Related papers: Autobiographical Notes of a Physicist
Quantum information is an emerging field which has attracted a lot of attention in the last fifteen years or so. It is a broad subject which covers from the most applied questions (e.g., how to build quantum computers or secure…
Defining interdisciplinary physics today requires first a reformulation of what is physics today, which in turn calls for clarifying what makes a physicist. This assessment results from my forty year journey arguing and fighting to build…
These notes are an elaboration on: (i) a short course that I gave at the IPhT-Saclay in May-June 2012; (ii) a previous letter on reversibility in quantum mechanics. They present an introductory, but hopefully coherent, view of the main…
The following annotated bibliography contains a reasonably complete survey of contemporary work in the philosophy of astrophysics. Spanning approximately forty years from the early 1980s to the present day, the bibliography should help…
This is an invited contribution to the Special Issue of "Foundations of Physics" titled "Forty Years Of String Theory: Reflecting On the Foundations". I have been asked to assess string theory as an outsider, and to compare it with the…
Personal view of author on goals and content of Mathematical Physics.
The talk presents the main lines of biography of the prominent physicist and bright personality. Also given is a necessarily brief description of Gribov's scientific work.
After reviewing the role of phase in quantum mechanics, I discuss, with the aid of a number of unpublished documents, the development of quantum phase operators in the 1960's. Interwoven in the discussion are the critical physics questions…
This book includes my lectures, together with their problem sets and solutions, on 1) classical mechanics (one semester), 2) thermodynamics and statistical mechanics (one semester), and 3) quantum mechanics (one semester), which I have been…
We outline the course of affairs in the experimental and theoretical fields of nuclear and particle physics which determined its finale, and give several fragmentary remarks on its present state. The essay tells about events and their…
In 1963-71, a group of people, myself included, formulated and perfected a new approach to physics problems, which eventually came to be known under the names of scaling, universality, and renormalization. This work formed the basis of a…
Motivated by issues in string theory and M-theory, we provide a pedestrian introduction to automorphic forms and theta series, emphasizing examples rather than generality.
The article is an historical overview of some of the major contributions from different areas of Science with which, for centuries, it has been built up a scientific, sound and consistent vision of the atom. Some experiments that led us to…
Some basic sociophysical notions are described by a physicist, tentatively for a sociologically-oriented reader.
I present an elementary essay on some issues related to nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, which is written in the spirit of extreme simplicity, making it an easy-to-read paper. Moreover, one can find a useful collection of ideas and…
This is the first of a series of papers that we intend to publish about the epistemology of fundamental physics in its current state. One of the main objectives of these papers is to improve our understanding of fundamental physics (and…
1. Introduction - 2. Astrophysics and Cosmology - 3. Neutrino Oscillations - 4. Higgs and New Physics Searches - 5. Flavour Physics and CP Violation - 6. QCD - 7. Heavy Ion Collisions - 8. Outlook
Physicists engage with the public to varying degrees at different stages of their careers. However, their public engagement covers many activities, events, and audiences, making their motivations and professional development needs not well…
The origins of Sociophysics are discussed from a personal testimony. I trace back its history to the late seventies. My twenty years of activities and research to establish and promote the field are reviewed. In particular the conflicting…
This paper addresses issues related to the process of informal socialization into physics, particularly for senior graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. Many physicists' careers are built on the relationships they have and develop…