14 ms·

The sad story of Heisenberg's doctoral oral exam (1998)

• bowsamic 4y ago
  > In his laboratory work Heisenberg had to use a Fabry-Perot interferometer, a device for observing the interference of light waves, on which Wien had lectured extensively. But Heisenberg had no idea how to derive the resolving power of the interferometer nor, to Wien's surprise, could he derive the resolving power of such common instruments as the telescope and the microscope. When an angry Wien asked how a storage battery works, the candidate was still lost. Wien saw no reason to pass the young man, no matter how brilliant he was in other fields. As a physicist, I feel like standards were much higher then! There's no way you would fail a student these days for not being able to derive something on the spot or know anything about a subject that isn't directly related to their PhD topic Also a great illustration at points here of "imposter syndrome", or really that Heisenberg actually _was_ an imposter in certain senses. I understand it all too well. Being a physicist, or any kind of scientist, can be extremely emotional taxing and alienating > When Heisenberg derived the uncertainty relations several years later, he used the resolving power of the microscope to derive the uncertainty relations-and he still had difficulty with it! And again, when Bohr pointed out the error, it led to emotional difficulties for Heisenberg.
  • zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    It’s true of any profession. Most people only learn the exact skills they need for their very specific job. If you ask them about anything slightly out of the way they won’t know. (Some people are exceptions of course) I think it’s one of the downsides of economic specialization. Although the upsides probably outweigh it substantially.
    • tom-thistime 4y ago
      I don't think Heisenberg was necessarily a narrow specialist, trained for just one job. He was one of the inventors of a whole new theory of mechanics.
      • bowsamic 4y ago
        Why would that imply he wasn't a narrow specialist?
        • mannykannot 4y ago
          There is a very real sense that what he was a 'specialist' in was figuring out what's fundamental to all of physics - so not so narrow.
          • bowsamic 4y ago
            Well yeah but that is more of a coincidence that he happened to be a specialist in something with wide effects. QM had implications far beyond just those fundamentals, but I would imagine that he would not have known much about those fields that QM ended up having an effect on. For example, did he know much about optics, which was one of the fields most heavily affected by QM? The widespread impact of your field and the specificity of actually working in your field are two very different things.
            • mannykannot 4y ago
              Coincidence?
              • bowsamic 4y ago
                Meaning that he happened to work on something that had widespread effect, he didn’t plan for it. It was luck that quantum mechanics was so successful
                • mannykannot 4y ago
                  I think it is clear that Heisenberg, Sommerfeld, Born and others at the forefront of theoretical physics at the time were well aware of how important and far-reaching the issues that comprised Heisenberg's real work were. As explained in the article, his diversion into hydrodynamics was purely to secure a doctorate from a physics establishment which had not yet caught up to this fact, and I would say that, if anything, it is this establishment which suffered a surfeit of narrow specializations.
  • psychphysic 4y ago
    I'm not convinced people fail PhD viva all the time. It's only a real fail if they tell you to give up
    • bowsamic 4y ago
      Indeed in modern times you will know far in advanced whether or not you will pass
    • oh_my_goodness 4y ago
      Traditionally that's the defense, not the oral qualifying exam.
• qwerty456127 4y ago
  "oral exam" sounds funny. I can't help but imagine a person (whom I visualize as Bryan Cranston for obvious reason) examining someone with their mouth or having their mouth examined :-]
  • not_gpt4 4y ago
    Hes correct. It should be "verbal exam".
    • tom-thistime 4y ago
      In fact, though, it's "oral exam." But it does sound funny.
      • not_gpt4 4y ago
        language, in fact, evolves. a rectal exam involves examining the examining the rectal cavity, so a oral exam should be reserved for examining the oral cavity.
        • tom-thistime 4y ago
          I agree in general, but disagree on the details. In an oral exam, a student answers questions orally. That's how language has evolved so far. I can't imagine a situation where a committee of professors would need to examine a granduate student's rectum to evaluate knowledge, so the "rectal exam" above is poorly named. To further advance linguistic evolution, "rectal exam" should be reserved for occasions when the student is required to pronounce words rectally in response to questions in his or her field of study. That happens more often than you might think, plus it makes everything consistent.
