A tribute to the publishers of classic atmospheric science books

The last four posts celebrated the publishers of classic physics books.  Today I'd like to pay homage to publishers of classic atmospheric science books.  Several of the major publishers we've already met - Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Springer, and Wiley - all have major contributions to this literature and appear to remain active in this field.  I will spare readers a laundry list of examples from these publishers.

The main focus of this post is to honor Academic Press, which became an imprint of Harcourt, and now Elsevier.  Wallace & Hobbs' Atmospheric Science:  An Introductory Survey and the 6-volume Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences are signature examples of their portfolio.  However, what "AP" may most be known for is its long-lived International Geophysics Series, which began in 1959 with volume 1, Beno Gutenberg's Physics of the Earth's Interior.  Its most recent volume was published 55 years later, the second edition of Robert Houze's Climate Dynamics, vol. 104 of the series.  The publisher's website lists this as a still-active series, but I do not know of any new volumes since 2014.  Each volume in the series was numbered, and new editions of existing books received their own volume number.

At one time, the series editor was William L. Donn of Columbia University, but later in "my" era (the late 1990s and early 2000s) the editors were Renata Dmowska (Harvard) and James R. Holton (U. Washington), joined later by H. Thomas Rossby (U. Rhode Island).  The series covered all of geophysics, but as the focus today is on atmospheric sciences, let me name a few prominent entries:  Holton's own An Introduction to Dynamic Meteorology, Fleagle & Businger's An Introduction to Atmospheric Physics, Salby's Fundamentals of Atmospheric Physics (a later edition of which is published by Cambridge University Press), Curry & Webster's Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans, Brown's Fluid Mechanics of the Atmosphere, Cushman-Roisin's Introduction to Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Gill's Atmosphere-Ocean Dynamics, Arya's Introduction to Micrometeorology, Marshall & Plumb's Atmosphere, Ocean, and Climate Dynamics, Chamberlain's Theory of Planetary Atmospheres, and Wilks' Statistical Methods in the Atmospheric Sciences.  One could go on and on.

In "my" era, the series volumes did not have a uniform "look", unlike the old McGraw-Hill International Series on Pure and Applied Physics, with their green covers with black and gold trim.  Nonetheless, with a 55-year run including many classics, the International Geophysics Series is ubiquitous on atmospheric scientists' bookshelves. 

A tribute to the publishers of classic physics books: Others

I am winding down my tribute to publishers of classic physics books in this post, though future posts will examine publishers in other subjects.

Springer-Verlag, of course, is a huge publisher in mathematics, engineering, and physics.  I already discussed their Lecture Notes series in an earlier post.  They are also the publishers of Walter Thirring's Course in Mathematical Physics and a series of texts lead-authored by Walter Greiner.  Of particular note was their series Springer Tracts in Natural Philosophy, whose yellow covers resembled some of the Springer math texts.  The series is listed as discontinued on the Springer website.  Other highlights include Florian Scheck's Mechanics, Jack Vanderlinde's Classical Electromagnetic Theory (originally published by Kluwer), and Statistical Physics I:  Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics by Toda, Saito, and Kubo.  They also have legendary reference books like the long-out-of-print Handbuch der Physik, and the AIP Physics Desk Reference.  Springer was founded in 1842 by Julius Springer.

Cambridge University Press is another titan, with classics going back to Brian Pippard's The Elements of Classical Thermodynamics (1957) and Chapman & Cowling's The Mathematical Theory of Non-Uniform Gases (first published in 1939).  Examples of notable texts include Kleppner and Kolenkow's An Introduction to Mechanics, Hand & Finch's Analytical Mechanics, Jose & Saletan's Classical Dynamics:  A Contemporary Approach, Zangwill's Modern Electrodynamics, Born & Wolf's Principles of Optics (originally published by Pergamon), and Ralph Baierlein's Thermal Physics.  They also have the Student's Guide series, exemplified by Daniel Fleisch's A Student's Guide to Maxwell's Equations.

Oxford University Press is particularly strong in thermal & statistical physics texts, with examples such as Blundell & Blundell's Concepts in Thermal Physics, Bowley & Sanchez's Introductory Statistical Mechanics, and David Chandler's Introduction to Modern Statistical Mechanics.  They have many others including Hilborn's Chaos and Nonlinear Dynamics and a particularly useful series, the Oxford Master Series in Condensed Matter Physics and a counterpart series for Statistical, Computational, and Theoretical Physics.

Cambridge and Oxford University Presses were founded in 1534 and 1586, respectively, laying claim to be the world's oldest and second-oldest university presses.

Finally I will mention a few publishers with relatively smaller footprints, at least in my collection of physics books.

Methuen's Monographs on Physical Subjects included some gems such as J. W. Leech's Mechanics and Derek F. Lawden's An Introduction to Tensor Calculus and Relativity.  Algernon Methuen founded the company in 1892.

W. H. Freeman, founded in 1946, was an imprint of Macmillan.  Its classic physics texts include Charles Kittel's Introduction to Solid State Physics (now published by Wiley), Kittel & Kroemer's Thermal Physics, Lorrain, Corson, & Lorrain's Electromagnetic Fields and Waves, and Taylor & Wheeler's Spacetime Physics.

W. B. Saunders, originally a medical publisher founded in 1888, was known as the publishers of Raymond Serway's introductory physics textbook, as well as classics such as Marion & Thornton's Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems, and Ashcroft & Mermin's Solid State Physics.  These are now published by Cengage. Due to a merger with Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Saunders acquired Grant Fowles' Analytical Mechanics, now also published by Cengage.

