物理学史与哲学

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.

Many authors noted that the principle of relativity, together with space-time symmetries, suffices to derive Lorentz-like coordinate transformations between inertial frames. These contain a free parameter, $k$, (equal to $c^{-2}$ in special…

Celebrating 170th anniversary of the discovery of Neptune, I review the story of the discovery that startled the world. The story is an interplay of scientific triumph and human weakness and an example of how science works in a…

In memory of Guido Altarelli I present my personal recollections of the early times and his major role played in the development of QCD.

I shall discuss the history of Indian astronomy, Aurveda (life science), chemistry and metallurgy to illustrate how downgrading experiments from scientific learning lead to the decline of ancient Indian science and civilization. We shall…

Summer vacations in the Dolomites were a tradition among the professors of the Faculty of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Roma since the end of the XIX century. Beyond the academic walls, people like Tullio…

This paper argues that non-self-adjoint operators can be observables. There are only four ways for this to occur: non-self-adjoint observables can either be normal operators, or be symmetric, or have a real spectrum, or have none of these…

Summer 2015 marked the 100th anniversary of the excavation by J.W. Fewkes of the Sun Temple in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado; an ancient ceremonial complex of unknown purpose, prominently located atop a mesa, constructed by the Pueblo…

It is conventionally thought that New Zealand's distance from the large, northern hemisphere centres of learning, and our relatively small population and wealth, are detrimental to the contribution we can make to the advancement of…

We summarize the papers published by Einstein in the Annalen der Physik in the years 1902-04 on the derivation of the properties of thermal equilibrium on the basis of the mechanical equations of motion and of the calculus of probabilities.…

The canopy of stars is a central presence in the daily and spiritual lives of Aboriginal Tasmanians. With the arrival of European colonists, Tasmanian astronomical knowledge and traditions were interrupted and dispersed. Fragments can be…

This is, with minor modifications, a text read at the 114th Statistical Mechanics meeting, in honor of D.Ruelle and Y.Sinai, at Rutgers, Dec.13-15, 2015. It does not attempt to analyze, or not even just quote, all works of David Ruelle; I…

The search for the left-handed $W^{\pm}$ bosons, the proposed quanta of the weak interaction, and the Higgs boson, which spontaneously breaks the symmetry of unification of electromagnetic and weak interactions, has driven…

Song and dance are a traditional means of strengthening culture and passing knowledge to successive generations in the Torres Strait of northeastern Australia. Dances incorporate a range of apparatuses to enhance the performance, such as…

In 1963, Eugene Paul Wigner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry…

The trial and condemnation of Giordano Bruno was mainly based on arguments of philosophical and theological nature, and therefore different from Galilei's. Such elements contribute to unfairly devalue the scientific contribution of Bruno…

Applied optics was one of the major topics Hans Walter was engaged in during his scientific life. He contributed to the understanding of optical properties of thin films, which could be used to design coating layers to improve the…

Einstein was deeply puzzled by the success of natural science, and thought that we would never be able to explain it. He came to this conclusion on the ground that we cannot extract the basic laws of physics from experience using induction…

This review describes the discovery of gravitational waves. We recount the journey of predicting and finding those waves, since its beginning in the early twentieth century, their prediction by Einstein in 1916, theoretical and experimental…

Some European scholars in the second half of 18th century discussed the myth of Atlantis taking into account the studies of the evolution of the Earth and of the beginning and diffusion of civilization, in particular the beginning of…