    • Retric 4y ago
      No, oral is more clear. We also say something is an oral tradition not a verbal tradition because one of the definitions of oral is “Spoken rather than written.” One of the mean songs for Verbal is “Of, relating to, or associated with words.” So a written test could be a verbal test.
• vjust 4y ago
  TIL that a brilliant physicist nearly failed his physics exam (sort of). What is revealing is the broad-based knowledge that was expected of any student of those times. Unlike the super-specialities of today. A career in such fields (rather in any field) in those days required total dedication to academics. Also the importance of oral arguments and oral debate.
  • someweirdperson 4y ago
    Broad? Limited to the fields of the professors, like today. The story talks about the FPI, and an extensive lecture by one of the examiners about this topic. Like today, expect professors to ask about their favorite topics. The FPI seems suitable for a 1st year physics course today, if not even at school. That example shows how one-sided his interests were, not how much of everything was expected.
    • gowld 4y ago
      How many people who know how an FPI works could also explain quantum mechanics?
  • harveywi 4y ago
    There are plenty of petty turds in academia today who do similar things, ruining the careers and significantly negatively impacting the lives of students. When they decide that they do not like a student (for _any_ reason), they have unchecked means to make that student's life miserable, make them jump through extra hoops, get them removed from the program, psychologically torment them, etc.
    • psychphysic 4y ago
      I don't understand why this is the strongly held narrative here. Those are some pretty major misses for a PhD candidate physicist. He would have been forwarded of this since he was forced to take one of the exam panels courses!
    • mbrudd 4y ago
      100% accurate!
• tom-thistime 4y ago
  Really puts Heisenberg in context. No wonder he seems so bitter.
  • Victerius 4y ago
    I didn't know Prof. Wien had a HN account.
    • tom-thistime 4y ago
      My comment was actually a sort of Dad Joke based on Breaking Bad, not a slap at Werner Heisenberg the physicist.
• CarbonCycles 4y ago
  Really appreciate articles like these...it somewhat reflects how society expects people to conform, but it's always the outliers that manage to change the world. Thank you for sharing...
• deleted 4y ago
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• abhv 4y ago
  A Turing Award winner (keeping it anonymous) related a similar story to me about his phd qualifier exam (when I was taking mine). This winner is a theoretical computer scientist who skipped most of his computer hardware courses. Near the time of his graduation, he was informed that he needed to pass a hardware course because it was required for graduation. He worried; his advisor begged the hw professor to give him an oral exam in place, because he was a promising candidate with a faculty job already lined up and incredible published results. Unlike Wein, the hw professor was happy to oblige and created a basic oral exam, suspecting that the student was destined for greatness. The student desperately tried to cram the hw textbook, but his heart was simply not into the subject. He did however, get the main point of the entire field. This is when the funny part of the story begins. If you know this person, you know that he is remarkably clever, charming and convincing. He tells me that the hw professor had prepared a small number of questions, all beginning with something like, "explain how a XXX works in a YYY architecture", and that he really didn't know any details of XXX. He started by copying a basic diagram of a processor onto the board. He kept his answers short, he began each with quizzical look indicating that the question was obvious, and all answers included a remark along the lines of "Obviously, its for performance!" In some cases, while facing the professor, he would point backwards to a spot between components in the diagram. He would slowly move his finger to different areas based on the look on the professor's face. The hw professor was amused and obviously passed the candidate! TLDR: don't let classes get in the way of your education.
  • kwhitefoot 4y ago
    Brilliant! There are good people in the world after all!
  • nothrowaways 4y ago
    Nice story, except the TLDR.
    • keeganpoppen 4y ago
      it's a Mark Twain reference fwiw
  • 4y ago
• Victerius 4y ago
  Let's have some fun. Here's a basic special relativity problem from John R. Taylor's Classical Mechanics. A space explorer A sets off at a steady 0.95c to a distant star. After exploring the star for a short time, he returns at the same speed and gets home after a total absence of 80 years (as measured by earth-bound observers.) How long do A's clocks say that he was gone, and by how much has he aged as compared to his twin B who stayed behind on earth? [Note: This is the famous "twin paradox." It is fairly easy to get the right answer by judicious insertion of a factor of γ in the right place, but to understand it, you need to recognize that it involves three inertial frames: the earth-bound frame S, the frame S' of the outbound rocket, and the frame S'' of the returning rocket. Write down the time dilation formula for the two halves of the journey and then add. Notice that the experiment is not symmetrical between the two twins: B stays at rest in the single inertial frame S, but A occupies at least two different frames. This is what allows the result to be unsymmetrical.]
