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Probably like other physicists, I get an interesting range of reactions when I reveal my profession to other people, at a party, next to someone on a plane, in the line at a game. Here are some typical examples: 'I hate physics' This one, unfortunately, is quite common. It is usually uttered with viciousness that never ceases to surprise me, and leaves me with a feeling that some, if not all, of the hate is intended to be transferred to the physicist (i.e. me). It is undeniable that physics has a strong effect on many people. There are people it attracts, and there are people it strongly repels. I have always wondered, which of physics' attributes causes it most to be hated: that it makes us think, that it is abstract, that it often requires good spatiotemporal skills, that it demands thorough comprehension, that it requires mathematics, that it offers little by way of wiggle room ( nothing travels faster than light) or direct emotional or physical consolation (rather the opposite: gravity does not switch off if you fall off a tall building)... What to do when faced with such a 'compliment'? I smile and take it gracefully, try to introduce a different topic. Sometimes I succeed in countering it lightly. A serious argument, I have found, is not received well, and usually makes things worse. You must be an Astronomer Many people think/assume, perhaps unconsciously, that all physicists are astronomers. Because they get so much exposure to the subject in the media (more than say to solid state physics), their questions are often quite specialized (Is Pluto a planet? How big is the black hole at the center of our galaxy? Is there water on Mars?). Over time I have found I have been forced to educate myself on astronomy in order not to be embarrassed in public with questions I did not have at least some idea of how to answer. (Excuses like 'That's not my specialty' are not well received, and erode my credibility as a scientist in the eye of the audience.) One remembers the hilarious situation in which, Walter Kohn, a physicist, had just been awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry, and was stopped on campus by two undergraduates who wanted help with their chemistry homework. Can you turn my kid into a Genius? A common type is a (grand)parent, one who is immediately interested in what useful information they can get from me that would turn their children into academic superstars. Sample questions: what is the one course my daughter can take at university that would give her the edge? My kid wants to be physicist, how can I convince him to become an engineer? My kid wants to be a physicist, is there a way I can channel her into patent law? By far the most amusing question I have ever faced was at a physics conference (although not having to do directly with my profession as a physicist) where a mother (not a conference attendee, just happened to be at the same hotel) came up to me and asked if I was a professor. I said I was. She said could I please give her high school daughter some career advice, she wanted to become a Dean. I was astonished: she didn't want to know about college, graduate school, postdoctoral studies, assistant professorship, tenure, promotion to associate and then to full professor - some of the many stages one has to go through to become a Dean. She was interested only in the final product! I asked why she wanted to become a Dean. And then came the truly flaggergasting answer, from the mother : "Because my daughter did an internship in the Dean's office, and she says that the Dean doesn't do anything". This was very funny, because Deans are overworked (the girl probably saw the Dean at the computer all day and thought no work was happening). But it was also very disturbing - that a parent would want their child to do a job that involves doing nothing! You don't have a real Job This is the reaction of many non-scientists. Once they learn I am a physicist, they look me up and down as if I was an alien or someone to be pitied, and conclude I must be off my rocker to work anything but a real job (usually some kind of business like they do). These types initially express their reverence and fascination for knowledge, but soon devolve into a discussion of real estate, cars, houses, celebrities, the economy, and politics. Let me tell you how much Quantum Physics I know Like astronomy/cosmology, quantum physics is much discussed in the media. Once the people learned on this topic figure out that I am a physicist who works in quantum physics, they lose no time in confidently expressing their own theories of the quantum. They tell me why everything is quantum mechanical, that the multiverse certainly exists (more about that in coming posts), how the notion of entanglement goes far beyond physics, how a quantum computer really works, why quantum physics is related to consciousness and enables astrology, etc. etc. They usually end by telling me how to carry out my own research. I actually enjoy these monologues, as I take the offered suggestions silently to their logical limits. There's usually something to learn. Conclusion Sometimes I enjoy pretending to be someone else by profession, like a dance instructor or a starving artist. It's a good break from being responsible (the secret to a good conversation, I have heard, is to pretend to be someone else).

