Murray Gell-Mann - Fermi (37/200)
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- Опубликовано: 1 июн 2016
- To listen to more of Murray Gell-Mann’s stories, go to the playlist: • Murray Gell-Mann (Scie...
New York-born physicist Murray Gell-Mann (1929-2019) was a theoretical physicist. His considerable contributions to physics include the theory of quantum chromodynamics. He was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. [Listener: Geoffrey West; date recorded: 1997]
TRANSCRIPT: He kept a little notebook with useful formulae, which were all exact-perfect. Every factor of two correct, every sign correct, every dimension correct, everything was right. He never put anything into his little notebook that he carried around with him without making sure it was perfectly correct. And that made it possible for him to do a lot of practical problems just on being asked because he had worked them out before and some of the critical formulae were in his little book. Most things he had thought about before in some form or other, most questions in physics were questions… were… were new forms of questions that he had already answered. And so if you asked him something he would begin at the top left of the blackboard and write line after line and then later on, perhaps at the bottom right or else before that, he would get the answer and put a box around it. And the answer was always correct; he never made any mistakes. A greater contrast with Viki Weisskopf could not be imagined. Everything Viki wrote was modular powers of two, powers of pi, powers of i-the numerator and denominator could well be interchanged. I remember when in a nuclear theory class he tried to derive the resonance formula…
[GW] The Breit-Wigner? The Breit-Wigner formula?
The Breit-Wigner formula, which in atomic theory was called the Weisskopf-Wigner formula. Breit and Wigner sort of generalized it to nuclear theory, but it was exactly the same formula as the Weisskopf-Wigner formula in atomic theory. Well, he got it all wrong, just completely wrong. The… the numerator was in the denominator, the denominator was in the numerator, the sign was wrong, the values, there were factors of two and pi floating around. So he said ‘Well’, he said,’ this time I haven't prepared, I have to admit, I haven't prepared this lecture, so… but next time I'll come in prepared and I'll derive it correctly’. Well he came in next time and again he tried to derive it and failed again. Now of course every student in that class learnt how to derive the formula. So it was much more effective than Julian Schwinger's smooth presentation, which really didn't leave you learning anything because he glossed over all the difficulties and presented only a very smooth picture of what was happening. Really didn't leave you with much of an idea of how to do it yourself, whereas Viki's mistakes were very educational. Now Fermi got everything right, but he wasn't a formalism person at all. He just calculated things usually with arithmetic, and got the answer by some trick that was very, very simple. However, it was a trick, and it was based on the fact that he had solved the problem several times before in different guises and put the… put the answers in his little notebook. So that it was a little hard to learn from him also because you would-if you were to do the problem yourself- you would have to invent that trick, which was not necessarily so easy. He didn't do it in, he didn't do a problem in a general way so that you would immediately recognize that that was the same way that you would do the problem. He had his own little twist, which you would have had to invent if you were to do it yourself. Anyway, it was all fine. But if you asked him a question to which he didn't know the answer, then things got much more difficult. He was not so happy about that and the discussion became difficult, and very interesting, but difficult. And of course I asked him fairly often things that he didn't, questions to which he didn't really know the answer, and we had some very interesting discussions as a result. 
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A true great of physics. What a memory and mind! Thanks for the quarks!
Vikii!!!!!!!! I wish I'd heard this about Victor Weisskopf earlier, I always lectured thinking I had to be like Schwinger or Feynman. So wrong. Weisskopf is a saint among physicists.
Reading the Quark and the Jaguar, it becomes apparent how brilliant Murray Gell-Man was, how diverse his interests were. I wish I could have met him.
Found the book in a 2nd hand store. Absolutely wonderful book!
I was lucky enough to take his advanced topic seminar for a year. I remember a few gems, but have forgotten more.
this guy is so fascinating....by opening up this specific world so much. Pretty personal, but exactly this is a great deal of the game. Great videos..
Interestingly the University of Chicago scanned a bunch of Fermi's notebooks, so if you're curious you can go and read them. One of them (not sure which, there are several) is probably the exact notebook Gell-Mann is talking about here. Isn't the Internet great?
You are awesome!!
