A physicist at FEDSM2026

Every once in a while I blog about some conferences that I attended, such as the 2018 Joint Mathematics Meeting in San Diego, the 2023 American Physical Society (APS) March Meeting in Las Vegas, and the 2024 APS Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) Meeting in Salt Lake City.  I'm now adding to this series by discussing my attendance at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Fluids Engineering Division (FED) summer meeting (FEDSM) in Bellevue, WA.  FEDSM2026 also celebrates the centennial of the FED, an anniversary I mentioned earlier this year.  For most of the year I wasn't sure if I would be able to attend, but I finally registered in late June.  The conference ran from July 26-29, 2026, and met concurrently with ASME's Summer Heat Transfer Conference (SHTC) and its Energy and Sustainability (ES) Conference.  Attendees were allowed to cross-attend most events in all three meetings, and the reception and two of the lunches were communal among all three.

Bellevue is on the other side of Lake Washington from Seattle, and I flew into SEA-TAC airport on Sunday July 26.  I had been to Bellevue once before, to visit Bellevue Square for dinner with friends.  Bellevue Square was within walking distance of the conference venue.  I had a chance to take a walk through Bellevue's Downtown Park, and nearby Meydenbauer Bay Park that afternoon, before returning to the conference venue (the Hyatt Regency) for the evening reception.  Tragically there was a mass shooting over in Seattle that occurred during the Bite of Seattle event at Seattle Center that very evening.  Those of us at the reception were blissfully unaware of the tragic events that unfolded that evening.

The first regular day of the meeting, Monday the 27th, was the day I was most looking forward to.  It began with an outstanding plenary talk by Prof. Alfred Soldati (TU Wien), on "Bubble and Drop Breakup in Turbulence."  He was also the recipient of this year's ASME Fluids Engineering Award, the division's highest award.  I'll skip ahead and mention the final plenary talk of the meeting, on Wednesday morning the 29th, on "Particles in Liquids:  Collisions, Stress, and the Legacy of R. A. Bagnold" by Prof. Melany Hunt of CalTech. Both of these talks focused on multiphase flows, and were outstanding.  Not only was the research presented extremely interesting, it was presented very well by both speakers.  Unlike some of the routine technical talks, these plenary talks were well organized and easy to follow -- I would even say riveting.  I could imagine either talk being presented at APS-DFD, as they addressed fundamental issues.  My complements to FED for selecting these plenary speakers.

Returning to the first day, Prof. Soldati's keynote was followed by the FEDSM town hall, a sort of annual report on the division.  As this was my first attendance at FEDSM (and only second at an ASME-only conference), I found it very informative.  FEDSM is an annual event, but every four years (including 2027) instead of co-meeting with SHTC and ES, they co-meet with the Japanese and Korean mechanical engineering societies in Asia, at an event known as AJK.  However, FEDSM does sponsor tracks in the SHTC/ES joint meeting back in the states. Finally FEDSM sponsors tracks at the annual international ASME meeting, called the IMECE (International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition).  I also learned that FED sponsors two journals, the Journal of Fluids Engineering and the Journal of Verification, Validation, and Uncertainty Quantification.  The current lead editor of JFE is D. Keith Walters of the University of Arkansas, and the current lead editor of VVUQ is Aaron Koskelo of Los Alamos National Labs (who could not attend the conference).  There were at least 260 registrants of the conference, though there were certainly a lot more than that number present, due to the co-meeting with SHTC and ES.  Even so, the combined conference still felt smaller than APS-DFD.  Another sign of this is that there were hardly any exhibitors at this meeting, and no separate exhibit hall.  Rather, the large open space in front of the ballrooms served as the exhibit space (I counted only 3-4 exhibitors) as well as the reception area and the registration area.  The above photo looks down the hall through this space.  The photo below shows part of the hotel lobby, with the ballroom area visible on the second floor.

I was eager to attend the two sessions on Fluids Education, one scheduled before lunch, and one after.  They did not disappoint.  One of the speakers, Prof. Ivana Milanovic of U. Hartford, gave an informative talk on the history of fluids education in the U.S., during the afternoon session. There was also a memorable joint presentation by Profs. Aarthi Sekaran (SUNY Poly) and Sarah Beetham (Oakland U.) on a very crafty experimental flow visualization project they incorporated in their classes.  The morning session had a focus on artificial intelligence (AI), a topic that came up in nearly every side-conversation I had, whether at lunch or at the reception.  The morning session keynote by Prof. Ganesh Raman (California State University's assistant vice chancellor for research) described how his university system was implementing AI at university-scale.  The afternoon session ended with a presentation by a very precocious high school student.

Later that afternoon, I attended a memorial session for Frank White, a major figure within the FED (for example, he was once lead editor of JFE), as well as the University of Rhode Island.  He is known worldwide as the author of acclaimed textbooks in fluids and heat transfer.  Finally, I ended the day by attending the Energy and Sustainability Power Hour, which was kind of like a networking/focus group session.  It was quite fun.  Indeed, the networking opportunities here, at the reception, and all three lunches, were an unexpected highlight of the meeting. Because of its smaller size, I interacted with far more attendees on a personal level than I usually do at APS-DFD.

I ended the evening with a very late dinner at Din Tai Fung, which was right across the street from the hotel (shown above), sampling (among other dishes) their famed Xiaolongbao, shown below.