Should you be a nonphysicist and find yourself at a physics party (maybe as a friend or spouse) here are 15 pieces of essential physics knowledge that might be helpful in making sense of conversations or even impressing the audience: The universe is 15 billion years old. No one knows what happened before that (yes, that was the Big Bang). Also, 'before' may not be a meaningful term. The Earth (and the solar system) are about 5 billion years old. The Sun will die in about 5 billion years. Your party, even if it is a very good one, will probably end before that. The visible universe - including us - is made of atoms and radiation. Atoms are made of smaller particles such as quarks and leptons. This latter piece of information is only to be used in a pinch. The existence of the multiverse (any other universe than our own) is not yet confirmed, no matter what Hollywood says. Dark energy (68%) and dark matter (27%) dominate the universe. This is stuff that has observable gravitational effects but otherwise we don't know what it's made of. The remaining 5% is what we see with our eyes and telescopes. Physics can describe pretty much everything at the level of our daily lives using a few equations that can be printed on a T-shirt. Quantum physics says life is uncertain, and things are (cor)related. Special relativity says time is relative, and length depends on how fast you are moving. General relativity says there is no such thing as force: mass tells space how to curve; space tells mass how to move. String theory: an exciting idea that the fundamental entities in the universe are not particles but strings. No experimental evidence for this theory is available yet. It's not clear if philosophy has any clear connections to physics, but the idea is usually entertaining to explore. Please be warned that asking this question at a physics party could lead to a fight, not necessarily involving you. Light connects mass to energy (E=mc^2), electricity to magnetism (B=E/c), and space to time (x=ct). Three of the great unsolved problems in physics: the unification of quantum mechanics with gravity, the appearance of turbulence in liquids, an explanation of why time has a direction. Experiment plays the role (mostly) in physics that proof does in mathematics. You can take a physics toy (some of them, like the rattleback , can easily be slipped into your pocket) to the party and ask the physicists to explain how it works. Have fun!

A famous quote, often attributed to Henry Kissinger, says that the tussles in academia are especially vicious because the stakes are so low. My interpretation of the expression is that by the stakes being low it is meant that not much money is involved. What are the fights about, then? One of the things that they are often about is intellectual credit, which has the broader implication of community - and sometimes public - recognition. I have had many colleagues from industry who have told me repeatedly that ideas by themselves do not count for much in their line of work. What people are really interested in - and often fight patent wars over - is finished working products. In academia, it seems to be almost exactly the opposite. The person with the earliest traceable connection to an idea often claims to be its original progenitor. On the biggest stages this often makes Nobel (and other) prizes controversial, especially when some people are left out of the honor roll. On smaller stages, you can receive complaints from other researchers about citations in your publications (one way to deal with these is to post the paper on the arxiv and wait for feedback before submitting to a journal). Sometimes referees will insist that you cite their work (this can get out of hand, with the recommendations going up to 5-10 of their papers, which would reflect a clear bias towards them in the citation list) or they will not accept your paper. On the other hand, reviews will often claim the work you have submitted 'has already been done' (I am dealing with one right now), based on some proximity to earlier literature. Where the rubber meets the road, i.e. in a functioning scientific research group, claims about credit priority often arise among students, postdocs and other faculty. Students who have worked together on a project often disagree about who should be first author (in my field the first author gets most of the credit; the last author is assigned the intellectual ownership). I have even seen cases where the student thinks the advisor should not be on the paper because 'they were not in the room' when the crucial advance was made (no thought is given to how the student happened to be in the room - because the advisor wrote (IP!) the grant (money!) that hired them.). The disagreements get more acrimonious when postdocs are involved, since first author publications (especially when they end up in high impact factor journals) are crucial to subsequent postdoctoral and faculty job applications. Outright disagreements are often preceded by periods of intense jockeying in the author queue. Some postdocs will even refuse to participate in projects where their (perceived) position in the author queue is not 'worth their time'. While students and postdoc disagreements can be adjudicated 'in-house', so to speak, priority disputes with colleagues and external collaborators may be outside of a professor's control. Sometimes they can lead to irreparable professional breaches and termination of collaborations. It is remarkable, on the whole, how high the paranoia can reach - I have seen entire papers, complete with author list, abstract, body, conclusion and references, put together by people who wanted to be first authors; remarkably, these papers described experiments which were yet to be done - blanks and placeholders were left for the data, yet to be taken! Perhaps unsurprisingly, the experiments were never done. My own approach to academic credit is to foster an atmosphere of generosity and appropriateness in my group and its dealings: meaning for the participants in any project not to get bent out of shape about it as long as the right people are getting the right recognition. I always confirm with all authors before submitting (most journals now ensure this is done formally). I also try to pre-empt the paranoia by trying to make people understand that if everyone tries their best and does their job, there is more than 'enough of the pie' for everyone to go around. I try to distribute projects so that each person gets to be first author on some papers, second on others, etc., etc. I also convey the message that dispute resolution by me should be a last option - it is part of the professional training of group members that they should learn how to get along with each other and stay personable and productive even when there are disagreements. Overall, the desire for credit and recognition is a very human and very powerful motivator for performance. If used appropriately, it can have very beneficial effects - as long as ego is sublimated to work.