  • selimthegrim 4y ago
    Hint: thinking about what happens when the acceleration changes makes this problem more straightforward
  • pantalaimon 4y ago
    ChatGPT says: The time dilation formula tells us that the time experienced by a moving clock will appear slower to a stationary observer by a factor of $\gamma$, where $\gamma = \frac{1}{\sqrt{1 - v^2/c^2}}$ and $v$ is the speed of the moving clock and $c$ is the speed of light. In this case, the speed of the space explorer's rocket is 0.95c, so $\gamma = \frac{1}{\sqrt{1 - 0.95^2}} = \frac{1}{\sqrt{0.0025}} \approx 7.071$. To determine how long the space explorer's clocks say that he was gone, we need to apply the time dilation formula to each half of the journey. Since the speed of the rocket is the same on the way out as it is on the way back, the value of $\gamma$ will be the same in both cases. First, let's consider the outbound leg of the journey. From the perspective of an observer on Earth, this journey takes 40 years. However, from the perspective of the space explorer, the time experienced on the outbound leg of the journey will be slower by a factor of $\gamma$, so the time experienced by the space explorer on this leg of the journey will be 40 years / $\gamma$ = $\frac{40}{7.071} \approx 5.648$ years. Now let's consider the inbound leg of the journey. From the perspective of an observer on Earth, this journey also takes 40 years. However, from the perspective of the space explorer, the time experienced on the inbound leg of the journey will also be slower by a factor of $\gamma$, so the time experienced by the space explorer on this leg of the journey will be 40 years / $\gamma$ = $\frac{40}{7.071} \approx 5.648$ years. To determine the total time experienced by the space explorer, we need to add the time experienced on the outbound leg of the journey to the time experienced on the inbound leg of the journey. This gives us a total time experienced by the space explorer of 5.648 years + 5.648 years = 11.296 years. To determine the difference in aging between the space explorer and their twin who stayed on Earth, we need to multiply the time experienced by the space explorer by $\gamma$. This gives us a difference in aging of 11.296 years * $\gamma$ = 11.296 years * 7.071 = 79.8 years. This means that the space explorer has aged 79.8 years less than their twin who stayed on Earth.
• ben_pfaff 4y ago
  These days, it is absolutely unheard of for someone to get a doctorate at age 21. I don't know whether it was unusual then.
  • f1shy 4y ago
    I know plenty “Industrie Dr.” 22 or 23 yo
  • rerx 4y ago
    Stephen Wolfram got it at age 20, in theoretical physics, from CalTech. (OK, that's also 40+ years ago by now)
  • nbernard 4y ago
    I'm not sure about unusual or not, but I believe it was (then and there) possible to start a doctorate right after graduating from high-school (if I remember correctly from a biography of J. von Neumann).
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• mbadros 4y ago
  I thought the story was that Heisenberg did not know either where the exam was, or when the exam was. :-)
  • kaffekaka 4y ago
    Oh he knew both, just not very precisely.
• WaitWaitWha 4y ago
  Interestingly, this type of entrenchment has not changed in my opinion. There is always a professor of distinguished, but long forgotten and superseded past-expertise on the orals. They will insist on nuanced competence in an area no longer necessary to forge ahead. They become petty and claw with every breath to maintain relevance, despite all the others on the panel fully aware of the opposite. Academia is a cesspool of barely-mediocrity, envy, and jealousy with pockets of brilliance flashing up time to time. In my opinion.
  • JadeNB 4y ago
    > There is always a professor of distinguished, but long forgotten and superseded past-expertise on the orals. Wait, are you claiming that knowledge of experimental physics is "long forgotten and superseded"? As a mathematician, I'm all for recognising the importance of theoretical physics, and think that there's no reason a good theoretical physicist has also to be a good experimental physicist—but I wouldn't go so far as casting experimental physics on the dustheap! From the relatively sparse information given, the questions asked, about the operation of basic optical instruments like the telescope and the microscope, do not seem like questions that are excessively recondite; they do seem to indicate a basis lack of competence as an experimental physicist (which Heisenberg neither was nor apparently much wanted to be).