There were so many tempting restaurants in the immediate area, that I felt as if I were missing out on all the places I didn't have the time to try!  This Din Tai Fung was the third I have eaten in, having previously visited the ones in Santa Monica, CA, and Taipei, Taiwan (in the 101 Taipei skyscraper).

I allowed myself to sleep in on the morning of Day 2, having been severely sleep deprived for the previous two nights in a row.  Thus I missed that morning's keynote, which I did not regret, as I observed the speaker take a phone call during someone else's talk later that day.  How rude!  On Day 2, I began flitting in and out of the regular technical sessions, which I continued to do in the late morning of Day 3.  The awards lunch was held on Day 2, and I even got to have a small slice of the FED centennial birthday cake!

Based on the photo of the uncut cake that FED posted on LinkedIn, it appears that my piece captured part of the "E" in ASME, under which was written "Setting the Standard".  So the "AR" is from the end of "Standard".

I attended an afternoon plenary talk by Joseph Katz (Johns Hopkins), like Frank White, a former lead editor of JFE and textbook author.  His talk was titled "Turbulent Boundary Layers over Complex Surfaces" (see below).

I ended Day 2 by attending a panel session at the SHTC on "Modern Insights into Computational Fluid Dynamics".   Unfortunately I could not make much sense of it, as I had missed the panelists' individual presentations because I was at the Katz plenary.  I managed to catch the end of the panel discussion, but it was less useful to me than I had hoped.  That evening I had dinner at Fogo de Chao, the Brazilian steakhouse, within walking distance of the hotel.  On the way there I observed what appeared to be a pro-Ukraine protest on a street corner.  The concierge at my hotel gave me a coupon for a free dessert at Fogo de Chao; here is a shot of my key lime pie:

On Day 3, the day began with a panel session on the "Past, Present, and Future of Fluid Mechanics".  The panelists and their focus were, in order, Professors Ted Heindel (Iowa State University) on experimental fluid mechanics, Zhonquan Zheng (Utah State University) on computational fluid dynamics, and Francine Battaglia (U. of Buffalo) on fluids education.  The moderator was the conference chair, Prof. Ning Zhang (McNeese State U.).

Here are the panelists, conveniently sitting in the order in which they spoke:

The panel session was followed by Prof. Melany Hunt's plenary, which I discussed above.  I then attended a technical session, and joined the third and final lunch.  Unfortunately I had to catch a plane, so I headed back to the airport and missed the Rising Stars plenary session that ended Day 3.  It was perhaps regrettable that I was so busy chatting to folks at my table at the lunches, that I completely missed out on the poster sessions.

Conference papers are already posted on the ASME website, and there is supposed to be a special issue of JFE next August (yes, a year from now) with papers from this year's conference.  However, the division promises to have special centenary articles in forthcoming issues of JFE and Mechanical Engineer magazine later this year.  Finally, unlike with the 2023 APS March Meeting, I used the ASME meeting app without any difficulties at FEDSM2026.  

I would like to add that the meeting hotel, the Hyatt Regency, was very impressive.  Every staff member I interacted with was unfailingly nice and helpful.  They even made special hotel room keys for the conference, which I kept as souvenirs:

This was the first time I've seen a hotel make themed room keys, but I'm sure it won't be the last.  My stay was only marred on the last day by a partial power outage in my tower.

So, what did this physicist think?  I was glad to have attended the once-in-a-lifetime centenary meeting of the FED.  It nourished my soul.  I doubt I will have the means and opportunity to attend either the FEDSM or DFD annual meetings for a very long time, so it was particularly fortunate that I did have the ability to attend this year's centennial FEDSM (being in the western U.S. helps).  As I mentioned in my post on the 2024 DFD, the fluids specialty meetings are probably of lesser interest to me at this stage of my career than a larger meeting like the APS Global Physics Summit (formed form the merger of the March and April meetings).  There was definitely more of a focus on engineering research at FEDSM than I have seen at DFD.  On the other hand, this being a smaller meeting (even accounting for the fact that three different conferences were meeting together) allowed me far more face-to-face networking than I usually do at either APS DFD or the March Meeting.  This, despite that I did not meet a single person that I knew from beforehand.  In summary, I had a great time at FEDSM and in Bellevue, but it's unlikely I'll be able to go to another FEDSM (or DFD) for a very long time.

 

The debasement of the scientific literature

The debasement of the scientific literature is the collective result of many factors, such as:

• Incentives to publish in quantity rather than in quality, such as the use of impact factor to assess research merit.
• Sloppy and poorly documented methodology, leading to non-reproducible research.  Some of this is due to poor scientific education.
• Paper mills.
• Networks of authors who conspire to cite each others' works, inflating citation counts and impact factors.
• Poor editing by journal editors.
• Cursory, lazy, narrow-minded, and/or selfish peer reviewers.
• Predatory journals.
• Artificial intelligence slop.
• Scientific fraud.

Now Nature has thrown the lid open on yet another such factor, "review mills".  These are peer reviewers who produce lazy peer reviews (often reproducing identical prose across hundreds of reviewer reports) and demanding citation to their own work.  Writer Katarina Zimmer and data visualizer Andreion de Castro released this groundbreaking interactive article a few days ago to document this phenomenon, which I had not been previously aware of.  However I do not find it in the least surprising.  I won't regurgitate details here; their article is a bombshell and you should read it.