Science is well known for not being based on authority; truth in science is ultimately decided by experiment (for the natural sciences) or logic (mathematics). Indeed, one of the glories of science is that prominent scientists ('authorities') can be wrong and newcomers/less distinguished scientists can be right ( one of my favorite stories in this context is Josephson versus Bardeen; another one is Chandrasekhar versus Eddington). This post is about how the endeavor of teaching and doing science in the real world nonetheless involves the frequent exercise of authority, partly because the enterprise is human, and our knowledge is limited. Perhaps all this is obvious, but perhaps also worth reminding ourselves of. I will discuss three examples based on my personal experience with the (scientific) academic process: i) Learning Throughout our learning experience, we are subjected to the authority of teachers and textbooks. The selection and order of topics and level of treatment for any course depends on the teacher. The perspective on the subject matter depends on the text(s), and often on the teacher as well (I am currently experiencing this vis-a-vis the quantum course I am teaching - some texts like to start with spin and the abstract state vector approach, some with classical wave physics in the position representation). Which notation to use, which solving techniques to teach, which problems to put on an exam, how the problems should be weighted, how many points to take off for which mistake, etc., are all decisions based on authority; they cannot be decided unambiguously based on purely scientific argument. ii) Peer review Professional scientists produce original research in their subject and this scholarship is eventually judged by their peers. Every paper is submitted to the authority of one or more experts. Here, especially, there might be extensive disagreement not only between authors and referees, but also between the referees themselves (I know of cases where the editor revealed all identities and got to the final decision by seating everybody around a table). Even if the decision of the referees is unanimous, there is no guarantee that it is right (my favorite example of this is Daniel Schechtman 's work, which was initially rejected and ridiculed, but eventually won a Nobel). Sometimes the editor has to make a call on the acceptance, and that introduces another kind of authority. iii) Grantsmanship Scientific funding is also decided by peers; but often also by independent program managers. Having talked about peer review before, I will discuss the program managers. They are very capable people, but of course have their own perspectives and missions. As by their own admission they receive many more good proposals than they can fund, they are forced to exercise their authority to make decisions to award or reject. Postscript I do not have any good suggestions for reducing the role of authority in the functioning of science, though I did write earlier about a way to reduce the conflict of interest in the process of peer review. Nonetheless, it is interesting to think, with the irreversible advent of AI, how all this might (will?) change. There will still likely be reliance on authority, but perhaps less on human and more on machine-based authority. Some are warning against this . Postpostcript The topic of authority in science reminded me of an amusing description I once came across, of classroom teaching, in some European university in the early 1900s. The class consisted of lecture notes read out by an assistant professor. The notes had been written by the (full) professor, who was also present in class, sitting to one side of the lectern, and nodding from time to time to indicate that all was going well!

After seeing the substantial interest in my previous post on the upcoming Nobel award announcements (Oct 7-14), I decided to stay on that topic. Here are some stories about my personal meetings with physics Nobel laureates. Hope you enjoy. i) Glauber : (For optics). I have already written about the few minutes of one-on-one I had with him when I was a postdoc. I won't repeat the story here. ii) Koshiba : (For neutrino physics) I did mention I was one of the graduate students selected to have lunch with him when he visited the University of Rochester (of which he was an alumnus) when he came to the US to be awarded the Wolf prize.. He did no more than politely shake my hand and say hello. Still, a big moment for me. iii) Cornell : (For atomic physics). I met him during a tour of his lab arranged for the attendees of a conference in Boulder. A more entertaining story happened when at a conference I saw him eat lunch by himself at the hotel cafe. After he left I informed his waitress (and mine) that she had been serving a Nobel laureate in physics. That got an interesting reaction. iv) Ketterle : (For atomic physics). I was getting a tour of his labs at MIT and found myself in his office. He asked me about my thesis work and I told him about the problem I had solved. He responded with an encouraging comment: 'That was a good fish to catch.' v) Phillips : (For atomic physics). The Nobel laureate with whom I have had the most contact. I have given several talks with him in the audience (and asking countless questions, a style for which he is famous), and attended some of his group meetings when I was a postdoc at Maryland. I also had the privilege of discussing my work with him in my office for a good half hour when he came to RIT as a commencement speaker. vi) Hansch : (For optics). This was an interesting story. I was browsing online one day when I saw a conference in my field advertised in Germany (in Bad Honef). I decided to check the list of invited speakers and was astounded to see my own name there - but no one had informed me! I wrote to the organizers, who replied sheepishly saying it had been a clerical error. The