Related papers: Henry Eyring: Statistical Mechanics, Significant S…
"I have dealt with many different transformations with various periods of time, but the quickest that I have met was my own transformation in one moment from a physicist to a chemist." Ernest Rutherford (Nobel Banquet, 1908) This article is…
Stephen Hawking's contributions to the understanding of gravity, black holes and cosmology were truly immense. They began with the singularity theorems in the 1960s followed by his discovery that black holes have an entropy and consequently…
Quantum mechanics has been argued to be a coarse-graining of some underlying deterministic theory. Here we support this view by establishing a map between certain solutions of the Schroedinger equation, and the corresponding solutions of…
In the late seventies an increasing interest in the scaling theory of Anderson localization led to new efforts to understand the conductance of systems which scatter electrons elastically. The conductance and its relation to the scattering…
The notion of entropy penetrates much of science. A key feature of the all-important notion of Boltzmann-Gibbs-Shannon entropy is its extensivity (additivity over independent subsystems). However, there is a need for other quantities. In…
Quantum correlations between two parties are essential for the argument of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen in favour of the incompleteness of quantum mechanics. Schr\"odinger noted that an essential point is the fact that one party can…
A sketch of three senses of emergence and a suggestive view on the emergence of time and the direction of time is presented. After trying to identify which issues philosophers interested in emergent phenomena in physics view as important I…
We propose a comprehensive bibliometric study of the profile of Nobel prizewinners in chemistry and physics from 1901 to 2007, based on citation data available over the same period. The data allows us to observe the evolution of the…
The ideas and results that are in the background of the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics had an immense impact on our understanding of reality. Therefore, it is crucial that these implications reach also the general public, not only the…
The notion of objective probability or chance, as a physical trait of the world, has proved elusive; the identification of chances with actual frequencies does not succeed. An adequate theory of chance should explain not only the connection…
I share some reminiscences of the late Steven Weinberg. Then I discuss a topic in quantum field theory which he taught me: the role of state wave functionals in deriving the $i\epsilon$ term of the Feynman propagator when using the…
Breiman challenged statisticians to think more broadly, to step into the unknown, model-free learning world, with him paving the way forward. Statistics community responded with slight optimism, some skepticism, and plenty of disbelief.…
The famous gedanken experiments of quantum mechanics have played crucial roles in developing the Copenhagen interpretation. They are studied here from the perspective of standard quantum mechanics, with no ontological interpretation…
A substantial school in the philosophy of science identifies Bayesian inference with inductive inference and even rationality as such, and seems to be strengthened by the rise and practical success of Bayesian statistics. We argue that the…
Feyerabend frequently discussed physics. He also referred to the history of the subject when motivating his philosophy of science. Alas, as some examples show, his understanding of physics remained superficial. In this respect, Feyerabend…
Schelling's model of segregation demonstrates that even in the absence of social or governmental interventions, individuals with mild in-group preferences can self-organize into strongly segregated neighborhoods. Many variants of this…
What factors affect a scientist's choice of research problem? Qualitative research in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science suggests that this choice is shaped by an "essential tension" between the professional demand for…
Non-relativistic quantum theory is derived from information codified into an appropriate statistical model. The basic assumption is that there is an irreducible uncertainty in the location of particles: positions constitute a configuration…
Geometrical formulation of classical mechanics with forces that are not necessarily potential-generated is presented. It is shown that a natural geometrical "playground" for a mechanical system of point particles lacking Lagrangian and/or…
An intense investigation of possible non-Fermi liquid states of matter has been inspired by two of the most intriguing phenomena discovered in the past quarter century, namely high temperature superconductivity and the fractional quantum…