For many years, Prentice-Hall was the publisher of David J. Griffiths' Introduction to Electrodynamics and Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, now both published by Cambridge University Press, and Douglas C. Giancoli's introductory physics text, now published by Pearson.  Prentice-Hall was founded in 1913 by Charles Gerstenberg and Richard Ettinger, naming the firm after their mothers' maiden names.

Independent publisher W. W. Norton, founded in 1923 by William Warder Norton and his wife Mary Dows Herder Norton, publishes the MIT Introductory Physics Series (principle author, Anthony P. French) as well as Hans Ohanian's introductory physics textbook.  Speaking of MIT, the MIT Press was the original publisher of the English version of Wolfgang Pauli's Lectures on Physics (now reprinted by Dover).

Academic Press (founded in 1941 by Walter J. Johnson and his brother-in-law Kurt Jacoby) is now part of Elsevier, but was the original publisher of the English version of Arnold Sommerfeld's Lectures on Theoretical Physics.  

Princeton University Press (founded in 1905 by Whitney Darrow) publishes Kip Thorne and Roger Blandford's series, Modern Classical Physics, as well as cosmology books by P. J. E. Peebles, Roger Newton's philosophical essay Thinking About Physics, and Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler's Gravitation.  They also have the Princeton Series in Physics and Einstein's Collected Papers.  Princeton also has a "Nutshell" series, for instance, Anupam Garg's Classical Electromagnetism in a Nutshell, which at over 700 pages is quite a large nut.

University Science Books is a niche player, with notable books by John R. Taylor, Frank Shu, David McQuarrie, and John Townsend.  Another niche publisher is Infinity Science Press, with titles like Ohanian's Classical Electrodynamics.  The Chicago Lectures in Physics are published by the University of Chicago Press, and includes Robert Geroch's Mathematical Physics.  Johns Hopkins University Presss has a few titles of note such as Don Lemons' Mere Thermodynamics.

World Scientific, a Singapore-based publisher started in 1981 by Phua Kok Khoo and Doreen Liu, has a few notable titles such as Kibble & Berkshire's Classical Mechanics (on behalf of Imperial College Press) and Fritz Rohrlich's Classical Charged Particles.

Finally, all physics readers should be grateful to Dover for keeping some of our favorite classics in print.

A tribute to the publishers of classic physics books: John Wiley & Sons

Unlike McGraw-Hill and Pearson, discussed in the last posts, who seem to have downsized their footprints in advanced physics books, John Wiley & Sons continues to maintain an active presence to this day.  Also unlike the previously discussed counterparts, Wiley tends not to place their classic physics books in series; each is a standalone volume.  They can be very proud of their portfolio, as illustrated by the all-stars illustrated in the below photo.

A selection of all-star classic physics texts from Wiley.

The Cohen-Tannoudji books are illustrative of the onetime partnership with French publisher Hermann, which also resulted in co-publication of Order within Chaos, by Berge, Pomeau, and Vidal.  We see also that over the years, Wiley acquired Interscience (a US firm founded by Kurt Enoch around the time of WW2) and German publisher VCH (Verlag Chemie), which was founded by the German Chemical Society in 1921.

Historical note.  Wiley traces its history to Charles Wiley, who started a printshop in 1807.  His  son John took over in 1826, who was in turn succeeded by his own sons William H. and Charles in 1876.

A tribute to the publishers of classic physics books: Addison-Wesley

Continuing the theme from the last post, I'd like to continue my tribute to the publishers of classic physics books by turning to Addison-Wesley, which is now an imprint of Pearson.  Back in its heydey, the publisher had both the Addison-Wesley Series in Physics and Series in Advanced Physics.  As the original US distributor of the English translations of the Landau & Lifschitz Course of Theoretical Physics published by Pergamon, and the original publisher of the Feynman Lectures on Physics, Addison-Wesley was another of the pre-eminent publishers of classic physics books.

Like the McGraw-Hill International Series in Pure and Applied Physics, the older Addison-Wesley books had a distinct "look":  plain front & back covers, with spines indicating the title and author of the book within a colored band.  The color schemes of these books varied more than for their McGraw-Hill counterparts.  Examples of classics include Herbert Goldstein's Classical Mechanics, which ran through 3 editions; Keith Symon's Mechanics, which also ran through 3 editions; Foundations of Electromagnetic Theory, by Reitz, Milford, and Christy, running through 4 editions; Eugene Hecht's Optics (now in its 5th edition); Daniel Schroeder's An Introduction to Thermal Physics (now published by Oxford University Press); Peskin & Schroeder's An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory (now published by Taylor & Francis's CRC Press); and J. J. Sakurai's Modern Quantum Mechanics (whose latest edition is published by Cambridge University Press) and Advanced Quantum Mechanics.

Addison-Wesley's Advanced Book Program also had a series called Lecture Notes and Supplements in Physics, edited by John David Jackson and David Pines, which included Gordon Baym's Lectures on Quantum Mechanics and Bethe & Jackiw's Intermediate Quantum Mechanics.  These two are now published by Taylor & Francis' CRC Press.  Addison-Wesley was also a prolific publisher of math texts, which can also be found on the bookshelves of some of us older physicists.

Today, A-W's successor Pearson still publishes some of these classics, like the Feynman Lectures, Hecht's Optics, and Goldstein's Classical Mechanics.  However, as is evident from the above discussion, many of their other gems are now kept in print by other publishers.  For instance, Elsevier now publishes the English translations of the Landau & Lifschitz course, and Dover publishes the second edition of Jerrold Franklin's Classical Electromagnetism.  

A selection of physics books from Addison-Wesley.  The five on the left show the "classic" cover style of the older ones.

Historical note.  Addison-Wesley was founded in 1942 by Melbourne Wesley Cummings and Lew Addison Cummings, naming the company after their middle names.

