Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
21 - How not to create tigers, August 1999
from Part One - Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2016
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
Summary
O ew'ge Nacht! Wann wirst du schwinden? Wann wird das Licht mein Auge finden?
–TaminoLong-time readers of Physics Today may recall a series of conversations with my opinionated friend and colleague Professor Mozart, reported in Reference Frame columns early in this decade (Chapters 8, 9, 11, 12, and 13.) In answer to inquiries about his long silence, I can now reveal that Mozart mysteriously disappeared at the height of the Gingrich revolution in late 1995, demoralized by the growing obsession with “strategic research.” I have just learned and am happy to report that he is alive and well, the proprietor of a small tobacco plantation in central Connecticut.
I had transcribed one of my last conversations with Bill Mozart in early 1995, but before I could negotiate his permission to report it in these pages, he vanished without a trace. As soon as I rediscovered his whereabouts, I sent him a brief note of inquiry, enclosing the text reproduced below, and was delighted to get it back decorated with the familiar scrawl I had despaired of ever seeing again: “PT-OK-WAM.” I am publishing our four-year-old conversation today both for the insight it sheds on the state of mind that led so productive a physicist to drop out of the profession at so early an age, and also because Professor Mozart's views on the state of our discipline in the mid-1990s remain relevant to the difficult situation in which we find ourselves today, at the brink of the new millennium.
A little background: Several years before the conversation reported below, Professor Mozart had become deeply involved in satisfying the congressional demand for international assistance in the construction of the Superconducting Super Collider. In seeking contributions from abroad he had given free range to his prodigious imagination, and for several years after the cancellation of that visionary undertaking, he was fully occupied with the unwinding of his far-flung operations. His normally sunny disposition was clouded by his ongoing dismay at the failure of the great dream.
To aid younger readers in understanding what follows, I should also explain that well into the mid-1990s there were people—even a few in the State Department—who remembered that Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, […]
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- Why Quark Rhymes with PorkAnd Other Scientific Diversions, pp. 147 - 153Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016