Physicists descend upon Las Vegas (March 2023)

For the first time since 1986, the American Physical Society (APS) held its annual March Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada.  Yep, I was there!

The main lobby at Caesar's Forum, March 8, 2023.

I attended in-person, arriving Sunday afternoon, March 5, 2023, and staying through late morning Friday, March 20.  Most of the events took place in and around Caesar's Forum.  (The virtual sessions have been running this week, ending tomorrow March 22.)  I heard there were about 12,000 physicists registered for the event, but I don't know how that breaks down between the in-person and virtual attendees.

Exterior of Caesar's forum, Las Vegas, NV, 9 March 2023.

I'll just mention some of the highlights for me.  First, being such a large event post-COVID, I noticed that some attendees were wearing masks, but I would say the majority were not.  Lanyards were color coded based on the wearer's comfort level:

Lanyard comfort level guide, 6 March 2023.

This would have been difficult to enforce because of the venue.  The regular session rooms were often too small, resulting in packed rooms with standing room only at the back.  (Some of the larger rooms hosted sparsely attended sessions, in contrast.)  The hallways were packed during breaks between sessions, and lines were long and convoluted (with several merging lines) at the food/drink-serving events, like the Monday evening reception, and the Industry Day reception thursday night.  The catered food was not of great quality, and the food-for-purchase at the exhibit hall was exorbitantly priced.   Continuing with complaints about the venue, there were a number of audio/visual technical glitches throughout the week.  I had trouble using the APS Meetings app on my phone (I was able to use it before the meeting, but never got it to work while I was actually there).  Not the organizers' fault, but it was very cold the night of the Monday evening reception, which was an ourdoor event, and all the food I ate was mostly cold by the time I ate it there.

Nonetheless, I had a great time.  This was only the fourth March Meeting I've attended - the first scientific talk I ever gave was at the 1999 Centennial Meeting in Atlanta, and I also spoke at the 2002 Indianapolis March Meeting.  Both of those were during my graduate student days.  Much later, I attended the 2014 March Meeting in Denver at my own expense.  I did so again this year.  I remember taking some time to explore Atlanta and Denver (even spending part of a day at Boulder) during the 1999 and 2014 meetings, but Indianapolis and Las Vegas are cities I know fairly well (though I did do some off-meeting things in Vegas).

The view from my hotel room at the Flamingo, 5 March 2023.  The "High Roller" is an iconic part of the Las Vegas skyline, and I got to ride on it Monday night after the conference reception!

 

The highlight Sunday evening was the Kavli Foundation Symposium, "Frontier Physics from Atomic to Astronomical Scales".  The first speaker was Monika Aidelsburger (Ludwig-Maximilians University) on using optically trapped cold atoms to simulate other quantum systems.  I especially enjoyed learning about "twistronics" from the second speaker, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero (MIT):  placing two or more graphene sheets on top of each other, but at an angle so that their crystal structures were out of alignment.  These types of systems are known as "moire quantum matter".  Next was Brad Marston (Brown University) who spoke about large scale waves in the Earth's atmosphere. The last speaker, Gabriela Gonzalez of Louisiana State University, is always worth going to hear (I've seen her speak elsewhere) talk about gravitational wave astronomy.  The session was followed by a unique, but very Nevada-ish, entertainment, a delightful performance by Le PeTiT CiRqUe (a children's cirque group actually based in the Los Angeles area), titled "Cosmic Tumbles, Quantum Leaps".  Hopefully the troupe can give a repeat performance for other physics events in the southern California/Nevada area in the future.

Monday's highlights include the session "Physics Outside the Lab:  Government, Policy, and Diplomacy, Outreach, Journalism and Entrepreneurship".  I missed the first talk as I was attending another session (a common occurrence throughout the week - there were so many interesting-looking talks that I missed due to conflicts). I enjoyed all of the remaining speakers though.  Joseph Niemela of ICTP spoke about supporting young physicists throughout the developing world.  Amy Flatten of APS outlined a very interesting career crossing over from government, tech companies, and now the APS itself.  The third speaker Surya Raghu, spoke about working in industry and Pasteur's quadrant (a concept introduced by David Stokes), while the last speaker, Matteo Rini, who had spent a year working at the European parliament, is now editor-in-chief of APS' Physics Magazine.