    • WaitWaitWha 4y ago
      I think I did not make myself clear. When I read the article, I gathered that there was a necessity for expert in A to make orals in B because their style of presentation. To achieve acceptance at B, there were non-relevant to A requirements. Did I misunderstood?
      • mattkrause 4y ago
        I'd quibble with "non-relevant" The goal of qualifying exams to produce well-rounded students---or at least ensure that they are minimally aware of the major intellectual traditions in their field. It's not crazy to expect that a soon-to-be physics professor understands how a battery works, at least roughly.
• nothrowaways 4y ago
  Interesting article. We would see more contributios from him had he taken the offer of James Franck. Even probably a different view on the matters.
• ortusdux 4y ago
  I use to frequent a grad student bar that regularly held an open-mic night for people to practice their defense. It was brutal. A room full of drunk grad and post-grads would try and pick apart your presentation. Targeted academic heckling. It was great. The goal was to get over your fear of the whole process -no matter what, your actual defense would be a better experience.
  • gcr 4y ago
    gosh that sounds like fun, what school was this for? where was it?
  • skadamou 4y ago
    This is so awesome! I want to take part in something like this. It's probably great for grad students to practice asking questions to a presenter as well. So many young PhD students avoid asking questions during talks, especially in subjects they don't know very well, because they are nervous about asking a "dumb" question.
  • upheaval7276 4y ago
    Sounds like a "Murder Board" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_board
  • yummypaint 4y ago
    Many departments have some kind of "informal lunch talks" for and by grad students, particularly in the summer. People often practice their defenses there. The advantage is everyone is in your field so the grilling can be pretty close to what professors will focus on.
  • neilv 4y ago
    A comedian friend in LA said something like this is an institution there. You spend months/years hitting these clubs to test and refine a bit, while developing all the skills. Some audience make a sport of the heckling, especially some of the other aspiring comedians. (She said the worst hecklers were the drunk fratbros who imagined themselves comedians, and their own bits were the kind that only their friends would think were funny, but they sure would be demanding of others.) It was good practice, but brutal, especially if you're weary from living poor, and hanging in there while trying to make it in LA. Lots of parallels with grad school.
• Someone 4y ago
  Reminds me of who were on Fourier’s doctoral defense committee: Lagrange, Laplace, and Legendre, who all have a “list of things named after” page on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Joseph-Louis_Lagrange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Jos... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Pierre-Simon_Laplace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Pie... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Adrien-Marie_Legendre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Adr...
  • gowld 4y ago
    It was a good match, as Joseph Fourier does too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Joseph_Fourier https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_J...
  • klipt 4y ago
    And Fourier continued in that tradition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Joseph_Fourier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Jos...
  • hindsightbias 4y ago
    Wow, that defense should be a movie or something.
  • drooglyman 4y ago
    For what it's worth, I just spent ~10 minutes looking for a solid source on this and couldn't find confirmation. The closest I found was a bio[1], which includes the following: > The Institute set as a prize competition subject the propagation of heat in solid bodies for the 1811 mathematics prize. Fourier submitted his 1807 memoir together with additional work on the cooling of infinite solids and terrestrial and radiant heat. Only one other entry was received and the committee set up to decide on the award of the prize, Lagrange, Laplace, Malus, Haüy and Legendre, awarded Fourier the prize. So it's not entirely wrong, but I think that all-star team was not his defense committee. [1] https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Fourier https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Fourier
• alexfromapex 4y ago
  I think sad may be the wrong lens to look at this through. It obviously prepared him for large amounts of success in his career.
• javajosh 4y ago
  Cool story. The most important aspect of it, in my view, is that the problem of 'deriving the resolving power of an optical system' is a very interesting one that inspired Heisenberg and Bohr! I speculate that the way Wien taught it was by rote, and not fully understood, even by Wien.