This year I was asked to peer-review an article that I had discovered had been extensively plagiarized.  The journal's editorial policy claims they check submissions against a plagiarism database, but evidently this had not been done before the manuscript was sent out for peer review.  The publisher was Springer-Nature.  Other commercial publishers (especially MDPI in a case study examined in detail) are implicated in the "review mill" problem discussed in the article by Zimmer and de Castro.  Thankfully I've never been published in an MDPI journal, as I've never had a high impression of that publisher, and I've been lucky that none of my coauthors over the decades has ever entertained publishing in their journals.  However, I have been published by Springer and the other major commercial publishers (Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, Sage) as well as a good number of nonprofit ones.

As my scientific career may be drawing to a close, I may personally not have to deal with the debasement of the literature for much longer.  However, I remain a consumer of the literature, and find it disheartening.

Physicists on US postage stamps: Robert Goddard

Here I am continuing the series of posts on physicists and astronomers on US postage stamps, including the first, second, and third posts, plus one on chemists.  (I have also covered mathematicians in this series.)

In the very first post I mentioned some aviation pioneers also depicted on US postage stamps; among them was Robert Goddard, who appears on an 8 cent airmail stamp issued in 1964.  I just discovered that his Ph.D. was in physics, so he can officially be considered among the physicists so honored!

 

What about chemists on US postage stamps?

In my last post, I mentioned I couldn't think of any chemists on US postage stamps at the time, though I mentioned discovering a stamp for Harvey Washington Wiley.  This was due to ignorance on my part.  To set the record straight, in addition to Wiley:

• In 1940, Charles W. Eliot appeared on a 3 cent stamp in the Famous Americans series. 
• In 1947, Thomas A. Edison appeared on a 3 cent stamp, on the 100th anniversary of his birth.  (His first lamp had been celebrated earlier, on a 2 cent stamp in 1929.) 
• In 1948, George Washington Carver appeared on a 3 cent stamp, in the same format as the 1940 Famous American Scientists issue (which originally featured no physicists, astronomers, chemists, or mathematicians).  He later appeared on a 32 cent stamp issued in 1998, part of the Celebrate the Century - 1910s series.  I believe this gives him the honor of being the only chemist to have appeared on 2 different US postage stamps.
• In 1954, George Eastman appeared on a 3 cent stamp, celebrating his 100th birthday. 
• In 1983, Joseph Priestley appeared on a 20 cent stamp, celebrating his 250th birthday.
• In 1993, Percy Lavon Julian appeared on a 29 cent stamp, in the Black Heritage series. 
• In 2009, Linus Pauling (Nobel laureate in both chemistry and peace) and biochemist Gerti Cori (Nobel laureate in physiology/medicine) both appeared on 41 cent stamps in the American Scientists issue of that year, its second such issue.
• In 2011, Melvin Calvin and biochemist Severo Ochoa, both Nobel laureates (in chemistry and medicine/phyisology, respectively), appeared on Forever stamps in the third and final American Scientists issue. 

Finally, in 1988 a physicist associated with Xerox, Chester Carlson, appeared on a 21 cent stamp in the Great Americans series. I should have mentioned him earlier.

Once again, I'm grateful to the website of the Mystic Stamp Company, as well as stampworld.com, and finally this article:

L. R. Caswell, 1990:  American chemists and physicists on postage stamps.  Journal of Chemical Education, 67 (10):  842-847.

 

 

Physicists and astronomers honored on US postage stamps: another update.

I previously blogged (2021) about physicists and astronomers honored on U.S. postage stamps, with an update last year here.  It's time for another update, not because any new stamps of interest have been issued, but because I have learned of two other stamps that I should have mentioned in my original post, along with a few other notable finds.

First, in 1973, the 500th anniversary year of his birth, Polish astronomer Copernicus appeared on an 8 cent stamp.  He is a major figure in the history of science, and the only one of those mentioned in this series of posts that did not live in the United States at some point during their life.

Second, in 1988, aviation pioneer Samuel P. Langley (along with his Aerodrome #5) appeared on a 45 cent airmail stamp.  He was an astronomer, mathematician, and physicist.

While I find it odd that I couldn't think of a single chemist honored on a postage stamp (but see below), the American Chemical Society has twice been so honored:  in a 1951 three-cent stamp celebrating the ACS's diamond jubilee, and a 1976 thirteen-cent stamp celebrating their centenary.  Similarly, the American Society of Civil Engineers was honored on the centenary of its founding with a 3-cent stamp in 1952.  This was preceded by another 3-cent stamp in 1950 honoring the Railroad Engineers of America.  This stamp features "Casey" Jones, and was issued on the 50th anniversary of his death. 

"The Sciences" were honored on a 5-cent stamp in 1963, celebrating the centenary of the founding of the National Academy of Sciences, whose first president was a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin.  In 1983, "Science and Industry" was honored on a 20-cent stamp, issued on the 50th anniversary of Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.

In 2018, a set of four Forever stamps were issued in honor of STEM education.  They honored Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

Since I've spent time in the pharmaceutical industry, I will also note that in 1956, a 3-cent stamp honoring the 50th anniversary of the Pure Food and Drug Act was issued, which features Harvey Washington Wiley, a major driving force in the passage of that law, and an official at the USDA agency that was a predecessor to the modern Food and Drug Administration.  So, I found at least one chemist after all!

At some point, I hope to find and scrutinize a history of every postage stamp issued by the United States Postal Service, to see if I can find any others of note.