program was actually a wish list and they did not have enough money to pay for my airfare. I told them I would pay for myself and they kindly agreed to invite me. When my invitation to Germany was confirmed, I wrote to Hansch asking if there would be interest in a talk from me at his institution, since our work had been inspired by his research and was closely related. The next day I got a long invitation letter from his secretary. Long story short, I showed up in Munich, and it was Hansch who introduced me at my talk. He listened carefully and asked many (amazing) questions. Surely one of the high points of my career. Some Close Shaves Some Nobelists with whom I came close to having contact: i) David Lee : (For superfluidity) My advisor's advisor. His Nobel was announced a month after I joined my advisor's group in graduate school. I was later told my advisor had hopped into his car and driven from Rochester to Ithaca (~2 hours away) to join the celebration party. ii) Art Ashkin : (For optics) We sent him our paper (he is mentioned in our abstract) directly related to his work, but he passed away shortly after. Would have been interesting to learn his views. iii) Norman Ramsey : (For atomic physics). Ramsey sat in the first row during my talk at a conference (making me quite nervous), and then afterwards snatched the last muffin from the food table from under my outstretched hand (probably did not see me). iv) Donna Strickland : (For optics). She was away when I was visiting her department at the University of Waterloo, but I got to see her personal car parking space, with its sign: "Nobel Laureate". v) David Wineland : (For atomic physics). He showed interest in my postdoc's talk (related to some of his own research) at a conference, but since everything was on Zoom, there was no scope for a follow up discussion. vi) Tony Leggett : (For low temperature physics) I was attending a small (where I ended up talking to everybody else) workshop where he was a featured speaker, but he couldn't make it in person and gave his talk remotely. Next post : The Nobel Prize in Physics 2024!!

With all the buzz about AI, including two Nobel prizes this year (in physics and chemistry) related to the subject, it was time for me to pick up a book that had been waiting to be read on my shelf since the summer: Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges (736 pages). First some general observations: The book has been around for a while - it was first published in 1983. The Enigma in the title is a pun on the German cipher machine that Turing help break. It also refers to the mysterious character of Turing himself, with reference to both his anti-establishment scientific attitude as well as his homosexuality, which was a criminal offense in England in his time. The book was the basis for the 2014 movie The Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch. (The Imitation Game refers to the Turing test , designed to establish if a machine can display human-like intelligence - sounds familiar?) Andrew Hodges, the author, is a mathematician at Oxford, and was a doctoral student of Roger Penrose. 5. The book has a foreword by Douglas Hofstadter , the well known author of Godel Escher and Bach. What I enjoyed learning from the book: Given the length of the book (736 pages), I did not expect a superficial treatment. Indeed, Hodges goes into great detail, presenting the times (i.e. the zeitgeist) and the characters as well as original material, such as many of Turing's letters. The book is definitely a very good source for the scholarship on Turing. Turing had strong connections to India. His father was a magistrate and his maternal grandfather a railway engineer in India during the days of the British Empire. Turing was, the book says, conceived in Chhatrapur , though his mother traveled back to England for her delivery. Turing's childhood is described very well, with his initial distaste for the school curriculum (esp. Greek), his chaotic penmanship, his average grades, and his lack of any indication of being a genius. Slowly we begin to see chemistry experiments, sometimes carried out against the ridicule of his classmates, and an ability for science, especially mathematics, emerge. A defining experience is his close - essentially scientific - friendship with Christopher Morcom, who dies in their last year of high school. Turing then goes to King's College, Cambridge, for his undergraduate degree, where he develops his mathematical chops and his long distance running. This is where he seriously starts thinking about algorithms and computing machines. He comes to the US and gets a PhD (in one year and nine months) with Church at Princeton. This connection came about as a result of their independently answering, negatively, a question posed by Hilbert about computable functions. Here Turing also comes into contact with Godel, and with von Neumann, who had a high opinion of his work and wrote him recommendation letters. Turing then goes to Bletchley Park, and helps decode the German cipher machine Enigma, which helps the Allies gain crucial victories in the war. Later came interactions with Claude Shannon, one of the pioneers of information theory; and Norbert Wiener, the pioneer of cybernetics; and of course, his work on the ACE (Automatic Computing Engine), Turing's analog to von Neumann's ENIAC , one of the world's first digitally programmable digital computers. The book finishes with an analysis of Turing's personal life and the circumstances of his death, at 41, by suicide. Summary A detailed book, which is certainly of interest to the historian of science. Perhaps a bit long for the popular reader. The discussion of the central theme that occupied Turing, of whether a machine can display human intelligence, is extensive. Turing's character is sympathetically and carefully attended to. I will probably go back to the book to re-read certain parts.