A tribute to the publishers of classic physics books: McGraw-Hill

Scientific book publishing is not what it once was.  It is easy now for authors to make PDF versions of their lecture notes and books available on the web at no cost to the user, as alluded to in my post earlier this month.  Other books are available from publishers in electronic form, perhaps accessed by students through university and institutional libraries.  It is possible that the printed scientific book is rapidly becoming a historical artifact.  

This progress seems good and right.  It expands access to these materials by reducing cost, while reaching anyone with access to the Internet.  Perhaps welcome by many is the saving of space on a scientist's bookshelf.  Nonetheless, as a creature of an earlier age, I am a scientific bibliophile.  In their time, scientific books were outrageously successful means of putting knowledge into readers' hands.  I hope to begin a series of occasional blog posts to celebrate the publishers of these artifacts, focusing first on some of the classic textbooks and monographs of physics.

An easy choice for a starting point is McGraw-Hill, whose International Series in Pure and Applied Physics seemed to cover all fields of classical and modern physics.  In their heyday, volumes of this series were recognizable for their green covers with gold trim, embossed on the front with the series title.  The volume's title and author appeared in a black rectangle at the top of their spines.  The series begain in 1929, and some volumes continued to be used well into the 1990s and beyond.  However, I'm not sure whether any new volumes were added after the death of its Consulting Editor, Leonard Schiff, in 1971, nor whether he was replaced.  The first Consulting Editor was F. K. Richtmeyer, who served in the 1930s, followed by Lee A. DuBridge from 1939-1946, and G. P. Harnwell from 1947-1954, followed by Schiff.

One of the series' most prolific authors was John C. Slater of MIT, who contributed around 10 volumes on a range of topics (including classical physics texts co-authored with Nathaniel Frank).  Philip Morse, also of MIT, contributed four volumes (including both volumes of Methods of Theoretical Physics with Herman Feshbach, as well as two books on acoustics, one of which is reprinted by Princeton University Press).  The Morse and Feshbach math methods books were later reprinted by Feshbach's family for a number of years.

The famous text by Feynman & Hibbs, Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals, first appeared in the series (and remains available as a Dover reprint), as did Max Jammer's The Conceptual Development of Quantum Mechanics, Frederick Seitz's The Modern Theory of Solids, and Microwave Spectroscopy by Nobel laureates Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow.  To select a couple other areas of physics, consider classical mechanics, where the series published Becker's Introduction to Theoretical Mechanics, Barger & Olsson's Classical Mechanics:  A Modern Perspective, and Lindsay's Mechanical Radiation.  In electricity and magnetism, the series featured books authored by Harnwell, Smythe, and Stratton; the latter kept in print by Wiley on behalf of the IEEE.  In the kinetic theory of gases, the monographs by Kennard and Present appeared in the series.  Other notable titles include Michael Tinkham's Group Theory and Quantum Mechanics (still in print with Dover), Francis Bitter's Introduction to Ferromagnetism, Leon Brillouin's Wave Propagation in Periodic Structures (at one time reprinted by Dover, but out of print now), and Schiff's own Quantum Mechanics, which ran through 3 editions.  I'm sure that older readers could name their own favorites too, or at least recognize some famous names in the list of authors and titles.

McGraw-Hill had another series, of undergraduate textbooks, called Fundamentals of Physics, edited by E. U. Condon.  I own two of the upper-division volumes of this series, Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics, by Frederick Reif, and Edgar Kraut's Fundamentals of Mathematical Physics, both still available as reprints from Waveland Press and Dover, respectively.

McGraw-Hill of course was also the publisher of the Berkeley Physics Course, a five-volume series meant to form a 2-year undergraduate physics sequence.  The most successful volume was Edward M. Purcell's Electricity and Magnetism, the only one to appear in a second edition, which remains in print now with Cambridge University Press.  Another classic in this series was Frank Crawford's Waves, which I mentioned in my earlier post.

In 1967 McGraw-Hill acquired Schaum's Outline Series, founded by Daniel Schaum, and continues to publish these books today.  These books (meant to supplement the main text of the course) range over multiple academic disciplines, not just physics.  As far as I know, of the four series discussed here, Schaum's is the only one that McGraw-Hill actively maintains. 

Outside these series of physics books, McGraw-Hill published others of course, like Mark Zemansky's Heat and Thermodynamics, which ran through 7 editions, and Jenkins & White's Fundamentals of Optics, which ran through 4 editions.  They also had another series called the International Series in Pure and Applied Mathematics, of which Dettman's Mathematical Methods in Physics and Engineering is worthy of note (again, still available as a Dover reprint).

Many of McGraw-Hill's physics books have attained classic status, and reprint editions are available for many of them by other publishers, as is evident from the above discussion.  These books have endured beyond their original publisher's interest in them.  While McGraw-Hill remains very active in the introductory physics textbook market, and still publishes some upper division texts, they don't seem to be major players in the latter, nor in the monograph sector of the market.  Thus, this tribute is mainly to past glories, with hope that some of the finest examples remain accessible to physicists of the future.

A family portrait of selected McGraw-Hill volumes in the International Series in Pure and Applied Physics.

Historical note.  McGraw-Hill has its roots in the publishing firms of James H. McGraw, who acquired the American Journal of Railway Appliances in 1888, and John A. Hill, who at the time was an editor of the Locomotive Engineer.  Hill formed his own publisher in 1902, and the two men merged their book operations in 1909.  Upon Hill's death in 1916, the remainder of their publishing companies unified to form the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company in 1917.