Monday afternoon featured a talk by Michelle Frank, a student at CUNY's Biography and Memoir program.  She spoke about the life of physicist Chien-Shiung Wu, particularly the early part of her career.  This was an incredibly good and informative talk.  The speaker incidentally has an article in the April issue of Scientific American, about Wu's involvement in quantum entanglement.  If Ms. Frank has more work on C.-S. Wu on the way, I will be eager to read it.

Another view of the Caesar's Forum, March 9.  The earlier Monday evening reception was held on this patio, but it was really cold that night!

Tuesday was the first day of the Exhibits, and I usually make sure to spend time at the exhibits whenever I attend a conference, usually shopping for books and occasionally speaking with software companies.  This time was no exception, and I ended up hauling back four books in my luggage, and purchasing 9 more after I got home, using the conference discounts. But I began the day attending a very interesting talk on maximum entropy-based statistical inference, a topic I've always wanted to learn more about.  The presentation by Ying-Jen Yang, a post-doc at Stony Brook, based on his graduate work at the U. of Washington under applied mathematician Hong Qian, was titled "Statistical Thermodynamics and Data Ad Infinitum".  There is an ArXiv preprint by the authors available as well.

Another highlight of the day was a talk by Rob Phillips of CalTech, an award-winning teacher.  He was assigned the title "More is Still Different", celebrating 50 (and a half) years since P. W. Anderson's famous and still influential essay, "More is Different".  As a fluid dynamicist, my absolute favorite slide of the whole meeting was this one of Phillips':

An exemplary slide from Rob Phillips' talk "More is Still Different", March 7, 2023.  The lower left corner is titled "Elasticity" and the lower right "Hydrodynamics".

The one time I was able to get food and drink in a reasonable manner was at the Meet the Physical Review Editors reception Tuesday late afternoon, which was also held outdoors.  I spoke with an editor of PRL and one for PRB, but I did not see the editors of Physical Review Fluids there.  I was able to be more social and talk to more new people there than at the actual reception the previous night.  However, DTLR readers should know that I questioned the editors I met about the efficacy of peer review.  I have come to be very sympathetic to the skeptical views of Adam Mastroianni on peer review.

Speaking of editors, throughout the week I popped in and out of the rolling session on Fluids, which began first thing Monday morning and continued until the end of the conference on Friday:

Placard in front of Room 210, where the Fluids sessions ran (March 8, 2023).

The editor of Physics of Fluids, Jeff Giacomin, was often sitting in the front row of the session.  I was able to speak with him very briefly, and noticed him chatting with the AIP Publishing representative at the exhibits at another point during the week.

On Wednesday I hurried to have a quick lunch (this was the one day I used the caterer at the exhibit hall) so that I could make it to the Art Meets Science session.  I was not disappointed.  I was able to attend the first three talks:

• James Kakalios (U. Minnesota) on "The Art and Science of Superheroes";
• Jessamyn Fairfield (U. Galway) on "Comedy as a Tool for Democratization of Knowledge";
• Julia Ruth (physicist turned cirque performer) on "Finding Center:  A Balancing Act Between Circus and Science".
  

I'm not sure I'll ever seen such a fascinating group of physicists in one place and time again.  All of these speakers gave riveting presentations, and ought to be in high demand on the speaking circuit in my opinion!

On thursday, one of the fluids sessions featured this enthralling talk on "Dancing Raisins" by Severio Spagnolie (U. Wisconsin-Madison).  All I can say is get a bottle of sparkling water, open it and pour into a glass, place some raisins in it, and watch what happens!  He said the first 20 minutes after opening the bottle were the best, but you could watch the raisins continuously aquire, then lose, buoyancy by bubble formation and destruction, for about 2 hours.  The roughness of the raisin surface and their rotational motion turn out to be keys to understanding the effect.