The 2024 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks”. Below we address some of the questions raised by this prize, keeping in mind that this is not my area of specialization. What was it about? The awardees used models from physics to simulate the human brain, leading to the creation of artificial neural networks ( ANN s). Their work turned out to be seminal for machine learning, which has had numerous benefits to science and society, enabling image recognition, language generation, data processing, etc. The work of this year's laureates has led to new pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and sensors, among other applications. Was it unexpected? From the reaction on social media, there is some surprise associated with the selection this year, for reasons to be discussed below. Was it physics? The fact that many people are asking this question means the award was not given for one of the well-established (canonical) branches of physics. Few probably would ask the question if the prize were to be awarded, for example, for particle physics or atomic physics. Some colleagues felt the work was top notch computer science, but not appropriate for physics. In my opinion this may be considered as a prize awarded for biological physics. I remember arriving in graduate school in 1995 and being briefly fascinated by ANNs through my roommate, who was a physicist and working on those systems. I was especially attracted by the abilities of these systems to display phenomena like memories and dreams . Hopfield is definitely a physicist. In fact he is a past president of the American Physical Society (which says the Nobel was awarded for application of physics to network theory; here is an APS post that addresses the controversy) and a recipient of the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize in 1969 (a heavyweight laurel). His work is based on models of interacting magnets and leans on statistical mechanics, which is a core area of physics. Hinton, on the other hand, has been exclusively employed by computer science departments in his academic career. He is one of the acknowledged heavyweights of AI (got the Turing award in 2018), but the connection to physics is less clear in his case. What does this mean for the Nobel prize going ahead? This probably means that we have to acknowledge contributions from relatively new areas in physics. It could also mean, as some have suggested, that a separate Nobel prize should be set up for computer science. In any case, noting that the Chemistry prize was awarded for computational protein design and prediction, this year AI has received a strong nod from Stockholm (the joke is that the Nobel Committee has been taken over by an AI system). Whether this is going to develop into a trend will be interesting to see in the coming years. Afterword No post this Friday - have a great weekend!

Lasers make for a $20 billion dollar industry and have all kinds of applications: industrial, medical, surveying, communication (internet), pointers...In this post I will cover some recent work on edible lasers . First a little prehistory : Shortly after the first lasers were invented, Art Schawlow , who later won the Nobel prize in physics, was playing around with jello and made perhaps the earliest edible laser . This stunt was only meant for entertainment and publicity. But, seriously, why do we need edible lasers? (I should specify these are microlasers, i.e. a few microns in size). We need edible microlasers because they can be used as sensors . It is often desirable to track edible products for freshness, temperature, pH, sugar concentration, carbon dioxide level, the presence of bacteria, refractive index, etc. Smart packaging edible lasers inside such products makes it easy to track these characteristics without having to open a bottle (juice/jam) or transparent package (think butter or cheese) and take a sample out, for example. Also, no need to worry about consumers taking in nondigestible markers. Edible lasers can also serve as barcodes . They can encode information like expiry dates and manufacturing information. At present there are concerns about counterfeiting of barcodes for selling low quality food and pharmaceutical products. If the barcode could be placed inside the material rather than as an external label, it would be much harder, if not impossible to counterfeit. How do edible lasers work? These are made of small particles which can emit light at a particular frequency (which depends on their size) when radiated with light of broad frequency (a little bit like scanning in barcodes with a laser). Barcodes can be encoded into the light emitted by using a number of microlasers of predetermined sizes, which gives a known emission spectrum. These particles can also be made to change their size in response to changes in pH/temperature of the food they are planted in, for example. This change in size shifts the frequencies they emit. The sensitivity of such methods to their environment is quite good. What are these lasers made of? They can be made from foods (such as chlorophyll in olive oil) or food additives (such as edible dyes like riboflavin and bixin). Useful parts are also made from spinach leaves, cinnamon oil, chitosan (a material that swells as it pH decreases). Which foods did the author put their lasers in? Peach compote, pickles, juices, milk, agar. Appetizing?

