Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
19 - Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
from Part One - Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2016
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
Summary
Friday, December 6th. Arrive Stockholm 8 am, luggage stuffed with white tie costume, dark suits, evening gowns, newly acquired white shirts and ties. Light rain. Grand Hotel selectively grand. Bathroom magnificent but closets insufficient for two Nobel guests. No bureaus whatever. After dinner find hosts and Cornell physics colleagues Dave Lee and Bob Richardson newly arrived from Göteborg, wearing tiny gold lapel pins so reporters, autograph collectors can tell laureates from guests. Bob has bad cold. Get perfect 8 hours sleep, but first night always easy.
Saturday, December 7th. Breakfast buffet at Grand phenomenal, and attended by many old friends from glory days of superfluid helium-3. Black stretch limos—one per laureate—take physics and chemistry winners to lectures. Guests follow in tour buses. Lecture hall surprisingly small. Front rows reserved for Nobel guests. Physics lectures evocative of scientific memories from early 1970s. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. Chemistry talks also fun since buckyballs really physics. Or is superfluid 3He really chemistry? Both prizes for something discovered accidentally while looking for something else. Back to Grand in dark. Get report on literature prize lecture by Wislawa Szymborska from those who cut chemistry to attend. Who would have expected parallel sessions? Awake half the night.
Sunday, December 8th. Laureates busy all day; guests free, weather dry, city beautiful. Collapse at 2 pm, awakening from nap in darkness at 3. Bus to opulent reception. Reunion of old 3He crowd at delicious dinner. Laureates can't make it, having mandatory “Informal dinner (dark business suit)” at Academy of Sciences. Awake most of night.
Monday, December 9th. Guest status good for front row seats at economics lecture. Theory of auctions. Integrals and derivatives. Like physics except physics works. American laureates have lunch with ambassador. Poor laureates. Guests have learned to skip lunch between breakfast buffet and late afternoon reception. Today's event dwarfs yesterday's: Apotheosis of Informal Dress. Black suit blends right in. Succumb to earthly delights until time to depart for dinner in gorgeous baroque clubroom with Swedish Cornell alumni. Sleep all night.
Tuesday, December 10th. Big day. Women have hair set in morning and are confined to quarters until afternoon. Laureates off at a mandatory rehearsal (casual). Take long walk along water to check out City Hall. Many delivery vans, mysterious stacks of wood.
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- Information
- Why Quark Rhymes with PorkAnd Other Scientific Diversions, pp. 131 - 138Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016