The afternoon featured a session on the history and philosophy of physics.  It began with a philosophical talk by Lena Zuchowski (U. Bristol) on the arrow of time, and ways to formulate a concept of entropy and a second law of thermodynamics in order to understand that arrow.  Astronomer Virgnia Trimble (UC Irvine) gave a general talk about physics anniversaries (the theme of the session).  Chad Orzel (Union College) then gave a phenomenal presentation about the 75th anniversary of quantum electrodynamics.  The session ended with Donnell Walton (Corning) who spoke about Willie Hobbs Moore, the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in physics in the U.S.  A surprising aspect of her career is that after doing physics she moved into quality management at the Ford Motor Company.  Three people asked or commented about this aspect of her career during the Q&A.

The day ended with a special session featuring two of last year's three Nobel laureates in physics.  The session was introduced by David Haviland (KTH Royal Institute of Technology), a member of the Nobel committee, who explained the history of the Nobel Prizes.  We then heard from John F. Clauser, followed by Anton Zeilinger (U. Vienna) about their work on quantum entanglement.  These talks were outstanding, and very inspirational!!!   I took the opportunity to take a quick photo before I left the room.

Anton Zeilinger, John F. Clauser, and David Haviland, after the speical Nobel laureate session, 9 March 2023.

I started my Friday with a talk by the son and grandson of Nobel laureates, Tomas Bohr (Technical U. of Denmark), who spoke about "Sap Flow and Sugar Transport in a Pine Needle".  I've been influenced by his work since my undergraduate years, and was delighted to see him speak about a topic related to one I had a chance to think about (circa 2008) for reasons now lost to time.

Tomas Bohr's talk on plant physics, 10 March 2023.

Having pursued a career away from physics for over 20 years, it was soul-nourishing for me to be back in the company of physicsts, attending the world's largest physics conference.  I should try to come back to this conference more often in future years.

Take probability models seriously, but not literally

Last week's Science had a feature article about several nurses who were convicted of murder in Europe based on statistical arguments regarding the number of babies who died under their care.  Some of these arguments appear to have been decisively debunked by statisticians not originally involved in the cases.  There is a sidebar article by the same author (Cathleen O'Grady) on mothers who were tried for the murders of their own children, again based on questionable statistical arguments.

These episodes are striking, given that I am currently reading a book by physicist Erica Thompson, Escape from Model Land:  How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It (Basic Books, 2022).  She argues that mathematical models always make simplifications and assumptions that divorce them from the real world; and while the modeling exercise may be of great instructive value, one must often be very careful not to claim that the model output represents reality.  In other words, once you step into "model land", and do your modeling exercise, you must not forget to step back out into the real world, and not mistake model land for reality.  The way I would put it is that models deserve to be taken seriously, but not literally.  In the case of the shoddy statistics that put innocent nurses and mothers in prison, those analyses should not be taken either seriously nor literally. 

Hamiltonian mechanics and Maxwell's relations in thermodynamics

This is my last post of 2022.  I just wanted to share that I recently stumbled upon a talk, from about a year ago, on youtube by Prof. John Baez, "Classical Mechanics versus Thermodynamics".  He seems to have discovered a connection/analogy between Hamilton's equations in analytical dynamics with Maxwell's relations in thermodynamics.  I had always thought of these topics as long settled parts of classical physics, but I am delighted that people can still find new sources of insight into them.  I found the talk riveting.  Apparently there are more details on his blog.

And with that, may all DTLR readers enjoy a wonderful 2023!

Important physicists who were medical doctors

Physics did not become a separate profession (as opposed to natural philosophy) until probably the 18th, if not 19th, century.  For much of the early history of physics, its practioners and researchers often had formal training in other learned professions.  One such profession is that of medicine.

With only minimal research, I tried to jot down the names of important physicists who had substantial training in medicine.  Not all of them actually practiced medicine, despite their education, but several did.  Here is what I came up with, in approximate chronological order:

• Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)
• Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576)
• William Gilbert (1544-1603)
• Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782)
• Thomas Young (1773-1829)
• Julius Robert von Mayer (1814-1878)
• Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894)

Can you think of others who belong on this list?