This post is aimed at stating explicitly something that is not always communicated to physics students as they make their way through the curriculum: namely that how they are expected to learn physics goes through changes as they advance through university. And this is because they are not only learning different things, they are learning more difficult things as they proceed. Stage 1 In the freshman year, for example, most students are taught mechanics. This is a subject where examples from our everyday experiences can be referred to in to class almost at will. Hence we encounter trucks going down slopes, hockey pucks sliding on ice rinks, divers jumping off cliffs. There is a lot of scope for discussion between students in class as to what can happen in a given physical situation; cartoons and simulations can also be used to convey the material. There are practically an infinite number of analytically solvable examples, leading to a virtually unlimited bank of 'practice problems'. The lab demonstrations involve objects whose motion we can observe and control. It is worth noting that special relativity is taught in some universities in the first year. Even in this case, rulers and clocks carry a lot of the discussion. The transformations between various inertial frames (frames which move at a constant velocity with respect to each other) can be visualized in terms of moving trains, planes and ships. Stage 2 Later in the first year, and sometimes for the the first time in the second year, courses such as electromagnetism show up in the curriculum. Those students who have played around with batteries and magnets, and maybe even toy electric circuits, will undoubtedly have some feeling for voltages, currents, etc. But practically no one has deep intuitive notions about how electric and magnetic fields (the basic elements of electromagnetism) behave (even less than they do about momentum and energy). Mathematically, vector analysis makes its appearance as an advanced form of calculus. So this subject requires a jump to a level of abstraction higher than mechanics. The number of analytically solvable (& 'practice') problems is noticeably smaller than in mechanics, though still quite large. Far fewer examples from our daily lives can be brought into the discussion, which now involves imaginary objects like Gaussian surfaces, and specialized configurations like loops and coils, though motors and light bulbs offer some relief, and some simulations are available. Stage 3 In their third year or so, students come to quantum mechanics. This is a subject whose foundations are mired in an abstract fog, and which applies to objects and phenomena usually quite far from our direct experience (electrons in orbit around a nucleus, neutrons diffracting from a crystal). Quantum phenomena (particles behaving like waves, loss of determinism, quantization of variables like energy) typically violate our (classical) intuition entirely. There are only a finite number of solvable problems (final exams are retained so that the questions may be recycled in the future); strong use of differential equations and linear algebra make the subject more mathematical than either mechanics or electromagnetism where physical intuition take some of the weight off math's shoulders. The use of abstract mathematical symbols, as opposed to explicitly numerical quantities dominates. Interestingly, there is a good suite of simulations available (online). Stage 4 In the final year of the undergraduate curriculum, as well in graduate school, students take electives. These are advanced courses in optics, solid state physics, quantum information, general relativity, etc. The situations considered are usually too specialized to draw examples from our daily lives (a photon near a black hole). There are few standard textbooks which cover such courses (mostly the material is developed by the instructing professor). The number of solvable problems is rather small. Time in class is mostly spent on developing the theoretical framework, rather than on examples, and practically no 'practice' problems are (indeed can be) prescribed. Each homework problem is a fleshing out of the textual material, typically long and with several parts. The exam is usually a take-home, or a presentation of a small research project. Summary The physics curriculum at university not only requires students to learn and carry forward concepts, it asks them to develop muscles which can shoulder the pedagogical load ever more efficiently. In the every succeeding stage, the theoretical courses become more mathematical and more abstract (while the experimental courses become more realistic, with some apparatus in upper course labs being notorious for not working due to their practical complexity). Eventually, students are expected to be able to learn or 'catch on' to a physics topic with a minimal number of examples, at a level of advanced mathematical abstraction, and without the need for extensive discussion. These are the hallmarks of an independent thinking physicist, though in my opinion cooking up multiple examples, making mathematical abstractions as concrete as possible, and delving into subtleties are very useful tools in the learning of physics as well.