Once again I'm grateful to the website of the Mystic Stamp Company.

On the history of the AMS AOFD conference

In an earlier post celebrating the 100th anniversary of the ASME Fluids Engineering Division, I expressed some confusion about the history of the American Meteorological Society's Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics Conference.  I wondered if it had not always been called by that name.

Indeed, the first Conference on Atmospheric and Oceanic Waves and Stability was held in 1976 in Seattle, WA; with the second in 1978, held in Boston, MA.  The 10th was held in Big Sky, Montana in 1995. For the 11th conference in 1997 in Tacoma, WA, the name changed to the Conference on Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics, a name that has stuck ever since.  I'm not sure at what point the meeting became annual rather than every 2 years.

Anyway, the conference is 50 years old this year, another celebration worthy of note!

 

 

Can't stop blogging about book reviews!

My last post commented further about book reviews in the physics community.  An announcement today that the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) has appointed a new editor for its MAA Reviews has reminded me that the mathematical community is doing relatively better on the book review front than the physics community is.  I don't read MAA Reviews regularly, but I see that it is a professional-society sponsored source of curated book reviews.  They also feature a Basic Library List, a downloadable spreadsheet which includes books they recommend for college and university libraries.  The list is annotated with a star system, with 3 stars for books considered essential, 2 stars for strongly recommended, 1 star for "recommended", and zero stars for "suggested".  I haven't examined the list in detail, but conceptually this seems to be a good idea, and quite useful for students and self-learners as well.

More broadly, I can't speak to the quality of MAA Reviews, as I'm not a regular reader, but the concept seems like exactly what I think is missing in the physics community.  As a bonus, all the content seems to be freely available online.  Unfortunately, using the search feature I was able to find only a single reviewed book in the field of fluid mechanics, and only 3 under physics.  Its coverage of statistics is not at all comprehensive, with only 6 books showing up in the search feature for statistics, 6 more for probability, with 3 more under probability theory, two under "Statistics and Probability", one more under Bayesian statistics, one each under classification and clustering, one more under data visualization, and one more under data analysis.

The Basic Library List has much better coverage, but no reviews are attached to the entries.  Looking at the fluid mechanics sections of the list, I count only 13 titles included, of which only two are rated at 3 stars (essential), both by James Lighthill:  his Waves in Fluids and Informal Introduction to Theoretical Fluid Mechanics.  Both are excellent choices that I would agree with.  There are no 2 star recommendations, but earning a single star are Acheson's Elementary Fluid Mechanics, Lamb's Hydrodynamics, Courant and Friedrichs' Supersonic Flow and Shock Waves, Stoker's Water Waves, and a book I'd not heard of until now, Gary Sod's Numerical Methods in Fluid Dynamics.  Aside from that last one, I would consider the rest as classics.  A 14th book, Batchelor's Introduction to Fluid Dynamics, also a classic, appears under "Mathematical Physics:  Fluid Mechanics".  However there are quite a few other classics that should have been included, many of which were written by physicists or engineers.  So, in execution the list might not live up to my expectations, but I suppose opinions about books are always subjective, so that no such list would make everyone happy.

In addition to MAA, I am a member of SIAM (the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics), and their SIAM Review (a journal sent to all members) maintains a healthy book review section.

Anyway, perhaps the physics community needs a source of free, online, curated book reviews in the spirit of MAA Reviews, to replace the fallen books section of Physics Today.  A professional society might be a good central place to host one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On book reviews

Not long ago, I lamented on this blog about the termination of Physics Today's book reviews section.  I mentioned that book reviews are pretty rate at the American Journal of Physics these days too.  However, I am pleased to see that the March issue of AJP does include a book review, of a recent text on soft matter physics.

The Atlantic recently had an article by Adam Kirsch about the termination of the Washington Post's book review section, the second time it has been terminated.  There is a good discussion there about disaggregation, that is, separating book reviews from other content.  It reflects a rethinking of the role of a general publication and how we no longer expect it to cultivate all areas of our culture.  This may indeed explain the loss of book reviews in Physics Today as well.

There may not be a single place to go to find authoritative reviews of physics books in the English language.  Perhaps a google search will find blogs or "booktok" videos that provide reviews, from actual users of these books.  But somehow this does not seem to me to replace the curated reviews from selected experts that might have been found in Physics Today, and perhaps can still be found at AJP and Contemporary Physics.  There are very few publications read across the community:  Physics Today and Physics World are the main ones I can think of in the English language.  I don't subscribe to Physics World, so I'm not sure if they even have, or have ever had, a book reviews section.

A peer reviewer discovers plagiarism

In the following, certain details are anonymized to protect the confidentiality of an academic journal's peer review process.

The Story 

Last month, I was asked to serve as a peer reviewer for a manuscript submitted to a certain European academic journal, published by Springer Nature.  I have no prior history with that journal, either as an author, peer-reviewer, or even a reader.  Nonetheless, the abstract of the manuscript was sufficiently intriguing that I agreed. 

I began working on my peer review.  I found that the paper was of appallingly low quality.  I have intermittently served as a peer reviewer for various journals over the last quarter century, but I have never, until now, thought to unequivocally recommend outright rejection of a manuscript.  I began drafting extensive comments to return to the author, with constructive comments on how the paper's quality could be raised to be of publishable value.  One of the points I made was the poor engagement with prior literature, especially with the manuscript's claim that previous investigators achieved little success in predicting certain features of the world.  To challenge the author, I decided to see if I could find papers that contradicted the claim about poor prediction success.  I started to find papers that claimed good prediction success, that were not cited in the manuscript.  I then had the idea of looking up the handful of papers that were cited in the manuscript in Google Scholar, to see who else had cited them.