Reminds me of one of my first-year maths lecturers, who was in the habit of writing absolutely everything on the board for everyone to copy, would begin every lecture by saying "in my previous lecture there were 6 errors" (or 3 or 8 or whatever). He would then write out the correct versions on the board. Someone in the class got a look at his notes one day and noticed that they were all dated, the oldest lecture being from 17 years earlier: he had never corrected the notes in which he made the errors.
Little late but I wish his family the best R.I.P
Nauseating little geek.
What this man seems not to be willing to ackowledge is that finding a connection between two apparently separate things is one of the possible definitions of intelligence. On many different levels. What Fermi did, although on one single case could seem just a "trick", was the result of a clear vision and of a deep understanding of what he knew. Indeed not a simple thing to reach. Many testify that he was not interested in complexity by itself, he always tried to simlplify a matter so to reach its core.
Well said. Further, I don’t like the word “tricks” in this context. I believe “insight”’is more appropriate.
He criticises almost everybody .
can somebody find that notebook and publish it
I’m not smart enough to know the difference, so would appreciate some insight here from physicists who know better. Is Gell-Mann throwing some humble-brag shade here on Fermi, or is it just the scientist “telling it like it is” delivery, which they get but we laymen interpret as rude or harsh?
I'm wondering the same, I add on the question
It’s both. MGM is all about humble bragging bht it also could be largely true.
Gell-Man walked around with a chip on his shoulder, so he’s always pointing out people’s mistakes. But unlike with Feynman, he seems to genuinely like Fermi and Viki. Based on this snippet, I see him saying how prepared and meticulous Fermi was and how, in a strange way, that Viki tried his best to give a general picture of the derivation of certain formula.
It may have been hard for the legendary Fermi to have a 23 year old Gell-Mann asking him questions he couldn't answer. Even worse, Gell-Mann then answered one of them on his own. And then Gell-Mann discovered that while Fermi was acting like Gell-Mann hadn't solved it, Fermi was writing to another physicist "Gell-Mann is right." So as much Gell-Mann liked Fermi, he can justifiably be a little annoyed with him.
His voice is similar to Carl Sagan
This was preceded by a Lady Gaga AD.
Universe trying to find a balance.
Fermi never had any scientific contact with Gellman, so I could record such an interview about Fermi.
how do you know? How would he know these stories?
He worked at Chicago before Fermi passed in '54. They were both physicists, so it's not much of a stretch to assume they had some scientific contact given Fermi's breadth of physics knowledge and how much Gell-mann could've learnt from him.
i'm viki
It seems don't a bad people.
Why is he shitting on Julian Schwinger so much in this entire video series?
Jealousy
He always hates on Schwinger lmao. Schwinger was probably orders of magnitude greater than he in physics, and maybe as a person too
Based on what are you claiming that he is better than Gell-Mann? Stories you heard on the Internet
Physics is NOT mathematics in which it can't always narrate in terms of equations. x^2=y is deemed to be a "valid" equation by many but it is not a function. Why? When y's are prime numbers then x's will be all irrational numbers, which implies that they aren't attainable. Thus, those irrational numbers should be excluded from those points. In reality there are not many functions around except mx+c=y is the only true function. This also implies that a lot of mathematics equations in physics that we presumed to be correct are actually wrong because they aren't functions. This included Einstein's famous equation, E=mc^2 which formed the foundation of modern physics. Einstein's famous equation is wrong otherwise garbage also can be used to make nuclear bombs as long as it is matter o it has mass. Energy and matter can't interchange one another according to Einstein's famous equation. One must have photons before one can emit out photons. Photons are particles and they have mass. This reality tells us that all EMWs includes light are dynamic photons per volume per time in different saturations. It's no longer true that light is either particles or waves depending on conditions. Light is dynamic photons per volume per time all the while. How come we even get the basics to be wrong? Stupid or what? If you are interested in real discoveries, I would recommend you to read my book, The Unification Theory - Volume One and you will be amazed with lots of new, interesting discoveries. In God I trust. .
Kok Fah Chong - You must have flunked your math courses if you don’t even know what a function is.
I like this comment. Meaningless and false, but somehow interesting to read.
Photons have mass? News to almost everyone. If photons have mass, how is it that they can travel at the speed of light?
Instead of advising us to read your book, please take an advice, start reading some school textbook.
Don't make the Commentbox a trash bin, as it is in other youtube videos. Maintain the dignity of the video of a great man.
Pills? Take it.