle of translational symmetry — which in nature gives rise to conservation of momentum — led to dramatic improvements in image recognition"

"there is physics for AI, where there are concepts from physics that can help you build better AI tools, even if you aren’t directly studying physical systems. You can build machine learning architectures that have physics-style reasoning embedded and those concepts turn out to be quite powerful."

"Cosmology is another area with massive amounts of data and massive computational costs to run simulations of the universe. Without something like machine learning, we simply wouldn't be able to tackle those problems."

"AI and physics is really a two-way street: AI’s influence on how we research new physics phenomena, but also applying physics thinking to the way that AI systems operate."

"I’m just curious about how things work. I think I became a scientist because my mom had been a physics teacher and she brought home cool demos—I saw a laser and I thought that was awesome. She’d bring home dry ice and I thought that it was amazing that gas could be a solid. I’ve always liked quantitative puzzles and so it’s a way to combine, sort of, curiosity about things around me with my tendency to be quantitative about things. What I study now is materials. I’m interested in why materials behave the way they do. Much of the technology in the world around us is built upon materials that have very specific properties."

"I basically told them, in no uncertain terms, that this was not the way that I thought physics research should be going. And they agreed with me, actually, about the off-the-shelf use of machine learning."

"Where would someone live within the academic ecosystem if they wanted to dive into physics topics, but also computation and statistics? That was the motivation for submitting a grant to the NSF to start this institute.If you think about AI solely as it applies to fundamental physics research, we have massive challenges in our field and we’re trying to understand some of the deepest questions in nature."

"You have to build up from the bottom. If you were doing weather, you would say, well, I want to understand what storms are without going back to interacting air nitrogen molecules."

"And that it somehow was related to collective phenomena in networks. And I slowly wove my way from an interest in how the brain functioned to a question of how could hardware or software, or whatever you want to call it, wetware, produce such a thing."

"And the centre of gravity of my knowledge and understanding moved slowly from much more physics oriented to the neurobiological one. And somewhere along the line, this connection between AI, networks, neural networks and physics developed."

"That’s right. I, my motivation was really coming from seeing that something does work, the brain, and understanding more about how the brain works would be necessary to understand thought consciousness or what have you."

"I’m still somewhat in shock"

"I don’t think there’s another physicist in the town of Selborne, so that things slowly leak out over the news. But there’s no marching in the street here."

"You have to build up from the bottom."

"In a good physics problem, you have a system which is well defined and where you can understand something about how collectively it may work in a way which is more robust than the individual little bits and pieces. You don’t leap into a problem overall saying, I want to understand how mind works."

"I didn’t know what my life would look like as a black postdoc or faculty member."

"I looked to the women such as my mother who had had academic careers, and tried to think about how I could shape my life to look something like that, and I realized that it could be something I could make work."

"Since I started working in high energy physics it certainly hasn't been lonely and there haven't been a lack of female role models."

"Black women are a different story. But there were minority women working at the Fermilab experiments whom I was very happy to see. And at the ATLAS experiment there are a noticeable fraction of African descent. So I think things are improving because, historically, all of the icons in our field have been white men."

"In my considered opinion the peer review system, in which the proposals rather than the proposers are reviewed, is the greatest disaster to be visited upon the scientific community in this century"

"We believe in Creation. We praise the Lord for that faith. But let us avoid either posing creation and evolution as intrinsically antithetical alternatives, the acceptance of one demanding the rejection of the other, or presenting creation as a scientific mechanism alternative to evolution, as though good science must ultimately lead to the verification of fiat creation and a falsification of evolution."

"If it is assumed, without due Scriptural support, that the purpose of revelation is to give mankind a source-book of information on all phases of physical, mental, spiritual, sociological, artistic, and scientific life — a source-book which must have meaning for the people to whom it was addressed and to all the generations coming after them in spite of the changes which are continuously occurring — then we have the greatest difficulty in maintaining the doctrine of an inerrant Scripture. If, on this stand, we adopt the position of “arbitrary inerrancy,” we essentially jeopardize the whole truth of Christianity by attempting to balance the great wealth and weight of God’s revelation in Christ upon our ability to show that the words of Scripture can be judged inerrant even when we examine them on the basis of criteria they were not written to satisfy. How much of liberalism and rejection of Biblical revelation has been precipitated as a blind reaction against such a stand!"