Lo and behold, I quickly discovered a paper published the previous October in a different journal, published by MDPI, that was nearly identical to the manuscript that I was reviewing.  A few superficial changes were made, but vast portions were word-for-word identical, including the tables and graphs.  I was shocked.  The Springer journal I was reviewing for has, on its journal policies page, a warning that all manuscripts would be checked using CrossRef's similarity checker, using iThenticate, for plagiarism.  And I confirmed that the "victim" paper was indeed in the CrossRef database, so if such a check had been run, the manuscript should have been flagged prior to it being sent out for peer review.  

I next thought about contacting the author of the "victim" paper, but I discovered an online obituary for him, indicating he had passed in December, the month before the plagiarizing manuscript was submitted to the Springer journal!  I submitted my findings to the editor, using the journal's manuscript submission portal.  About a week later I emailed him separately, as I began to worry that other peer reviewers might be wasting time on this plagiarized manuscript.

The editor replied, and indicated he would reject the manuscript.  Indeed, he did so, but in the formal decision letter (for which the reviewers were cc'd), the reports of all the reviewers were included.  Thus I was right that we had all wasted considerable time on the manuscript.  There were a total of 3 of us reviewers, and I was the only one who had discovered the plagiarism.  One of the other reviewers recommended publication, but leveled lengthy criticism on the paper; the other was much more negative, saying the paper was "potentially interesting" but leveled numerous additional criticisms.  They both complained about many of the same things I did (in my draft comments, which were not shared with the journal) though I had also identified other issues not mentioned by them (again, not shared with the journal).

After the rejection, I decided not to let my draft peer review comments go to waste, so I posted them on PubPeer as comments for the published MDPI paper (which I've been calling the "victim" paper).  Unfortunately, the author is no longer with us, and unable to reply to my criticisms.

Reflections on the Incident

Several things went wrong here.

1. The MDPI journal should not have published the original paper.  It likely would not have passed peer review at the Springer journal where it was also submitted.  Moreover, according to Wikipedia, MDPI is a controversial publisher that has been suspected of being a predatory journal.  From now on, I will refuse to submit to, or peer review for, any MDPI journal.
2. The plagiarizer should not have picked such a terrible paper to plagiarize.  Chances of getting it published would be low, except at another predatory journal.  But what was the point of plagiarizing it in the first place?  Why plagiarize?
3. I strongly suspect that the Springer journal did not follow its own policy of running a plagiarism check on the submitted manuscript.
4. The peer reviewers should and did assume that the journal would follow its policies, and none of us attempted to check the manuscript for plagiarism.  Two of the three peer reviews therefore failed to detect the plagiarism, and the third one (me) did so but not deliberately; I stumbled upon the "victim" paper while trying to accomplish an unrelated task.

Peer review is a purely voluntary effort, and journals (including for-profit journals, such as was the case here) rely on the goodwill, skill, and effort of volunteers to perform a thorough manuscript review.  When reviewers are asked to review plagiarized manuscripts, it results in a colossal waste of time and energy.  Journals often have trouble convincing researchers to agree to review manuscripts, and when incidents like this occur, it decreases the reputation of the journal and creates resentment on the part of reviewers whose time was wasted.

Another note on scientist biography series

Previously I blogged about some biography book series featuring scientists, notably here and here.  The latter post mentioned the Blackwell Science Biographies series that migrated to Cambridge University Press, as well as a more general biography series at Oxford University Press (OUP) called Lives and Legacies, that has featured two physicists, Isaac Newton and Ben Franklin. 

Somehow I neglected to mention in my post on the Cambridge Companions series, that Oxford University Press has an Oxford Handbook of Newton currently in development.  Some of the chapters have been published online, and they look quite promising.

I recently learned of another Blackwell series, Blackwell Great Minds, that currently resides at the publisher Wiley.  Like OUP's Lives and Legacies, it is a very general series not focused on scientists.  However, I know of two scientists who have volumes dedicated to them:  Darwin and Newton.  (There is also a volume on Descartes.)  So it seems among the larger intellectual history culture, Darwin and Newton may be the most consequential scientists.  Both of them are represented in the following series:

• Cambridge Companions.
• Very Short Introductions (OUP).
• Cambridge Science Biographies.
• Oxford Portraits in Science.
• Blackwell Science Biographies (Wiley).

In addition, Newton is represented in the Oxford Handbooks series and the OUP's Lives and Legacies series.  He is even represented in the Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy series!  (So are Robert Boyle and Margaret Cavendish.)  However the Bloomsbury Handbooks series features only one scientist I know of, Emilie du Chatelet (forthcoming later this month).

Congratulations to the ASME Fluids Engineering Division on their 100th anniversary

Earlier this month, I learned that the Fluids Engineering Division (FED) of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) is celebrating its 100th anniversary this summer at their annual summer meeting (FEDSM2026).  They may be the oldest fluid mechanics-specific professional society in the United States...let's take a look at the evidence for this claim.