The International Year of Sound

In 2015, DTLR celebrated the International Year of Light.  Alas, I was not even aware that 2020 is the International Year of Sound until I received this month's issue of Physics Today.  As a former member of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), I wish I had known of this earlier.  In the past I've contributed to research in both physiological acoustics and later ultrasound imaging, but have been away from the field over over a decade.  Nonetheless, I am pleased to recognize the International Year of Sound, if only during its final weeks.

Don't let lecture notes rot

Last week Nature Physics published an op-ed titled "Don't Let Lecture Notes Rot" (vol. 16, p. 1167).  It makes the case for physicists to make their lecture notes available more broadly than for just their own students, particularly in advanced courses where an individualistic perspective can be appreciated by students and even other faculty worldwide.  The op-ed also discusses some of the logistical issues involved in making such notes both available and findable. 

As an example of making lecture notes available, Springer's 50-year old series, Lecture Notes in Physics, long predates the internet, but still seems to be going strong; it is accompanied by their series Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics, which seems to be about 10 years old.  During my graduate research in physics in the late 1990s, there were two particularly useful volumes of LNP that I relied on and cited in my dissertation.  Nowadays, individual professors can simply post their course notes on their personal websites, though they may need encouraging from their colleagues and students, and perhaps university department heads.  

One of the mechanisms discussed for making the most interesting or useful lecture notes findable is for faculty to share annotated reading lists or reference lists.  These often appear in course syllabi, though I agree with the op-ed that some annotation would make these lists even more useful.  I think this principle applies even more broadly.  For instance, I have never taught an upper level physics course, but I can certainly share some books that I found useful as I was studying physics, in the spirit of helping others navigate the landscape of learning materials.  However, bear in mind that my experience dates from the late 1990s, and I am unfamiliar with more recent literature in the field, as well as online offerings such as the MIT OpenCourseware mentioned in the op-ed.

Here I will focus on three standard subjects:  classical mechanics, classical electromagnetic theory, and thermodynamics & statistical physics.  I will also discuss a nonstandard one, fluid dynamics.  Let me start by saying that in retrospect, the textbooks assigned for my undergraduate courses in these topics did not suit me at all.  It wasn't until graduate school that I expanded my reach to a serious study of texts other than those I was assigned, particularly when I was studying for the qualifying exams.  So, the discussion below focuses particularly on books I consulted heavily during those studies.  Of greatest interest are books that have a good balance of theory and solved problems.

For undergraduate classical mechanics, my hands-down favorite must be Marion & Thornton's Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems, a book almost ideally suited for preparing for the qualifying exams.  I also occasionally consulted Symon's Mechanics, whose chapter on gravitation includes a vector field theory/PDE formulation of classical gravity not found in Marion & Thornton.  Symon also briefly discusses fluid dynamics and acoustics, topics absent from Marion & Thornton.  At the graduate level, I must confess I am not a fan of Goldstein's Classical Mechanics.  Were I to revisit theoretical mechanics, I would take a look at Fetter & Walecka's Theoretical Mechanics of Particles and Continua, Scheck's Mechanics:  From Newton's Laws to Deterministic Chaos, and a little book by Leech, Classical Mechanics.

For electromagnetic theory, my clear favorite is Griffiths' Introduction to Electrodynamics, which in my view is at the pinnacle of undergraduate physics textbooks.  I regret that I did not encounter the book until my first year in graduate school, but it too is ideal preparation for the qualifiers.  Griffiths does not dwell much on electrical circuits though, so I supplemented it with Electromagnetic Fields and Waves, by Lorrain, Corson, & Lorrain.  A backup reference was Nayfeh & Brussel's Electricity and Magnetism.  Finally, as an example of alternate perspectives discussed in the Nature Physics op-ed, Schwartz's Principles of Electrodynamics puts special relativity at the heart of its development of the theory, making Maxwell's equations seem much more natural than the conventional presentations do.  I hope that all physics students get exposed to Schwartz's approach at some point in their learning careers.  Another alternate perspective is presented in Kovetz's Electromagnetic Theory, which includes integrated discussion of continuum mechanics and thermodynamics, topics not often found in undergrad E&M.  A bridge to graduate level books like Jackson's nerve-wracking Classical Electrodynamics could be Heald & Marion's Classical Electromagnetic Radiation.

Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics by Greiner, Neise, and Stocker, part of Greiner's Classical Theoretical Physics series, is a superb qualifying exam study resource for those topics.  When I actually took graduate level statistical physics, I found Statistical Mechanics:  An Advanced Course with Problems and Solutions, by Kubo, Ichimura, Usui, and Hashitsume, a superb backup resource.  There are many other books I would look at were I to revisit thermal/statistical physics, but one worth mentioning is Reichl's A Modern Course in Statistical Physics, which includes coverage of nonequilibrium phenomena.

A physicist should begin the study of fluid dynamics with the two chapters on it in the Feynman Lectures on Physics.  The main text I learned fluid dynamics from was the first edition of Fluid Mechanics by Pijush K. Kundu.  It is an exceptional choice, one that I would highly recommend to others.  This is a field blessed with many fine books.  I found particularly useful the following:

• Aris, Vectors, Tensors, and the Basic Equations of Fluid Mechanics, a major source for Kundu's presentation of the derivation of the Navier-Stokes equations.
  
• Choudhuri, The Physics of Fluids and Plasmas:  An Introduction for Astrophysicists, which makes connections with the kinetic theory of gases, plasma physics, and magnetohydrodynamics.
• Tritton, Physical Fluid Dynamics, very much an experimentalist's perspective.
  

The list of fluid dynamics books I would consult were I to return to the field is too long to outline here.  I will just mention Batchelor's An Introduction to Fluid Dynamics, Falkovich's Fluid Mechanics:  A Short Course for Physicists, Guyon et al.'s Physical Hydrodynamics, Panton's Incompressible Flow, and Yih's Fluid Mechanics:  A Concise Introduction to the Theory.

