Questions tagged [physicists]
For questions about those who did Physics
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How many times did Isaac Newton repeat things if he didn't understand something?
When I was taking a class in university, I heard the professor say that if there was a part of Isaac Newton that he didn't understand, he had to read it over and over again hundreds of times. Is this ...
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Who made the first (recorded) axiomatic model of nature?
Neil Degrasse Tyson has claimed that, via his Principia, Isaac Newton was the first person (on record) to make a "modern" theory of physics, in the sense that Newton made an axiomatic ...
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Who was the first woman to complete the physics and mathematics program in Zürich?
According to descriptions of Mileva Marić, Einstein's first wife, she was the second woman to complete the mathematics and physics program at the Zürich Polytechnikum. However, nobody points out who ...
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Was Martin Packard of Varian Associates related to David Packard of Hewlett-Packard?
I came across an entry for the Proceedings of the American Physical Society which was published in Phys. Rev. volume 93 page 939 (1954) under the heading "Minutes of the Stanford Meeting December ...
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Who was the first to understand that there is not a net flux of energy between Sun and Earth, but of entropy?
According to Penrose's Cycles of Time, he starts by reminding the usefulness of the second law of thermodynamics and how it applies to everyday life. In particular, how the net energy of Earth is a ...
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Did any "classical era" physicist foresee that a theory such as Quantum Mechanics is logically inescapable?
I am interested in knowing if in the era preceding the observations that lead to the advent of Quantum Mechanics, anyone foresaw logically that a theory such as Quantum Mechanics is in a sense, "...
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What are some physicists that wrote literary works?
As usual when I see an article about asking about mathematicians, I cannot help to ask what about physics? Inspired by Literary works authored by mathematicians what are some physicist that also were ...
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On early US patriotism to choose quark color charge labels
Sean Carroll has a video about gauge theory (2020) in his series about Greatest Ideas of the Universe, where he claims that early in the development of quantum chromodynamics, some physicists tried to ...
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Why did Einstein's teacher say that Einstein's presence alone undermined his authority?
Based on the excellent answer from @njuffa in the post Is it true that Albert Einstein was kicked out of high school due to his "peacefulness"? there is a quote from what the "home-room ...
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On Bryce Seligman DeWitt's Name Change
Weinberg, in his memoir on Bryce Seligman DeWitt (available at https://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/dewitt-bryce.pdf) states that
In 1950 two major but totally ...
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Einstein's "answers have changed"
I remember first seeing this anecdote a few years ago in a newspaper article, now I am seeing more frequently in motivational content over the internet, every time with very few additional details. ...
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Who were some physicists with musical background?
Inspired on this post: Who were some mathematicians who have a musical background? I want to now ask if there were any famous physicists who had a particular musical background.
Looking in Google I ...
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First example of regularization
Background:
I like to think of L'Hospital as one of the earliest authors of least-squares regression.
L'Hospital, G. (1696). L'analyse des infiniment petits pour l'intelligence des lignes
courbes.
I'm ...
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Presocratics from the view of mathematicians and physicists
I am interested in a book that has all the fragments of pre-socratics but the notes etc. in the translation are from a mathematician or physicist relating with how each point affected the evolution of ...
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Doubt on women behind the development of wormhole physics
Ludwig Flamm $[1]$, Albert Einstein-Natan Rosen $[2]$, Hermann Weyl $[3]$, John Wheeler-Fuller $[4,5]$, Homer G. Ellis $[6]$, K. Bronnikov $[7]$, Michael Morris-Kip Thorne$[8]$, M. Visser $[9]$, ...
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What did Schroedinger try to say with the cat thought experiment?
In many books one finds different explanations. Specifically popular seems to be that he "argued against the Copenhagen interpretation". But what did he really intend to communicate?
I for ...
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Did Feynman win the Putnam by a "large margin"?
From James Gleick's Genius: the life and science of Richard Feynman:
One of Feynman’s fraternity brothers was surprised to see him return home while the examination was still going on. Feynman ...
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Demystifying Nikola Tesla: Scientifically sound, historically accurate biography
As any physicist knows, a lot of amateur science afficionados out there bring up Nikola Tesla in rather fantastical ways. There are indeed a few reasons for his near mythical status in popular culture,...
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Why is it said that Marie Curie died due to her work but the same isn't said for Fermi?
I learnt in school that Marie Curie died from her work at 66 years. On the other hand, Enrico Fermi, who also handled a lot of radioactive substances died of stomach cancer at the age of just 53. It ...
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Other than Franco Rasetti, how many scientists refused to work on the Manhattan Project on moral grounds?
Franco Rasetti was an American-Italian physicist. He was born in Italy and obtained his laurea in physics at the university of Pisa. Fermi invited him to join his research group at the University of ...
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What physicist was famous for his out-of-the-box problem solving methodology using concept maps?
I remember having read on Wikipedia some time ago the page of a 20th century physicist. There was a subsection about his strategy for problem solving that involved drawing a concept map of the objects ...
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How did Heisenberg build the P Q matrix terms?
I learnt in some Wikipedia articles that the terms of the P and Q matrices designed by Heisenberg were composed of Fourier coefficients. Could you provide some explanation on how these coefficients ...
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Who was the first to hypothesise that gravity from one mass causes the spacetime around another mass to curve?
Was it Einstein? Or was there someone before him to hypothesise this?
Shannon T
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Who introduced the difference between magnetic fields in matter? $\mathbf H$ vs $\mathbf B$
In magnetism, there are two different magnetic fields, that I will simply call $\mathbf B$ and $\mathbf H$. The distinction is not always clear. In experiments $\mathbf H$ is the applied field while $\...