"Evolution is a scientific question on the biological level; it would be unfortunate indeed if a scientific question were permitted to become the crucial point for Christian faith."

"The human senses are tools of science in studying the natural world. If you can see it, hear it, feel, taste, or smell it, then science can’t work with it. This isn’t meant superficially, for scientists have developed a great variety of instruments that extend the capabilities of science far beyond the unaided senses. But even with the most subtle of instruments, the link between instrument and scientist is in the form of a meter needle whose location is seen, a photographic record or computer tape that can be read, or an audible signal that can be heard."

"Throughout history philosophers and mystics have sought a compact key to universal wisdom, a finite formula or text which, when known and understood, would provide the answer to every question. The Bible, the Koran, the mythical secret books of Hermes Trismegistus, and the medieval Jewish Cabala have been so regarded. Sources of universal wisdom are traditionally protected from casual use by being hard to find, hard to understand when found, and dangerous to use, tending to answer more and deeper questions than the user wishes to ask. Like God the esoteric book is simple yet undescribable, omniscient, and transforms all who know It. The use of classical texts to foretell mundane events is considered superstitious nowadays, yet, in another sense, science is in quest of its own Cabala, a concise set of natural laws which would explain all phenomena. In mathematics, where no set of axioms can hope to prove all true statements, the goal might be a concise axiomatization of all “interesting” true statements."

"Ω is in many senses a Cabalistic number. It can be known of, but not known, through human reason. To know it in detail, one would have to accept its un-computable digit sequence on faith, like words of a sacred text. It embodies an enormous amount of wisdom in a very small space, inasmuch as its first few thousand digits, which could be written on a small piece of paper, contain the answers to more mathematical questions than could be written down in the entire universe, including all interesting finitely-refutable conjectures. Its wisdom is useless precisely because it is universal: the only known way of extracting from Ω the solution to one halting problem, say the Fermat conjecture, is by embarking on a vast computation that would at the same time yield solutions to all other equally simply-stated halting problems, a computation far too large to be carried out in practice. Ironically, although Ω cannot be computed, it might accidentally be generated by a random process, e.g. a series of coin tosses, or an avalanche that left its digits spelled out in the pattern of boulders on a mountainside. The initial few digits of Ω are thus probably already recorded somewhere in the universe. Unfortunately, no mortal discoverer of this treasure could verify its authenticity or make practical use of it."

"Recently I attended a workshop on the study of complexity at which two MIT computer scientists, Tom Toffoli and Norman Margolus, demonstrated the operation of an and gate on a computer monitor. Also watching the show was Charles Bennett of IBM, an expert on the mathematical foundations of computation and complexity. I remarked to Bennett that what we were watching was an electronic computer simulating a cellular automaton simulating a computer. Bennett replied that these successive embeddings of computational logic reminded him of Russian dolls."

"The deep gender bias of science (including medicine), of its very ways of seeing problems, resonates, Keller argues, in its "common rhetoric." Mainly "adversarial" and "aggressive" in its stance toward what it studies, "science can come to sound like a battlefield.""

"We're talking of a few tenths of a degree change in temperature. None of it in the last eight years, by the way. And if we had warming, it should be accomplished by less storminess. But because the temperature itself is so unspectacular, we have developed all sorts of fear of prospect scenarios – of flooding, of plague, of increased storminess when the physics says we should see less. I think it's mainly just like little kids locking themselves in dark closets to see how much they can scare each other and themselves."

"With respect to science, the assumption behind consensus is that science is a source of authority and that authority increases with the number of scientists. Of course, science is not primarily a source of authority. Rather, it is a particularly effective approach to inquiry and analysis. Skepticism is essential to science; consensus is foreign."