I will end with a few other miscellaneous books I found useful in my studies:  Optics, by Hecht; Optical Properties of Solids, by Fox; Waves, by Crawford (part of the Berkeley Physics Course); Group Theory in Physics, by Tung; Physical Chemistry, by Atkins; Giant Molecules:  Here, There, and Everywhere..., by Grosberg & Khokhlov; and naturally the Landau & Lifshitz Course of Theoretical Physics.

"In our quest for accurate simulations, are we computing too much and thinking too little?"

The title of this post is a quote from Kerry Emanuel's essay published earlier this year, "The Relevance of Theory for Contemporary Research in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate".  He expresses a concern that numerical models of these phenomena, and attempts to improve their predictive performance by brute force, have supplanted the value of theoretical reasoning in advancing atmospheric and oceanic science.  The need to cope with large data sets and computational methodology has supplanted the study of scientific theory and physics in the curriculum, resulting in an unbalanced focus by both students and researchers, in his view.  He presents the argument more forcefully and eloquently than I can, so DTLR recommends this essay to all its readers.

Reference

K. Emanuel, 2020:  The relevance of theory for contemporary research in atmospheres, oceans, and climate.  AGU Advances, 1 (2), e2019AV000129.

 

A Perspective on the Legacy of Edward Lorenz

Recently I stumbled upon a paper published last year by James McWilliams, "A Perspective on the Legacy of Edward Lorenz".  The paper discusses what McWilliams considers to be Lorenz's four most important ideas:

1. Available potential energy in the atmospheric general circulation;
2. The Lorenz model's chaotic dynamics and strange attractor;
3. The limits of weather predictability; and
4. The "slow manifold".
   

My own thesis research directly applies versions of the first two of these ideas, so I owe a lot to him.  I had the privilege of meeting Prof. Lorenz when he was well in his late 80s.  The occasion was an annual meeting of the American Meterological Society in San Diego, in January 2004.  A symposium in Lorenz's honor was held, and he gave the final presentation of the symposium.  Earlier in the day, a poster session was included in the festivities, and he graciously visited the posters.  My mentor and I first encountered him there.  We introduced ourselves and shook his hand, but otherwise exchanged very few words with him.  We also spoke briefly with him after his presentation at the end of the symposium.  One of his biographers described him as "reticent" and that is consistent with my brief experience with him.

Not being part of an elite institution, I do not often meet major figures in the history of science.  My brief encounter with Lorenz was one such instance.  Here is a picture of the cover of the symposium booklet.

Reference

J. C. McWilliams, 2019:  A perspective on the legacy of Edward Lorenz.  Earth and Space Science, 6 (3):  336-350.

Carlo Rovelli's rant about statistical illiteracy

In the Guardian earlier this week, physicist Carlo Rovelli has an op-ed railing about statistical illiteracy, which he says can be fatal in a pandemic.  He opposes early criticisms of COVID-19 epidemiological models "estimating rather than accurately depicting how severe the virus might be."  Aside from that, he never actually makes clear why statistical illiteracy can be fatal.

Let us focus then on other aspects of his argument that children should be "taught the fundamental ideas of probability theory and statistics".  For example, he writes:

We use probabilistic reasoning every day, and most of us have a vague understanding of averages, variability and correlations. But we use them in an approximate fashion, often making errors. Statistics sharpen and refine these notions, giving them a precise definition, allowing us to reliably evaluate, for instance, whether a medicine or a building is dangerous or not.

On the contrary, we should be using probabilistic reasoning and statistical ideas in an approximate fashion.  To pretend that the nominal precision of probabilistic and statistical claims can be taken seriously in any but the most sterile situations is just as dangerous as the statistical illiteracy Rovelli complains about (see Kay & King, 2020; Weisberg, 2014; Derman, 2011; Taleb, 2007; I won't rehearse the case made eloquently by these writers).  See also my recent post.  

The most important statistical contribution to the evalution of medicines, to take Rovelli's example, is in the rigorous sequence of phased clinical trials (described in ICH, 1997), rather than specific methods of data analysis.  Phased clinical trials are designed to learn and confirm knowledge about the efficacy and safety of a proposed drug or biologic in a sequence of designed studies in three phases, culminating in the third phase consisting of at least two randomized, blinded, controlled clinical trials.  It is the features of study design and mutually reinforcing knowledge from all phases that makes decisions about medicines reliable, with data analytical methodology playing only a supporting role.

Rovelli writes:

Without probability and statistics, we would not have anything like the efficacy of modern medicine, quantum mechanics, weather forecasts or sociology. To take a couple of random but significant examples, it was thanks to statistics that we were able to understand that smoking is bad for us, and that asbestos kills.

The first example, the causal assocation of smoking and lung cancer, is a masterpiece of epidemiological reasoning, described well by Freedman (1999, Sec. 8).  Of one of the statistical models used in the research, Freedman writes,

The realism of the model, of course, is open to serious doubt:  patients are not hospitalized at random.This limits the usefulness of confidence intervals and P-values. Scientifically, the strength of the case against smoking rests not so much on the P-values, but more on the size of the effect, on its coherence and on extensive replication both with the original research design and with many other designs. Replication guards against chance capitalization and, at least to some extent, against confounding—if there is some variation in study design.

Freedman concludes:

The strength of the case rests on the size and coherence of the effects, the design of the underlying epidemiologic studies, and on replication in many contexts. Great care was taken to exclude alternative explanations for the findings. Even so, the argument depends on a complex interplay among many lines of evidence. Regression models are peripheral to the enterprise.