First, ASME was founded in 1880, and its Hydraulics Division (HYD) was formed in 1926, with Prof. Lewis F. Moody as a prime mover in its creation.  Its first separate division conference was held in 1961.  Prof. Robert C. Dean led the effort to change its name to the Fluids Engineering Division (FED) which succeeded in 1963.  A restructuring occurred in 1989-1990, but the name remained.  There was also a Committee on General Hydraulics which existed between 1938-1940, led by Murrough P. O'Brien, and later a Fluid Mechanics Committee, formed in 1957 by Dean, now called the Fluid Mechanics Technical Committee (FMTC).  The Journal of Fluids Engineering was founded in 1973, also under Dean, its first editor.  I've pulled this information from the article by Cooper et al. (2016).

We must turn now to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), founded much earlier (1852).  Its Hydraulics Division was formed in 1938, the 12th such division formed.  Fred C. Scobey of USDA was the prime mover of that effort.  Its first specialty conference was held in 1950, and its Journal of the Hydraulics Division began in 1956.  In 1982, the journal was renamed the Journal of Hydraulic Engineering.  A 50th anniversary book for the division was published in 1990, but I have not been able to see a copy.  My information is drawn mainly from Petersen (2002).  It is unclear to me from the society's website whether the Hydraulics Division, or its specialty conference, still exist, but the journal definitely does.

The American Physical Society (APS, founded in 1899) created its Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) in 1947, its fourth division.  Raymond J. Seeger was the prime mover of this effort.  The first annual meeting was held in 1949, though sessions were sponsored at the 1948 APS annual meeting, including a joint meeting with the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences (a predecessor to the AIAA, about which more later).  However the APS did not start a special fluid mechanics journal until 2015, Physical Review Fluids.  Prior to that, the DFD collaborated with the American Institute of Physics (AIP) in the publication of Physics of Fluids, founded in 1959 under Francois Frenkiel.  Some historical information on the DFD can be found in this piece by Russell Donnelly.

For the remainder of this post, information is drawn from Wikipedia and/or the websites of the professional societies themselves.

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) was formed in 1963 from the merger of the Institute of the Aerospace Sciences (founded in 1932 under the name Institute of Aeronautical Sciences, mentioned above), and the American Rocket Society, founded in 1930.  At one time the AIAA sponsored a Fluid Dynamics Conference, but it does not seem to exist anymore.  They do have a Fluid Dynamics Technical Committee, within their Aerospace Sciences Group.  I do not know when it was formed, but it can't be older than AIAA itself.  AIAA does not seem to have a specialty journal for fluids; rather fluids papers appear across the constellation of their journals on other subjects.

The same about the journals can be said about the American Institute for Chemical Engineering (AIChE), founded in 1908.  They don't seem to have a specialty journal, conference, or division or forum dedicated to fluids, as the topic basically pervades much of the discipline, as it does for AIAA.

Indeed, many professional societies in science, mathematics, engineering, and the Earth, environmental, and planetary sciences make use of fluid mechanics, and many of their practitioners carry out fundamental research in fluids.  Fundamental and applied topics in fluids research pervade across multiple technical areas within these professions, so often they do not have a fluids-specific unit, journal, or conference.  Examples include the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), and the American Meteorological Society (AMS).  However, the AMS does host an annual Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics (AOFD) conference.  It has not always been annual (the most recent, just held earlier this week, was called the 25th, but I coauthored a presentation given at the 13th in 2001), so I'm not sure when it began.  I have seen an announcement for the 2d AMS Atmospheric and Oceanic Waves and Stability conference in 1978, so perhaps this is the same conference under a different historical name?

So to conclude, the major U.S. professional society units that specialize in fluid mechanics appear to be the ASME's FED and the APS's DFD, both of which sponsor annual conferences and journals (JFE and PR Fluids).  The AIAA has a technical committee but no special conference or journal.  The AMS also has their AOFD annual conference, and the ASCE maintains the Journal of Hydraulic Engineering. To these we can add the AIP's Physics of Fluids journal.

The surviving units, ASME FED and APS DFD, were created in 1926 and 1947 respectively, so indeed FED is the oldest that I know of in the United States.  The ASCE has the oldest journal discussed here, however, since JHE dates to 1956, with PoF following in 1959, JFE in 1973, and PR Fluids in 2015.  Finally the oldest surviving conference discussed here is DFD's, starting in 1949, followed by FEDSM in 1961, and AOFD possibly dating to sometime in the 1970s.

References

P. Cooper, C. S. Martin, and T. J. O'Hearn, 2016:  History of the Fluids Engineering Division.  Journal of Fluids Engineering, 138:  100801.

M. S. Petersen, 2002:  Summary of the Hydraulics Division- ASCE (1938-1988).  Environmental and Water Resources History, ed. by J. R. Rogers and A. J. Fredrich, Sessions at ASCE Civil Engineering Conference and Exposition, Nov. 3-7, 2002, Washington, DC., pp. 193-194.

Robert L. Devaney (1948-2025)

Today I learned that the Boston University mathematician and educator, Robert L. Devaney, died in November of last year.  He was especially known for his upper level textbook, An Introduction to Dynamical Systems, first published in 1986, back in the heyday of chaos theory, and whose third edition came out in 2022.  My first course in nonlinear dynamical systems was in 1994, where we used the first edition of his 1992 (much gentler) textbook, A First Course in Chaotic Dynamical Systems:  Theory and Experiment.  I believe it was the only math textbook (other than my first-year calculus textbook) with color illustrations.  The book also featured very brief biographical profiles of some of the pioneers of chaos theory, nearly all of whom were still alive at the time.  One of them was Devaney's Ph.D. advisor, Steven Smale, who outlives him.  A second edition was published in 2020.