• lifeisstillgood 4y ago
  >>> he still had difficulty with it! And again, when Bohr pointed out the error, it led to emotional difficulties for Heisenberg. This resonates with me deeply - knowledge that I "should" have known but are shamed for not knowing become massively harder to learn. I think I somehow label that area as "not part of my identity" and so if I need to learn it Indont have an intellectual challenge I have to resolve past trauma and adjust my view of myself. And accept past failings It's easier now but I see this in kids learning maths or in my own money management etc. We need to be kinder to ourselves.
  • feoren 4y ago
    > We need to be kinder to ourselves. Everyone else needs to be kinder to themselves. I, on the other hand, am a worthless piece of shit who deserves no kindness. Resolving that obvious hypocrisy would require me to accept that I'm "not special"; see, singling myself out as the sole human being who deserves to hate themselves keeps me in a special category. You already mentioned the real problem: > identity Yup, there it is. "Part of my identity" and "not part of my identity" are stupid and useless characterizations that we all, me included, cling to desperately. It's extremely freeing to give up parts of your own identity. I try, but it's hard. It feels like death ... but then if it works, it feels like a rebirth. Hating myself is one of the hardest parts of my identity to give up. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to. But let's all agree to ruthlessly murder those awful "I'm just not good at math" parts of our identities, and help everyone else murder their own. It's such an easy virus to catch, and so damaging.
    • shigawire 4y ago
      Psychedelics can help with this for some people.
• seanhunter 4y ago
  One of my favourite positive doctoral viva stories was Wittgenstein, who presented "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" as his dissertation, which had already been published and was already considered a masterpiece. The report was something like "We consider the work of Mr Wittgenstein to be the work of a genius. Nevertheless, it fulfills the criteria for a Cambridge doctorate". Edit to add: The actual quote (which I just found) was from G.E. Moore (Bertrand Russell was the other examiner): "I myself consider that this is a work of genius; but, even if I am completely mistaken and it is nothing of the sort, it is well above the standard required for the Ph.D. degree."
  • arglebarnacle 4y ago
    Very funny to me that on the way out of the room Wittgenstein allegedly "clapped the two examiners [Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore] on the shoulder and said, 'Don't worry, I know you'll never understand it.'"
    • ska 4y ago
      That seems on-brand, if off-base, for Wittgenstein; so perhaps he did.
    • my-god-hn 4y ago
      Probably because it was a bunch of nonsense. Wittgenstein has no place in the same sentence as Bertrand Russell.
      • kleiba 4y ago
        "When Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was originally published—in German in 1921, and in English in 1922—Bertrand Russell was much better known. In fact, Wittgenstein relied on Russell to get his manuscript published in the first place, and it was Russell’s introduction to the Tractatus that encouraged publishers to consider accepting it at all. While Wittgenstein was grateful for Russell’s efforts, he was dismayed by his introduction, feeling that not even his former professor understood him. For Russell’s part, he was by this time exhausted by his relationship with the young Austrian who had been his student at Trinity in the years leading up to the First World War." [1] [1] https://dearbertie.mcmaster.ca/letter/wittgenstein https://dearbertie.mcmaster.ca/letter/wittgenstein
• superposeur 4y ago
  Having just finished the epic Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes, my mind goes to a different place —- Heisenberg was at the core of the German bomb project. Speculatively, I wonder how things might have gone a different way had he been required to be a brilliant experimentalist too. Success versus failure hinged on nitty-gritty experimental details, not on sweeping theoretical insight. Probably not, but then again — Germany is where fission was discovered and an also a powerhouse of chemical engineering. Not all of German science fled the nazis.
  • vibrolax 4y ago
    I don't know. Having the theoretical and experimental physics talent was a necessary condition for producing the atomic bomb, but was not sufficient. What was lacking was a government willing and able to commit to a crash program building the novel industrial base for isotope separation, radiochemical separation, and all the other things detailed in Rhodes' (and others books).
    • superposeur 4y ago
      Agreed that this is low probability. But it did strike me that the Nazi brass were most interested in such a crash program, at one point declaring that it should be given top priority. What dissuaded them were the apparent failures of early efforts and lack of confidence of the scientists themselves — the scientists got hung up on use of heavy water as a neutron moderator, among other suboptimal practical decisions.