 

Addendum, March 25, 2023.  Jennifer Coopersmith's book, Energy, the Subtle Concept (revised edition, Oxford University Press, 2015, Appendix III) makes clear the following individuals, contributors to thermodynamics, should be added to the above list:

• Hermann Boerhaave (1688-1738)
• Joseph Black (1728-1799)
• Pierre Louis Dulong (1785-1838)
  

Addendum, October 22, 2023.  I recently learned that Galileo Galilei attended medical school, but dropped out.  In fact, he did not complete a college degree at all.  However, Stillman Drake speculates that the definition of cause Galileo gives in his treatise On Floating Bodies is a take on an aphorism taught to medical students of the time.  See Drake's Cause, Experiment, and Science (University of Chicago Press, 1981) for details.

Physicists honored on US currency and coinage

Last year, I blogged about physicists, astronomers, mathematicians, and aerospace scientists and inventors honored on US postage stamps.  Today I'd like to tackle the even rarer phenomenon of physicists depicted on US currency and coinage.

Not surprisingly the list is very short.  Obviously, again Benjamin Franklin heads the list, as depicted on the $100 bill.  He is now joined by Dr. Sally Ride on a new American Women Quarter, issued this year.

If we expand our focus, as we did for the postage stamps, to include aerospace inventors, the Wright Brothers are depicted on the North Carolina  state quarter (2001), and their Flyer is also depicted on the Ohio state quarter (2002).  

Aside from these, I know of no other scientists, mathematicians, or engineers depicted on US currency and coinage, unless you count the polymath Thomas Jefferson.  Are there any that I missed?

Norton Critical Editions in natural science

Continuing a slight diversion that began with my November 2021 post on the Cambridge Companions series, let's consider independent publisher W. W. Norton's series of Critical Editions.   The Norton Critical Editions are annotated editions of classic works, mostly of literature, along with editorial apparatus including context and commentary.  Until recently I owned only one NCE, of Machiavelli's The Prince, and was not aware that any books in the series covered natural science.  I recently became aware that there are at least three NCEs on natural science:  two on biology, and one on physics and mathematics.  One is an NCE of James Watson's The Double Helix, edited by Gunther Stent (1980), and the other two are anthologies of selected writings of Isaac Newton (ed. by I. B. Cohen and R. S. Westfall, 1995) and Charles Darwin (ed. by P. Appleman, 1970; 3d edition, 2001).  If that is a complete list of NCEs in natural science, then it has been over 20 years since the last one was revised, while no others have been issued.

These books seem to be intended for use in humanities courses.  The volume on Newton, which I recently acquired, does have some technical material, but is not dominated by it.  And perhaps this explains why there are no other NCEs for physicists.  Too bad!

The 2022 Nobel Laureates in Science

The first week of October has been an exciting one, as usual, with the announcements of the Nobel Prizes, especially those in science.  DTLR readers know that I have a particular interest in connections between Nobel Laureates and fluid mechanics research, even though the prizes have rarely been awarded for work in classical hydrodynamics.  This year is no different, but at least two of the science laureates have familial connections to hydrodynamicists!

One of this year's physics laureates, John F. Clauser, stated in an oral history interview conducted 20 years ago with Joan Bromberg, that his father was a grad student of Theodore Von Karman's, and later became chair of the aeronautics department at Johns Hopkins.  Clauser states that "But all along the way, he always was trying to understand physics, and there were very strong similarities between the mathematics of fluid flow and the mathematics of quantum mechanics, and he didn't understand quantum mechanics. And he kind of pre-programmed me as the guy who might help try to solve the problem that he couldn't solve."  This appears in the very first paragraph of the transcript!  Further down in the transcript, Clauser returns to fluid mechanics, revealing that he himself is quite knowledgeable about it, discussing solitons, compressible flow, the subsonic-supersonic transition, and shock waves.

One of this year's chemistry laurates, Carolyn Bertozzi, has an older sister Andrea, who is a distinguished math professor at UCLA and works in fluid mechanics.  Andrea Bertozzi is co-author (with her doctoral advisor, Andrew Majda) of Vorticity and Incompressible Flow (Cambridge University Press, 2002). Incidentally, their father was an MIT physics professor.

Congratulations to all the 2022 Nobel Laureates in physiology/medicine, physics, and chemistry!