I actually agree with Rovelli that probability and statistics have made important contributions to medicine, quantum theory, and weather forecasting.  However to include sociology in this list is questionable.

Statisicians themselves are in intense disageement over how statistical methods such as p-values should be used and interpreted, as illustrated in last year's special issue of The American Statistician (TAS) on "Statistical Inference in the 21st Century:  A World Beyond p < 0.05", and the "Statistics Debate" sponsored by the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, held earlier this month.  How then do we expect to teach children about statisics?  Perhaps the only positive outcome of the TAS special issue is the final paper of the collection, describing a course on statistical thinking "beyond calculations" (Steel et al., 2019).  I would favor a course of this kind rather than technical training on probability theory and statistical methods that Rovelli seems to be advocating.  Rovelli's rice-throwing story would fit very well within such a course, and illustrates how approximate thinking about statistics can be more concrete and intuitive than a bunch of technical mathematics. 

References

Emanuel Derman, 2011:  Models. Behaving. Badly.  Why Confusing Illusion with Reality Can Lead to Disaster, on Wall Street and in Life.   New York:  Free Press.

David Freedman, 1999:  From association to causation:  some remarks on the history of statistics.  Statistical Science, 14 (3):  243-258. 

International Conference on Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (1997), ICH Harmonised Tripartite Guideline: General Considerations for Clinical Trials, E8.

John Kay and Mervyn King, 2020:  Radical Uncertainty:  Decision-Making Beyond the Numbers.  New York:  W. W. Norton.

E. Ashley Steel, Martin Liermann, and Peter Guttorp, 2019:  Beyond calculations:  a course on statistical thinking.  The American Statistician, 73 (Supplement 1):  392-401.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2007:  The Black Swan:  The Impact of the Highly Improbable.  New York:  Random House.

Herbert I. Weisberg, 2014:  Willful Ignorance:  The Mismeasure of Uncertainty.  Hoboken:  Wiley.

The Nobel Prizes 2014-2020

In its first year, this blog commented here and here on the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics; however I failed to comment on any of the prizes in following years.  As we are now wrapping up Nobel week 2020, let me offer a few observations on the prizes in physics and chemistry in the years since 2013.  Before I do that, I want to also note last year's Economics Prize for work applying randomized trials to social science.  Such a worthy achievement reflects well on two earlier advocates of randomized trials, statisticians Ronald A. Fisher and Austin Bradford Hill, who pioneered their use in agriculture and medicine, respectively.

Physics

 

I am especially pleased to see two of the subsequent prizes in physics were awarded for technological innovations, namely 2014 (blue LEDs) and 2018 (inventions in laser physics).  It is my view that applied physics is part of physics proper, and should be recognized as such at the highest levels.  Other recent prizes in this vein include 2009 (fiber optics and CCD sensors), half of the 2005 prize (optical frequency comb), and 2000 (the integrated circuit, and semiconductor heterostructures).

 

The 2017 prize to the prime movers of the LIGO collaboration for discovering gravitational waves was arguably premature at the time, as I had misgivings about certain methodological details of the original discovery.  However I think the evidence base accumulated since then, and the methodological improvements, have been both impressive and convincing.  I am prepared to join other voices proclaiming that we are living in the era of gravitational wave astronomy.

The 2019 and 2020 prizes are unusual in that they have gone for two years in a row to achievements in astrophysics and astronomy.  Following the same pattern, each year one theoretical astrophysicist and two observational astronomers shared the prize.  In 2019, the theorist James Peebles essentially received a lifetime achievement award for his contributions to the standard model of cosmology, while Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz were honored for the first discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-like star.  This year, Roger Penrose was honored for his theoretical work on black holes.  Laureates Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez are the heads of two competing groups making observations at Sagittarius A*, who determined that the center of the Milky Way galazy is occupied by a "supermassive compact object".  This last is carefully worded; the obvious implication is that this object is a Black Hole, but the Nobel Committee chose not to use those words.  I am pleased that the leads of these fiercely competitive groups were honored together.

Finally, it is notable that though the third year of the Nobel Prize in Physics included its first female laureate (Marie Curie, 1903), a 60 year gap occurred before the second (Maria Goeppert Mayer, 1963), and a 55-year gap occured before the third (Donna Strickland, 2018).  Only a two-year gap separated the third and fourth women laureates.  I started the study of physics 28 years ago and saw year after year pass with no female laureates, while several possible female candidates passed away, like Deborah Jin who died at age 47.  It's therefore breathtaking to see two female laureates in just the last two years!  Hopefully this is not simply a 'market correction' but rather a 'new normal' (apologies for the cliche'd analogy).

 

Chemistry

 

First I can't resist bragging that the 2014 prize was awarded to physicists.  Most of the recent prizes have been for technological innovations like theirs, with many being specific to the life sciences.  This is befitting chemistry's status as the "central science", overlapping on one end with physics and at the other with biology and medicine.  Finally, it is notable that 4 of the 7 ever female laureates were awarded in the last 11 years (Ada Yonath, 2009; Frances Arnold, 2018; and this year's laureates Emannuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna).

Before this year, each woman laureate in physics or chemistry had died before the next one was awarded in her field; most tragically, Irene Joliot-Curie winning the year after her mother died.  The exception was Frances Arnold's 2018 award while Ada Yonath was still alive.  However now there are four living female laureates in chemistry and two in physics, an unprecedented occurrence, but let us hope these numbers will only increase moving forward.  

 

(By my count, there are currently 7 living female laureates in physiology and medicine; 10 in peace; 6 in literature; and only 1 in economics, though that prize has a shorter history than the others.)