    • Nomentatus 4y ago
      It's true that the NAZI govt thought the war would be won or lost in a couple of years, so longer programs weren't much valued. But they invested in rockets which didn't come into play quickly. The German physicists told the govt the bomb was far off; but there's every reason to think the scientists knew better and deliberately fudged their calculations.
  • AaronM 4y ago
    You might also like Now it Can Be Told: the Story of the Manhattan Project by Leslie R. Groves I thought it did a good job at talking about how the Army made everything happen.
• jgerrish 4y ago
  It's not a sad story. It's a lesson to others. It's interesting how the story switches between reasons. To me, the most salient is: "could not overcome Heisenberg's complete lack of interest and gave up the effort". Attention to detail has been one of my largest issues in mistakes I've made, and this reminds me that sometimes that's what is required. And sometimes what's required is putting a draft on arxiv.org and waiting for the criticism or roast. Growing up in a house where your parent is worried about your performance in a subfield and reaches out to experts in the field. That's the complicated double-edged sword.
  • galaxyLogic 4y ago
    "could not overcome Heisenberg's complete lack of interest and gave up the effort" We all want to excel so naturally we pick topics which seem easy to us and thus can expect to excel further in them. If we did not do well in some topic earlier, we are not very interested in it, because the best we can hope is to do ok in that subject. I did not like "technical drawing" in my first year and so I found a way to pass without taking that course. Now I lament I didn't take it. But I wanted to excel, not be mediocre in something. I wish this psychological observation was taught to first year students.
    • galaxyLogic 4y ago
      Why Technical Drawing is important? Because anything we envision in our mind is in essence a 3-D model. If we can draw it on paper it helps to clarify our thoughts. We can not envision anything 4-D, can we? Being able to draw 3-D objects on paper(or computer) with correct perspective is invaluable I now think.
      • pvaldes 4y ago
        > We can not envision anything 4-D, can we? We definitely can draw 4-D in paper. It just needs much more work.
        • galaxyLogic 4y ago
• lqet 4y ago
  > The result was that Heisenberg received the lowest of three passing grades in physics and the same overall grade (cum laude) for his doctorate I don't think that's accurate - there are usually 4 passing grades for dissertations in Germany, the lowest passing grade being "rite". It would be surprising if "cum laude", which literally means "with praise", was the lowest passing grade at Heisenberg's university (edit: Wikipedia confirms 4 passing grades for Heisenberg's dissertation: "summa cum laude", "magna cum laude", "cum laude", and "passed" [0]). The standard grades for dissertations in Germany are "summa cum laude" (=very good with distinction), "magna cum laude" (=very good), "cum laude" (=good), "rite" (=sufficient), and "insuffizienter" (=failed). Some faculties have "satis bene" as an additional grade between "cum laude" and "rite". [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg#cite_note-2 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg#cite_note-2
  • max-ibel 4y ago
    Perhaps you have to read the OP in the spirit of Futurama: Professor Ogden Wernstrom : I give your invention the worst grade imaginable: an A-minus-minus.
• yummypaint 4y ago
  As a physicist i find this quite comforting. It's good to keep in mind that even the most transformative thinkers in the history of science had reasons to experience impostor syndrome. Einstein famously had a lot of trouble with math as well. No matter how good you are, physics will regularly present you with problems that you can't solve. Statistically speaking, most of the time spent doing science is spent being wrong. As soon as you figure a system out your work is essentially done and you move on to being wrong about a different problem. The psychology is very different from working problem sets, writing an app, or defending a political position, yet we don't really prepare students for these realities as we probably should.
  • jofer 4y ago
    > "Statistically speaking, most of the time spent doing science is spent being wrong. As soon as you figure a system out your work is essentially done and you move on to being wrong about a different problem." That's a remarkably good quote. Definitely very true. I would argue that grad students prepare pretty well for that, and it's one of the main mindset shifts you're expected to make in grad school vs undergrad. Regardless, though, it's not something that gets broad appreciation.
  • whatshisface 4y ago
    Hopefully you're not wrong but uncertain, if you were wrong you'd be confident you were right.