This is a post about my visit to the museum housing the scientific collection of C. V. Raman , the Nobel laureate in Physics, after whom the famous Raman effect is named. I got to see the museum in the summer of 2023 during a visit to the Raman Research Institute ( RRI ) in Bangalore, India and somehow did not get down to writing about it for almost a year. There were several interesting aspects to this visit. First : The museum is a special place, in the sense that it is not actually generally open for admittance. It opens to the public only on special days like National Science Day (Feb 28) in India. So you have to specifically request a viewing, and the request is more likely to be accepted if it goes through a faculty member at RRI (in this case my host). When I was visiting, the keeper of the museum had retired. But since he lived nearby, he was asked if he would be available to come over and open the galleries and give us a tour. Thankfully, he did. In fact he turned out to be an interesting person with very detailed and interesting information about the exhibits. Second : I was joined by some unexpected companions: a departmental colleague at RIT who happened to be visiting his family in Bangalore; and a professor from France who eventually invited me to visit his lab in Paris (I went, a few months later). Third : Raman was a great collector of gems and crystals: I have never seen so much bling in a scientist's stash. Raman was interested in their optical properties, and the display cases included rather expensive diamonds, amethysts, opals and rubies, among others. I was also shown some crystals which Raman acquired from an iron ore factory which was shutting down some distance away. Apparently these crystals form only when the furnaces are cooled below a certain temperature, and when he heard the factory was closing, Raman promptly presented himself to collect the specimens. The museum also contains many items that he collected in his tours worldwide and which he received as gifts from other countries. Fourth : Raman was also interested in acoustics, and the collection houses several musical instruments (I remember seeing string and percussion instruments in the museum, which he wrote physics papers on). This included a tabla , which the keeper, amazingly, allowed me to play to my heart's content (and to the amusement of my companions). Fifth : Raman was an obstinate (persistent?) character. The day he retired from the Indian Institute of Science, he moved to the RRI campus, which he had built as his 'scientific retirement' - a place where he could continue to perform research till basically his death. However, when he first moved in, there was no electricity in the Institute. The power company demanded a bribe, which Raman refused to pay. Instead, he built himself a device with a mirror that could track the sun throughout the day and reflect its light into his office, so he could work! The device was on display in the museum. (Eventually, I was told, electricity was provided). Sixth: The climax of the tour occurred in a room where the lights were switched off and UV lamps were turned on. A number of stones, which contain chemicals that fluoresce as a result of absorbing the UV light, lighted up in the dark and made for a colorful display (more bling). Postscript Overall, the impression the museum gives is that Raman was a scientist with intense curiosity and persistence (also idiosyncratic - there's a sign there that he used which says 'The Institute is not open to visitors. Please do not disturb us.') - inspiring!

This post is a review of the article ' Beyond The Big Bang Theory: Revealing the Everyday Research Lives of Theoretical Physics Faculty ' recently published in The Physics Teacher. One of the authors is my departmental colleague Prof. Ben Zwickl , a leading expert in the field of Physics Education Research (PER). The idea behind the article is to address the misconceptions that many students and perhaps even other faculty, not to say the general public, have about theoretical physicists (some of the stereotypes have been - profitably - promoted by shows like The Big Bang Theory ). Below I will summarize the findings of this paper, interspersed with some of my own observations. The Misconceptions i) The theoretical physicist is a 'lone genius' : This is largely not true. Most theoretical physicists are quite collaborative, especially those who are prolific (I should add that some, like myself, publish by themselves as well as in collaboration). In addition, many theoretical physicists (like myself, again) also collaborate closely with experimentalists. And most theoretical physicists - myself certainly included - are not geniuses. They are hardworking and capable people. Of course, there are a few exceptions, who are acknowledged (to be) geniuses. I'd like to recall a couple of quotes from Einstein in this regard. The first is 'I have no special gifts, I'm just curious.' The second is 'Most people think it is the intellect that makes the great scientist. They are wrong. It is the character.' ii) The theoretical physicist is socially awkward : I have almost never seen an example of this. In fact it is difficult to be awkward since physicists get so much practice in socializing (professionally). One is always interacting with colleagues in departments, at conferences, workshops, and talks; with students in class; with program managers at funding agencies. In fact, theoretical physicists love talking shop with each other whenever they get a chance. Some conference centers acknowledge this by covering the walls of their corridors with black/white boards because you never know when a discussion can break out. Even before technology (like computers and smart phones and airplanes) made contact easy, say in Europe in the 1930s, one finds the theoretical greats (Einstein, Lorentz, Bohr, Heisenberg...) always visiting each other. There is a word/phrase for it in German (I forget what it is exactly) which roughly translates to 'doing physics by walking', that is, by visiting other physicists. Before transport became easy with trains and cars, one finds a steady professional correspondence between the prominent scientists of the day (17th century: Newton-Leibniz-Hooke, 18th century: Cauchy-Laplace-Lagrange-Lame). Going back to the Greeks, Archimedes corresponded with scientists like Conon of Samos and Eratosthenes of Cyrene. iii) The life of a theoretical physicist is intellectually glamorous : Meaning that they make astonishing discoveries at breakneck rates, or else spend their time talking in fancy language about esoteric concepts. Neither is true, of course. A lot of struggle (sometimes ranging over years, even decades) goes into making progress. In fact, most theoretical physicists spend their time not feeling very smart (Feynman used to say he felt like a monkey with two sticks trying unsuccessfully to get to a fruit) as they are usually unable to solve the problem they are working on (Problems worthy of attack, said Paul Erdos , prove their worth by fighting back). And most (theoretical) physicists, rather than hiding behind obscure jargon, try to state things as simply as possible: this is almost an indispensable requirement for making progress in research. iv) The theoretical physicist has little common sense : This is a stereotype, but one which I find to be alarmingly popular in the world. Multiple times I have found myself in situations where everybody else in the room is a business or corporate person and on being told that I am a theoretical physicist, immediately assumes that I am completely unware of the ways of the world, that I have no business shrewdness, and that I can be fooled by even the most naive maneuvers. In such company, life suddenly becomes tedious; I sometimes think it might be better to introduce myself as the owner of a quantum startup, which is not far from the truth, and probably carries much more street cred. Not only do theoretical physicists have common sense, they have even been accused of having too much of it: Einstein was once complaining to Eddington about some physicists who were too slow to accept relativity. 'No,' replied Eddington, 'They have too much common sense.'