Matt Ridley on "What the Pandemic has taught us about Science"

This weekend's issue of the Wall Street Journal features an insightful essay by Matt Ridley, in the Review section, titled "What the Pandemic has taught us about Science".  Two of the best passages are the following very simple observations:

"Seeing science as a game of guess-and-test clarifies what has been happening these past months.  Science is not about pronouncing with certainty on the known facts of the world; it is about exploring the unknown by testing guesses, some of which prove wrong."

"The health of science depends on tolerating, even encouraging, at least some disagreement.  In practice, science is prevented from turning into religion not by asking scientists to challenge their own theories but by getting them to challenge each other, sometimes with gusto."

I strongly recommend the article to DTLR readers, even if you may nit-pick a few details.

The solar corona

We've been hearing a lot about "corona" lately, but a remarkable photo of the solar corona has been making the rounds, courtesy of the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter satellite mission.  (The link is to Elizabeth Gibney's Nature article about it.)  The photo is an excellent complement to a high-resolution photo of solar granulation released earlier this year by the ground-based Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii (see Alexandra Witze's Nature article here.)  Along with NASA's Parker Solar Probe, and a new European ground-based telescope planned for the Canary Islands, we may be entering an exciting period to do solar physics.

Escape From Model-Land

Earlier this week, Mark Buchanan's column in Nature Physics featured "The Limits of a Model" , concerning  the pitfalls of epidemiological forecasting, of course a topic very much in the news in the last few months.  Near the end Buchanan cites an intriguing paper by Thompson & Smith (2019), "Escape From Model-Land", a bracing discussion of why one should be very humble about using mathematical/empirical models.  It calls to mind another entertaining piece from over a decade ago, the "Financial Modeler's Manifesto" by Emanuel Derman and Paul Wilmott.

DTLR strongly recommends the Thompson & Smith piece, a candidate for required reading by every applied mathematician, applied statistician, and mathematical/computational modeler in every discipline.

Reference

Erica L. Thompson and Leonard A. Smith, 2019:  Escape From Model-Land.  Economics:  The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal, 13:  2019-40.

A critique of "AI Feynman"

Udrescu & Tegmark (2020) describe a neural network-based machine learning algorithm for "symbolic regression", which they define as determining the form of a functional relationship between a response variable and a list of input variables from a data set.  Kepler's realization that Mars' orbit is elliptical, inferred from observational astronomy data, is the prime example they give.  Their "AI Feynman" algorithm has a number of modules, including automated dimensional analysis, polynomial fitting, neural network-based data interpolation, tests for symmetry and separability, and so on.  The paper concludes with the ambitious declaration, "We look forward to the day when, for the first time in the history of physics, a computer, just like Kepler, discovers a useful and hitherto unknown physics formula through symbolic regression!"  While the paper reports important accomplishments and leaves the door open to further improvements in the authors' methodology, DTLR believes that the effort is less than meets the eye.  Here I will discuss some methodological weaknesses, most of which the authors acknowledge, as well as a conceptual weakness.

Methodological weaknesses

The authors compare their "AI Feynman" algorithm to a commercial software called Eureqa.  They defined a set of 100 algebraic equations from the Feynman Lectures and compared the two algorithms' ability to discover the correct functional relationship, using simulated data from the "true" relationship (without and with Gaussian noise in the response variable, but not in any of the independent variables).  Data for the input variables was sampled uniformly between 1 and 5, a rather arbitrary choice.  The authors triumphantly report that AI Feynman had a 100% success rate, while Eureqa achieved only 71%.  However, buried in the paper is the fact that they used the Feynman Lectures as a training set, on which their algorithm was tuned (ie, potentially overfit to).  Thus the comparison with Eureqa on this data set is wholly unfair, and the claimed 100% success rate is not generalizable.  Recognizing this, they define a set of 20 equations drawn from other classic physics texts, reporting that AI Feynman solved 90% while Eureqa solved only 15%.  Finally a third test set of somewhat arbitrary mathematical relationships was defined; AI Feynman achieved 67% success compared to Eureqa's 49%.  The authors explain that this last set of equations may not have the nice properties of physical laws that AI Feynman was designed to exploit.

Data from real experiments would rarely resemble the simulated data that the authors used.  At the early stages of an investigation, part of the domain of the input variables may even be experimentally/observationally inaccessible.  Thus the authors' comparison exercise seems artificial, though a necessary preliminary step before tackling real data.  Nonetheless it is important to point this out to readers who might find the reported performance metrics impressive.  The authors acknowledge that they did not include differential or integral equations in their evaluation, nor noise in the input variables, nor real data sets, though they hope to address all these weaknesses in future work.

A word about dimensional analysis:  In the authors' Newtonian gravity example (their Fig. 2), why were the temperatures of the masses not considered as candidate input variables?  Why is gravity completely ignored in a dimensional analysis of the ideal gas law (Lemons, 2017)?  In both cases, physical intuition is the answer.  The first step in any dimensional analysis is of course the selection of candidate variables to include in the functional relationship.  In the authors' exercise, the candidate variables were pre-selected from knowledge of the true relationship.  In reality, physical intuition (which requires training; it is not the same as natural intuition) must be used.  Santiago (2019) states that this step is the most difficult and requires the most experience.  The physicist generating the experimental data has often already made the decision on which variables should be measured, so the point may be moot, at least for physics problems.  However, if the method is extended to other, more empirical domains, such as public health, the social and behavioral sciences, and finance, it will run into trouble.  It is often far less obvious which variables should be considered even as candidates for inclusion, and dimensional analysis may cease to be an operative method.  In fact, it is often the case that you have little or no data on the input variables you really need, while you have plenty of data on variables of limited relevance to your problem. 