At the time I took the course, I was preparing for a summer physics project in nonlinear dynamics, and I probably read James Gleick's Chaos around this time as well.  So the course was very timely, and in retrospect, the book I think was successful in at least introducing me to the field.  The book was probably a bit more mathematical and less "physical" than other books I encountered then and later, so I'm not sure I would use it today to teach a class on the subject, but I would certainly refer to it in developing my lectures, and possibly cite it as supplementary reading.

I'm not positive, but I believe I did see Devaney speak once, at a New Jersey section meeting of the Mathematical Association of America, sometime in the 2000s.  Unfortunately I failed to get a chance to ask him to sign my copy of his textbook, either because I forgot to bring it to the meeting, or I didn't get chance to have a one-on-one conversation.  I can't remember anymore.  I certainly regret the missed opportunity, but am grateful for his contributions to dynamical systems education over a distinguished career.

 

 

 

Another refresh of Physics Today

DTLR has been a regular reader of Physics Today, published by the American Institute of Physics, since the early 1990s.  Since then, PT has also gained an online presence with its website, of which I am an occasional (though not regular) user.  The January 2026 issue has a piece from the editor about the magazine's latest refreshed design.  One of its stated goals is to move to "cleaner layouts, fewer distractions, larger and more readable fonts..."  In this, I am very pleased with the results.  For some reason, the subjective experience of browsing through the print edition of this issue was very enjoyable, and the design changes seem to have enticed me to read more of the content than I usually do.  Another positive change is that it appears that much of PT's content is no longer paywalled.  All moving in the right direction!  So let's take a closer look at Physics Today past and present:  I will share with you what I think are the hits and misses with the current PT compared to its former glories.  For comparison, I have in front of me the May 2007 print issue, one I decided to keep almost 20 years ago, as it has two very interesting articles (one on the physics of groundwater, and the other on Millikan's famous oil drop experiment).

Here are some elements that seem to have been maintained across almost two decades:

• Feature stories.
• Search and discovery (short reports about research advances).
• Issues and events (news articles, including FYI "science policy briefs").
• Quick study.
• Back scatter.

I've always considered the first three of these to be the heart of PT, serving the core purpose of the magazine, along with letters/opinion (more on that later).   I read two of the three features in the January issue, and I found Johanna Miller's piece on superconducting quantum circuits (subject of last year's Nobel Prize in Physics) to be superb.  I really enjoy articles like this:  an article that takes the reader by the hand into a field they are not an expert in, and in this case relying on just our memory of undergraduate quantum physics, and gives us a gentle explanation of the research, connecting it to broader trends in physics.  The article was enjoyable and instructive, and the writing was of excellent quality.  I would like to see several articles like this per year in Physics Today.  (The groundwater article by Mary Anderson in the May 2007 issue is another in this vein - so good I kept the issue.)  I am also a fan of physics history, and enjoyed several pieces in last year's issues celebrating the international quantum year, such as Ryan Dahn's article on women in the early history of quantum physics.  That piece inspired me to acquire the book from which the article is derived.

I remember when Quick study and Back scatter were first introduced years earlier.  I thought both of those were excellent additions to the magazine's departments.  They're generally easy to consume, and the topics are very diverse.  They make PT a more well rounded product.

Two new departments are "What can physicists do?" (which started last year) and the Crossword.  I glanced at the Crossword and realized I had to stop myself from starting to mentally pencil in the entries, as I was really too busy to commit to it at the time.  So much for getting rid of distractions LOL!  

"What can physicists do?" is, I think, a long overdue addition to PT.  Years ago the British magazine Physics World used to have a similar department, then more recently APS News did too, though I haven't seen it recently there.  The physics profession is going to have a recruitment crisis unless it broadens awareness of what physicists do, outside of traditional physics jobs.  The much-appreciated annual careers issue just isn't sufficient to address the constantly challenging topic of physicist employment.  I hope this new department never goes away.

How about the new logo?  I dislike that the words "Physics Today" are deemphasized on the cover, next to the initials PT, which I think appear on the cover for the first time ever.  I used to enjoy the puzzled looks from innocent members of the public when they see me flipping through a magazine with PHYSICS TODAY emblazoned across the cover.  It is no longer obvious from the cover that this is a physics magazine!

It's unclear whether the Opinion and Letters departments are continuing.  Both appeared in issues as late as the fall of last year.  I think these departments are essential as they give voice to members of the community.  Yes, the back page of APS News is another venue for such discussions, but social media, the blogosphere, podcasts, youtube, and the like have fragmented the media consumption of physicists.  Physics Today may be one of the few common pieces of curated media that reaches across the physics community (beyond even the individual AIP member societies like APS).  I am also a reader of the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, and its Comment and Discussion department is perhaps the liveliest I've seen across professional society magazines - it is usually the first part of the magazine I want to read!  PT's letters & opinion section has never been quite so vigorous, but I would like PT to preserve its place there, as I think it really is also part of the heart of the magazine.

Related to opinion, the May 2007 issue reminds me of the long-departed Reference Frame column.  Some of the best and most stimulating writing in PT has appeared there.  Authors such as Frank Wilczek (in that particular issue), Leo Kadanoff, Jerry Gollub, David Mermin, and so many others provoked much thought, reflection, and amusement.  This was one of the most fun parts of the Physics Today of the past, and I really miss it!

