Who said in the 50s all the mathematics a physicist needed was a rudimentary knowledge of the Greek and Latin alphabet so that he can put indices on

Question

I found this quotation on a YouTube video interview of Professor Abdus Salam: at 3:54 he says

in the 50s all the mathematics a physicist needed was a rudimentary knowledge of the Greek and Latin alphabet so that he can put indices on

But, I cannot make out who Professor Salam is quoting, "Sir Ray... "

Answer 1

This is a statement used by many authors in the epigraphs. For example, Reed and Simon Methods of modern mathematical physics, vol. 4, Chap. XII cite this as:

In the 1930-s, under the relaxing influence of quantum mechanical perturbation theory mathematical background of a theoretical physicist was reduced to rudimentary knowledge of Latin and Greek alphabets.

Since in the books of various authors this citation differs, I suppose that Res Jost could say this orally, or perhaps the whole thing is made up.

Answer 2

The epigraph of chapter 2 of Streater and Wightman's 1964 PCT, Spin & Statistics, and All That says

In the thirties, under the demoralizing influence of quantum-theoretic perturbation theory, the mathematics required of a theoretical physicist was reduced to a rudimentary knowledge of the Latin and Greek alphabets.

R. Jost

S & W give no citation, but the bibliography for chapter 2 lists several Jost publications.

Note that the German pronunciation of his name sounds to an English speaker as if it were spelled "Yost"; I think I hear Salam saying the name this way.

See here for information about Jost.

Jost and Wightman were close scientific collaborators, who presumably held each other in esteem. Since the the Streater and Wightman book was published while Jost was alive, I believe the quotation is genuine.