  • vient 4y ago
    > Einstein famously had a lot of trouble with math as well. Isn't it a myth? http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1936731_1936743_1936758,00.html http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,288...
    • sidlls 4y ago
      Most definitely a myth. The mathematics of the physics he worked on is not simple. But of course there is also the time honored and long standing friendly animosity between physicist math and "real" math, in which scant few physicists are "good at math."
• mjreacher 4y ago
  This reminds me of how Terence Tao almost failed his orals at Princeton. Turns out even the best in the field need to spend lots of time doing hard work. https://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/tao_terence https://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/tao_terence https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202007/rnoti-p1007.pdf https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202007/rnoti-p1007.pdf (less technical)
• codeulike 4y ago
  FAQ: The “Snake Fight” Portion of Your Thesis Defense https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-portion-of-your-thesis-defense https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-port...
• sbaiddn 4y ago
  "There is an interesting epilogue to this story. When Heisenberg derived the uncertainty relations several years later, he used the resolving power of the microscope to derive the uncertainty relations" Loved this part. They are pretty much the same :)
• simonblack 4y ago
  They were uncertain whether to give him a pass?
• hankman86 4y ago
  Not so much sad, but rather ignorant. Heisenberg knew that an experimental physicist would sit on the panel. What kind of questions did he expect to get asked? In those days, the expectation for a physics PhD was to be well-versed in different branches of the art. Think of this as you may, but it seems like Heisenberg simply didn’t prepare properly.
• throwaway81523 4y ago
  There is an even scarier story about Heisenberg, from late in WW2. From https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0096340211433019 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00963402114330... : > In November 1944, the OSS learned that Heisenberg planned to visit Switzerland the next month. Former major league baseball catcher and then OSS officer Moe Berg was dispatched to Zurich with orders that “Heisenberg must be rendered hors de combat” (out of action) if Heisenberg gave evidence that the German bomb effort was close to completion. Apparently Berg alone was to decide whether or not to kill Heisenberg (Powers, 1993: 391–392). > With a pistol in his pocket, Berg attended a lecture by Heisenberg, waiting for some sign of an advanced German atomic bomb program. Heisenberg offered no such signal and therefore survived. Instead, Berg reflected on his own “uncertainty principle” in regard to killing Heisenberg, a reference to the scientist’s most prominent contribution to the theory of quantum mechanics (Powers, 1993: 398–399). > Later that week, as the Battle of the Bulge turned to Allied advantage, Berg attended a dinner given for Heisenberg and heard him lament Germany’s coming loss of the war. This appeared to clinch the case that Heisenberg could not be part of a successful atomic bomb project and effectively ended any further US interest in killing him (Powers, 1993).
  • imbugene 4y ago
    Zes, I recall the movie titled "The Catcher Was A Spy" which has this series of events captured in satisfactory detail.
• thrwoeur2343 4y ago
  This is nothing compared to S. Ramanujan. The man, clearly a genius in mathematics, was also but merely mediocre in his Mathematics classes (and exams) at University. The struggle to be recognized for him must've been quite insane. "So, you're telling me you're this math genius who can't even ace Math exams ? Yeahhhh right."
  • ggsp 4y ago
    I dimly remember my high school math teacher telling us this was because he‘d just write down results without showing procedure, having done the necessary work in his head, but I may be conjuring that memory up.
• speed_spread 4y ago
  So he was both a genius and a dimwit at the same time. Meta state superposition - Typical Heisenberg.
• musicale 4y ago
  > Accustomed to being always at the top of his class, Heisenberg found it hard to accept the lowest of three passing grades for his doctorate What part of "passing grade for his doctorate" did he not understand? And certainly it's not entirely bad to learn how to deal with something less than complete success occasionally. But it seems to me like he correctly optimized his efforts. If he had scored higher, it would have meant that he had wasted time and effort that could have been better spent working on things he was actually interested in – like his eponymous uncertainty principle.
• DrNosferatu 4y ago
  I question if today’s hyper-agressive attitudes are any useful in Science, and, if they just don’t contribute to the toxicity that plagues Academia. There are other ways to express disagreement, no? It seems it’s just people discharging and inflicting their sadistic & abusive pus on - many times livelihood-insecure - others because the System enables them to.