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Which scientist(s) first measured the elementary charge and how did they do it? [duplicate]
I would be grateful if anyone could shed some light on these questions.
Which scientist(s) first measured the elementary charge? If it wasn't measured in a straightforward experimental setting, and ...
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Which physicists died very young or in a tragic way?
Inspired by Which mathematicians died very young or in a tragic way? , I wonder which physicists had similar fates.
A quick search lead me to Heinrich Hertz who died from a malignant bone condition at ...
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Does Anthony Bloch have a kinship with Felix Bloch?
I would like to know whether Anthony Bloch is a descendant of Felix Bloch or not. The Anthony Bloch's page on The Mathematics Genealogy Project only shows his advisory relationships, not kinships.
...
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Has there been an equivalent in physics to Ramanujan in maths?
Ramanujan's story is a well known story of the Indian young man who turned out to be a mathematical genius without a scholarly education. He was "discovered" by the mathematician Hardy at ...
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Was Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity inspired by his father?
Becquerel was awarded the Nobel prize for his discovery of radioactivity. He was researching phosphoresence and decided one day to place the stuff he used in a drawer to keep it out of the sun. He put ...
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How did Mach's view on spacetime differ from Einstein's?
We can read in Wikipedia:
Mach's principle, in cosmology, hypothesis that the inertial forces experienced by a body in nonuniform motion are determined by the quantity and distribution of matter in ...
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Galileo's discovery of the independence of motion
It is well-known that Galileo was the first one to state that motions in different dimensions (or components) are independent of one another. Where is this in Galileo's writings?
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Was Landau interested in the interpretations of quantum mechanics?
I am interested in Lev Landau. I was trying to find what was his approach to the interpretation of quantum mechanics, I am unable to find any particular source were this is discussed.
Was he an ...
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What are Steven Weinberg's contribution to physics other than electroweak unification?
What are Steven Weinberg's contributions to physics other than the Nobel-winning work on electroweak unification? Why is he so famous and respected among particle physicists compared to other Nobel ...
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Why we got so many geniuses after 19th century? [closed]
Albert Einstein was a genius, Kurt Gödel was a genius, John Von Neumann was a genius (I hope that people over here will share the meaning of "genius" which I understand, for me I always find ...
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Names of the electromagnetic units in SI
The unit of electric charge is the coulomb, named after Charles Augustin de Coulomb. This makes sense because Coulomb's law talks about the force between two charges. Likewise, it also makes sense to ...
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In which article did the physicist Sheldon Glashow introduce his electroweak theory?
In which article did Glashow introduce (1961?) a unified description of the electromagnetic and weak interactions, i.e., the electroweak interaction that earned him the Nobel prize in physics?
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Einstein's handwritten manuscript on General Relativity
The book "The Road to Relativity" by Gutfreund and Renn annotates Einstein's original handwritten manuscript from 1916 - "The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity." I can ...
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How did J.J. Thomson learn that what he discovered was different than an atom or a molecule?
Wikipedia says he discovered that the electron was different than an atom or molecule. His line of reasoning is not shown. I additionally searched stack exchange and unless I missed it.....
I am lost ...
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Why did Sylvester Gates choose the name Adinkra?
Sylvester James Gates was one of the co-discoverers of Adinkras. These are graphical representations of susy (supersymmetry) algebras.
They are named after a West African people — the Akan of Ghana ...
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Which books did famous physicists and mathematicians use to study in university? [closed]
I would like to know if there is any data on this topics out of curiosity. I know that telling everyone which textbooks they used isn't a common habit, but I am certain there are textbooks that some ...
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What is the source of a quotation by Niels Bohr?
The quote is:
When asked ... [about] an underlying quantum world, Bohr would answer,
'There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical
description. It is wrong to think that the ...
user10963
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Einstein: 'SR is a theory of invariants, not relativity' -- source?
It is occasionally remarked that Einstein was unhappy that SR became referred to as a ‘theory of relativity’, when in his eyes it was, much more importantly, a theory of invariants (Invariantentheorie)...
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Heisenberg's Obituary to Pauli
In an interview of Heisenberg by Thomas Kuhn:
When Pauli had died, I was asked to write this memorial volume. Weisskopf had asked me. Then, actually, originally I had written an article on Pauli's ...
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Was there ever a mathematician or physicist who spearheaded a concerted effort to create a flawless musical instrument?
Specifically, is there any research paper or record of where someone renowned in their field performed experiments by using the properties of physics, engineering or mathematics to develop a musical ...
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What was the content of Sakharov's research into cosmic rays?
According to Wikipedia, Sakharov in his early scientific career investigated cosmic rays. It offers no other details. It claims that it was for this work that he was awarded his doctorate.
However ...
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On the naming of quantum chromodynamics
A theory of strong interaction is called quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Particles interacting strongly are supposed to have color charge, for example quarks appear in three "mutations" - red, green and ...
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Portrait of Stephen Butterworth
Does anybody know of a portrait of British physicist Stephen Butterworth (1885-1958)?
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Did Heisenberg defend that Germany should rule Europe?
The following has been attributed to the German physicist Werner Heisenberg:
History legitimizes Germany to rule Europe and later the world. Only a nation that rules ruthlessly can maintain itself. ...
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Was Richard Feynman really awarded a patent for a nuclear Airplane and Rocket?
I've been re-reading "Surely you're Joking Mr. Feynman", and at one point he talks about how at Los Alamos they were asked to write down any idea, no matter how obvious involving nuclear technology, ...
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What is the Leroy Grumman Medal won by the theoretical physicist Kenneth G. Wilson?
I happened to find that one of the most important inventors of the renormalization group, Kenneth G. Wilson, won the Leroy Randle Grumman Award Medal in 1986, 4 years after his Nobel prize. Details in ...
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