The Problem Peer review is a highly contentious topic in academia. This is because papers are published (always) and funds are granted (usually) after they have been peer reviewed. Sometimes (often?) the reviewers are in disagreement with the authors of the paper/grant proposal. This is generally fine if the disagreement is purely scientific. However, conflicts of interest often show up in these interactions, because the professionals best equipped to judge the paper/grant are often the competitors of the authors from the same or a closely related field. They are competing with the authors for scientific recognition (professional prestige) and money. In principle the reviewers can recuse themselves from judging, but often the prospect of striking down a competitor is simply too tempting - a plain Darwinian survival/climbing tactic. Even if this strike is delivered rather blatantly, the reviewers know that the journal editors/grant managers will be assuredly on their side because journals/agencies are overwhelmed with submissions/applications and want to quickly get rid of most of them. Thus, pretty much the whole academic enterprise operates on the cusp of this balance of expertise and self-interest on the part of the reviewers. Some would call it asking the fox to guard the henhouse. Some attempts at a Solution In order to allow for free criticism, the identities of the reviewers are usually withheld. Some journals offer 'double-blind' peer review, where the identities of the authors are also withheld. But it is not overly difficult from the contextual evidence (subject, references, etc.) to establish the authors' identities. Some journals also allow reviewers to state their names in their reports, in case they feel comfortable doing so. Some journals offer the option, to the authors, of posting the entire review correspondence after the paper is published. This, of course, avoids the issue of making public the sometimes unfair reviews which lead to rejection. A Different Possible Solution I think it is high time - and a good opportunity - that professional reviewing services were offered by companies set up explicitly for that purpose. Such a company would hire professional scientists from different fields, preferably with at least a postdoctoral degree, who are unaffiliated to any institutions (and recuse themselves from judging submissions from their alma maters - some cross reviewing would have to be done internally to ensure fairness). These scientists would, through the company, offer their services for unbiased refereeing to various journals and funding agencies. To keep up and extend their expertise, they would continually read the literature, and, if necessary, attend seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conferences. They may, while reviewing, choose to elicit the opinions of experts practicing in the field, but without divulging the explicit contents of the paper/grant they are judging. For example, they could say to an expert: "If someone sent in a paper claiming they had done so-and-so what questions would you ask of them?" This type of consultation, with the accumulation of time and expertise, would hopefully become rare. AI could possibly be used effectively here, as an additional unbiased resource. Postscript If paid well, this could be a very good career option for the professionals who choose this path; they could make a good industrial salary while still remaining intimately connected to academia, and in fact playing a crucial role in advancing science. One can think of evolving a grading rubric, with factors such as originality and impact, degree of technical advance, interest to general public...which these companies could generate, so any paper/grant processed by them would carry away a meaningful stamp useful to other agencies. Papers (which often end up taking months for a single page of review report to arrive because the professor was busy with other duties) and grants would receive much more prompt attention. The conflicts of interest would go down dramatically. This might mean more papers/grants receiving favorable reviews, but ultimate acceptance/awardance rates could be regulated by journal editors and program managers. Postpostcript The company need not be very big. In 2020 there were 10,000 FTE (full-time equivalent) physics faculty in the US. If each employee of the company was able to take the reviewing load of 10 such faculty, this would lead to a company of 1000 employees; AI could probably trim this down to 200. That's just for physics...there could be a company for medicine, one for engineering, one for chemistry....