Related papers: Memories of a Theoretical Physicist
The paper is dedicated to the memory of prominent theoretical physicist and mathematician Dr. Vadim Kuznetsov who worked, in particular, in the fields of the nonlinear dynamics, separation of variables, integrability theory, special…
In this opening talk I will address some issues that exemplify the theoretical progress that has been made and is to be expected in the field of meson-nucleon physics. My emphasis will be on performing precision calculations to test aspects…
These are author's recollections of informal discussions on foundations of quantum mechanics, which happened in his presence in 1970-80s
Dedication to my untimely departed friends, Dmitry Igorevich Diakonov, Viktor Yur'evich Petrov and Maxim Vladimirovich Polyakov.
This is a philosophy-intense physics article, or, if you wish, a physics-intense philosophy article. Also, being a mathematician, I tend to view the physics, in particular the essence of quantum physics, in emphasizing the mathematical…
On the occasion of the celebration of the first half-century of Yang--Mills theories, I am contributing a personal recollection of how the subject, in its early times, confronted physical reality, that is, its "phenomenology". There is…
I provide a critical commentary regarding the attitude of the logician and the philosopher towards the physicist and physics. The commentary is intended to showcase how a general change in attitude towards making scientific inquiries can be…
These notes on string theory are based on a series of talks I gave during my graduate studies. As the talks, this introductory essay is intended for young students and non-string theory physicists.
This work examines how experiences in one disciplinary domain (biology) can impact the relationship a student builds with another domain (physics). We present a model for disciplinary relationships using the constructs of identity, affect,…
The present discussion concerning certain fundamental physical theories (such as string theory and multiverse cosmology) has reopened the demarcation problem between science and non-science. While parts of the physics community see the…
Axions are an increasingly popular topic in theoretical physics, and are sparking a global experimental effort. In the following I review the motivations for the existence of axions, the theories underlying them, and the methods to search…
I had the marvelous good fortune to be Ken Wilson's graduate student at the Physics Department, Cornell University, from 1972 to 1976. In this article, I present some recollections of how this came about, my interactions with Ken, and…
We present our personal histories with Michael Fisher. We describe how each one of us first came to Cornell University. We also discuss our many subsequent interactions and successful collaborations with him on various physics projects.
There is a huge number of excellent and comprehensive textbooks on quantum mechanics. They mainly differ for the approach, more or less oriented to the formalism rather than to the phenomenology, as well as for the topics covered. These…
This article is a slightly expanded version of the talk I delivered at the Special Plenary Session of the 46-th Annual Meeting of the Israel Physical Society (Technion, Haifa, May 11, 2000) dedicated to Misha Marinov. In the first part I…
In the Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, " 'I' is not the name of a person, nor 'here' of a place, .... But they are connected with names. ... [And] it is characteristic of physics not to use these words." This…
As students pursue a bachelor's degree in physics, they may ponder over which area to specialize in, such as theory, computation, or experiment. Often students develop preferences and dislikes, but it's unclear when this preference…
I consider the "Quantum Bayesian" view of quantum theory as expounded in a 2006 paper of Caves, Fuchs, and Schack. I argue that one can accept a generally personalist, decision-theoretic view of probability, including probability as…
String theorists are certain that they are practicing physicists. Yet, some of their recent critics deny this. This paper argues that this conflict is really about who holds authority in making rational judgment in theoretical physics. At…
This is the first expression of my thoughts and my experiments with Nature about the mathematical description of the Universe. The theories about our surrounding Nature became popular from our ancient civilizations and may be from the…