Conceptual weakness

When Max Planck first obtained his blackbody radiation law, as an empirical formula that satisfied constraints imposed both by the known data and physical intuition, he did not publish it.  Why?  Because at that moment, the formula was strictly empirical; it did not provide any physical insight.  Planck published it only after he developed a theoretical model of resonators in thermal equilibrium with the radiation, from which the formula could be derived.  A feature of his model was the quantization of energy.  The latter was not taken seriously until Einstein showed that energy quantization could also resolve the mystery of the photoelectric effect, superfically a completely different physics problem.  The new physics wasn't just one new equation, it was a new concept.  If energy quantization were an intrinsic property of nature, it would manifest in many physics problems, and physicists gradually discovered that this was indeed the case.  Symbolic regression is at best a contributing factor to discovering new physics; it cannot be the sole tool for doing so.

References

D. S. Lemons, 2017:  A Student's Guide to Dimensional Analysis.  Cambridge University Press, Sec. 1.8.

J. G. Santiago, 2019:  A First Course in Dimensional Analysis.  MIT Press, Sec. 5.2.

S.-M. Udrescu and M. Tegmark, 2020:  AI Feynman:  a physics-inspired method for symbolic regression.  Science Advances, 6:  eaay2631.

In praise of high journal acceptance rates?

A Penn State professor of astronomy and astrophysics, Jason Wright, published a commentary in the February 2020 issue of Physics Today, titled "High journal acceptance rates are good for science".  He notes that the journals he publishes in have an 85% acceptance rate.  He says that "Therefore nearly all significant astronomical results submitted to those journals that are not obviously fatally flawed are likely to be published....it is the sign of a healthy culture of science, and astronomy is better for it."  He writes about how this state of affairs helps to avoid publication bias, because paper rejection is often influenced by reasons other than quality:  "scientific taste, politics, professional advantage, and science's inherent conservatism."  He even writes that "it's important that scientists be allowed to be wrong in the literature, as long as they have made no errors."  He concludes that "referees best serve when they act not as gatekeepers but as editorial consultants and independent voices that offer construcive criticism that improves submitted papers."

DTLR finds much merit in Wright's arguments.  However, I do think referees and editors have to be gatekeepers when it comes to one point that Wright alludes to, but does not emphasize.  I and many others have seen methodologically unsound research published, even in prestigious journals with low acceptance rates, in the life and social sciences.  A methdological critic would have been able to reject the paper before seeing any of the data.  This is a collective failing of authors, referees, and editors, who are often themselves untutored in even basic principles of research design and execution. There has been much discussion of these phenomena, for instance, in a special issue of the Lancet in 2014, and in closely related discussions of reproducible research (for instance).  Sadly, that this has continued to be a recognized problem for almost 15 years is a sign of an unhealthy culture of science.

One proposed remedy has much appeal:  "Results-Blind Manuscript Evaluation" (RBME), initially proposed by Joseph Locascio over 20 years ago (eg, Locascio, 2019).  This involves a two-stage manuscript review, where a mansucript is first evaluated on the basis of the Introduction and Methods sections, without knowledge of the results.  Methodologically unsound research can be rejected out of hand at this stage; if not, the manuscript moves to the second stage where its entirety is reviewed, though the decision to accept or reject may still not be based on the results, but only on the soundness of execution, analysis, and presentation thereof.  See the cited paper by Locascio for details.  RBME would not solve all the problems, but would go a long way in changing the incentives.

DTLR believes that a scientific journal should combine the insights of Wright and Locascio in its efforts to fight publication bias, while ensuring that research with a chance of contributing to, rather than misleading, the work of others, sees the light of day.

References

J. J. Locascio, 2019:  The impact of results blind science publishing on statistical consultation and collaboration.  The American Statistician, 73 sup 1:  346-351.

J. Wright, 2020:  High journal acceptance rates are good for science.  Physics Today, 73 (2):  10-11.

The Women of Fluid Mechanics: Personal Stories and Practical Advice

Last month's issue of APS News featured an article by Otani & Hu, titled "The Women of Fluid Mechanics:  Personal Stories and Practical Advice".  The article was a commentary based on a panel session at last year's annual APS Division of Fluid Dynamics (APS-DFD) meeting, which featured four female professionals in the field (3 faculty members, and the fourth the founder of a very popular blog and miniature social media empire, FYFD).  (Disclosure:  I am a "patron" of FYFD through the Patreon website.)

Among other things, the authors write that "In spite of their intellect, work ethic, and accomplishments, all of these women have faced and witnessed disrespect and scrutiny based on their gender."  It is indeed disappointing that this still happens at the end of the second decade of the 21st century.   I myself witnessed inappropriate behavior by male physics faculty in the late 1990s, as I wrote about here, though that episode was not related to fluid mechanics. 

DTLR supports efforts to reduce the barriers for women in fluid mechanics research.  One female fluid dynamicst (whom I have never met) certainly has had a key influence, through her published work, on my brief years of research in fluid mechanics.  She is cited in every fluid dynamics paper I have co-authored, and her name appears in the abstract of 3 of the 4 refereed papers of mine in the field.  Hopefully more women's names will appear in the reference lists of fluid dynamics research papers as time goes on.

Reference

Courtney Otani and David Hu, 2020:  The women of fluid mechanics:  personal stories and practical advice.  APS News, 29 (3):  8.

Feynman's 1964 Messenger Lectures

Happy New Year.  DTLR would like to point its readers to Richard Feynman's 1964 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University, which Bill Gates and Microsoft have made available for viewing at Project Tuva.  These lectures also appeared in book form (Feynman, 1967).  DTLR highly recommends this lecture series.

Reference

Richard Feynman, 1967:  The Character of Physical Law.  MIT Press.