Philosophy
Toward the end of June 1962, a virtual pantheon of modern physics descended on a tiny island just off the shores of Lake Constance, in Germany’s rolling Bavarian countryside. They’d come from around the globe for the 12th annual Nobel Laureates Meeting at Lindau. Laureates and select students gathered for a collegial week of lectures, informal meetings, and socializing.
Friedrich Katscher, a Viennese physicist and journalist, covered the conference for Austrian newspapers and radio. He says it was a giddy experience for a science lover: “These were the really great people of the world, and many of them were meeting each other for the first time.”
Halfway through the week, the students rallied for a torch-lit procession through the town as a show of appreciation for the great scientists’ leadership and dedication to teaching. (Paul Dirac, overcome, joined right in.) Then physicists and students together sang “Gaudeamus,” the academic hymn: “Let us rejoice therefore, while we are young. After a pleasant youth, after a troubling old age, the earth will have us.”
Katscher seized the opportunity to get an autograph from almost every scientist present. The list could transform even the most stoic physics buff into swooning groupie: Niels Bohr, James Franck, Lise Meitner, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, Gustav Hertz, among many others. Katscher says they readily signed for him, and were supremely gracious to press and students alike.
Just months later, Niels Bohr was dead. None of those whose names are scrawled on the yellowing page are still alive. The last to survive, Edwin Salpeter, died in 2008. Katscher says he feels lucky to have been there: “It was one of the last possibilities to see these people together.”
Left column...
Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett [Wikipedia]
Cecil Frank Powell [Wikipedia]
Edwin Ernest Salpeter [Wikipedia]
Otto Robert Frisch [Wikipedia]
Right column...
James Franck [Wikipedia]
John Douglas Cockcroft [Wikipedia]
Edward Victor Appleton [Wikipedia]
Max Born [Wikipedia]
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac [Wikipedia]
Otto Hahn [Wikipedia]
Lise Meitner [Wikipedia]
Niels Henrik David Bohr [Wikipedia]
Robert Hofstadter [Wikipedia]
Harold Clayton Urey [Wkipedia]
Emilio Gino Segrè [Wikipedia]
Werner Heisenberg [Wikipedia]
Gustav Ludwig Hertz [Wikipedia]
Glenn Theodore Seaborg [Wikipedia]
- Missing Wikipedia Entries
A couple weeks ago was the birthday of Bob Speca, the world record holding domino-toppler. His name came up in my critical thinking class when I was discussing the domino fallacy and I was interested in what he had been doing since his heyday in the 70s....
- How Reliable Is Wikipedia?
The taller of the short people is working on a research project on Ruth Wakefield, the accidental inventor of the chocolate chip cookie. She's finding few resources in the public library, so we did a web search and pointing to the results, she tells...
- Samuel A. Goudsmit Papers Available Online Via Aip
"AIP's Niels Bohr Library Makes Goudsmit Papers Available Online" Papers document history of frontier physics research July 26th, 2011 PRNewswire The Niels Bohr Library and Archives of the American Institute of Physics (AIP), has digitized...
- Edwin Herbert Land...second Revolution In Photography
Edwin Herbert Land May 7th, 1909 to March 1st, 1991 [Click to enlarge] What's that old joke? What is the equivalent term for hemorrhoids for Eskimos...Polaroids. Okay, I'll never write for Leno. Today is the birthday of Edwin Herbert Land who...
- Deceased--aage Bohr
Aage Bohr June 19th, 1922 to September 8th, 2009 "Denmark's Nobel prize winner Aage Bohr dies at 87" by Jan M. Olsen September 19th, 2009 Associated Press COPENHAGEN — Aage Bohr, a nuclear physics professor and Nobel laureate like his father,...
Philosophy
Not movie star autographs but just as valuable
"logbook: nobel meeting"
by
Andrea Mustain
April
2010
Symmetry
by
Andrea Mustain
April
2010
Symmetry
Toward the end of June 1962, a virtual pantheon of modern physics descended on a tiny island just off the shores of Lake Constance, in Germany’s rolling Bavarian countryside. They’d come from around the globe for the 12th annual Nobel Laureates Meeting at Lindau. Laureates and select students gathered for a collegial week of lectures, informal meetings, and socializing.
Friedrich Katscher, a Viennese physicist and journalist, covered the conference for Austrian newspapers and radio. He says it was a giddy experience for a science lover: “These were the really great people of the world, and many of them were meeting each other for the first time.”
Halfway through the week, the students rallied for a torch-lit procession through the town as a show of appreciation for the great scientists’ leadership and dedication to teaching. (Paul Dirac, overcome, joined right in.) Then physicists and students together sang “Gaudeamus,” the academic hymn: “Let us rejoice therefore, while we are young. After a pleasant youth, after a troubling old age, the earth will have us.”
Katscher seized the opportunity to get an autograph from almost every scientist present. The list could transform even the most stoic physics buff into swooning groupie: Niels Bohr, James Franck, Lise Meitner, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, Gustav Hertz, among many others. Katscher says they readily signed for him, and were supremely gracious to press and students alike.
Just months later, Niels Bohr was dead. None of those whose names are scrawled on the yellowing page are still alive. The last to survive, Edwin Salpeter, died in 2008. Katscher says he feels lucky to have been there: “It was one of the last possibilities to see these people together.”
Left column...
Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett [Wikipedia]
Cecil Frank Powell [Wikipedia]
Edwin Ernest Salpeter [Wikipedia]
Otto Robert Frisch [Wikipedia]
Right column...
James Franck [Wikipedia]
John Douglas Cockcroft [Wikipedia]
Edward Victor Appleton [Wikipedia]
Max Born [Wikipedia]
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac [Wikipedia]
Otto Hahn [Wikipedia]
Lise Meitner [Wikipedia]
Niels Henrik David Bohr [Wikipedia]
Robert Hofstadter [Wikipedia]
Harold Clayton Urey [Wkipedia]
Emilio Gino Segrè [Wikipedia]
Werner Heisenberg [Wikipedia]
Gustav Ludwig Hertz [Wikipedia]
Glenn Theodore Seaborg [Wikipedia]
- Missing Wikipedia Entries
A couple weeks ago was the birthday of Bob Speca, the world record holding domino-toppler. His name came up in my critical thinking class when I was discussing the domino fallacy and I was interested in what he had been doing since his heyday in the 70s....
- How Reliable Is Wikipedia?
The taller of the short people is working on a research project on Ruth Wakefield, the accidental inventor of the chocolate chip cookie. She's finding few resources in the public library, so we did a web search and pointing to the results, she tells...
- Samuel A. Goudsmit Papers Available Online Via Aip
"AIP's Niels Bohr Library Makes Goudsmit Papers Available Online" Papers document history of frontier physics research July 26th, 2011 PRNewswire The Niels Bohr Library and Archives of the American Institute of Physics (AIP), has digitized...
- Edwin Herbert Land...second Revolution In Photography
Edwin Herbert Land May 7th, 1909 to March 1st, 1991 [Click to enlarge] What's that old joke? What is the equivalent term for hemorrhoids for Eskimos...Polaroids. Okay, I'll never write for Leno. Today is the birthday of Edwin Herbert Land who...
- Deceased--aage Bohr
Aage Bohr June 19th, 1922 to September 8th, 2009 "Denmark's Nobel prize winner Aage Bohr dies at 87" by Jan M. Olsen September 19th, 2009 Associated Press COPENHAGEN — Aage Bohr, a nuclear physics professor and Nobel laureate like his father,...