The obituaries were moved fully online a number of years ago, and I understand the reasons why.  There was just no room in the print edition to accommodate the departures of numerous colleagues who first joined the profession in the post-Sputnik expansion of American science.  At least PT has continued its commitment to the community by keeping community-sourced obituaries on its website.  I would still appreciate an occasional tabulation of recently posted obituaries in the print edition, something that has sadly been dropped, since I am not a regular visitor to the website.  

Another department that went online was the Job Opportunities.  And this too is understandable.  Job searching is now done fully online.  Print media is just too slow a venue for it.

The book reviews have vanished entirely.  I really miss them.  Book reviews are also increasingly rare in the American Journal of Physics. It seems that the journal Contemporary Physics may be one of the last bastions of book reviews covering the breadth of physics.  Perhaps AIP should arrange to provide a subscription to Contemporary Physics for its members?  Even more specialized journals like the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, which used to have book reviews, seem to have lost them. 

Back before 2007, PT used to also feature occasional science policy panel discussions, where a group of prominent physicists would be prompted with questions and the ensuing discussion recorded for readers.  When I was thinking about my post-Ph.D. career in the summer of 1997, I read a number of such panel discussions in back issues of PT as part of my research.  They were quite valuable then, and perhaps continue to be of historical value today.  However PT hasn't hosted one in decades.

Another class of article that PT should increase is interviews.  Last year they did have one with Peter Shor.  We've got to have more such interviews!

Finally I appreciate that Physics Today remains committed, for the moment, to having a print edition.  This is not a given.  The American Meteorological Society ended the print run of its Bulletin, BAMS, at the end of 2025.  I still get EOS in print from the American Geophysical Union, and the less durable print copies of APS News and SIAM News from their respective societies.  I don't always want to be looking into a battery-powered screen, so having these print publications is much appreciated.

It seems that I have no complaints about the new Physics Today except for its logo, and the loss of some of the eliminated departments from the past.  I hope that letters & opinions haven't gone away, and I'd love to bring back Reference Frame and Book Reviews, and a list of obituaries posted online.

The Year of Mathematics

I have just learned that 2026 has been declared "The Year of Mathematics"or YoM2026, by the Conference Board on Mathematical Societies.  Unlike previous celebrations noted on this blog, such as last year being the international quantum year, this YoM2026 designation seems to be restricted to the United States.  At time of writing, they have announced that a bipartisan Congressional resolution has been introduced in the U.S. Senate.

Why 2026?  Apparently this year the International Congress of Mathematicians will be meeting in Philadelphia, in the year of the United States' 250th anniversary. The quadrennial Congress was held in the U.S., according to Wikipedia, on only two previous occasions (1950 and 1986).  Otherwise, I am not aware of any particular anniversary being celebrated in 2026 in connection with mathematics.  In this respect the selection of the year seems as arbitrary as 2020-2021 as the International Year of Sound.  In contrast, I noted several epochal anniversaries being celebrated when 2015 was designated the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies.  (Wikipedia tells us that in addition to the ones I noted in my post at the time, there were also 1865 and 1965, respectively, anniversaries of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory and the Penzias/Wilson cosmic microwave background discovery.)  Of course 2005 was the World Year of Physics to celebrate the centenary of Einstein's annus mirabilis.  Then 2011 was the International Year of Chemistry, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Marie Curie's Nobel Prize in Chemistry (um. she also won a Nobel in Physics in 1903) as well as the centenary of the International Association of Chemical Societies.

So, in contrast with these various physics-related celebration years, there is no specific anniversary being celebrated by YoM2026, nor is the celebration international.  Even the International Year of Statistics (2013) was a global event, though I am not aware of any particular statistics anniversary being celebrated that year.  Last year's quantum year celebrated, of course, the centenary of Heisenberg's matrix mechanics.

Perhaps the granddaddy of them all was the International Geophysical year in 1957-1957, which Wikipedia tells us traces its heritage the International Polar Years of 1882-1883 and 1932-1933.  However, unlike the more recent celebrations I noted above, the geophysical and polar years featured surges of actual research and international collaboration.  In comparison, the more recent celebratory "years" seem to be largely about outreach and propaganda.

 

Hydrodynamic Quantum Analogs and nonlocality

Last month's SIAM News featured a front-page, above-the-fold article by Prof. John Bush of MIT, "Shifting the Classical-Quantum Boundary:  Insights from Pilot-wave Hydrodynamics".  Among other things, the article challenges the conventional wisdom that quantum theory is inherently and demonstrably nonlocal.  It does so by championing Hydrodynamic Quantum Analogs (HQAs), which are classical analogs of quantum phenomena, using fluid mechanics.  The author uses HQAs to lend credence to the de Broglie-Bohm pilot wave formulation of quantum mechanics.

I have a passing interest in HQAs, regardless of whether they supports alternate interpretations of quantum mechanics, or challenge nonlocality.  I keep an open mind about Bush's assertions, but am neither a cheerleader nor dogmatic opponent of these ideas.  More importantly, I know almost nothing about the field, except what I've learned from Bush's article, and glimpses of other papers in the area (including his) that I've seen over the years.

However I do think Bush does his readers a disservice in the following passage.

The notion of nonlocality, or action at a distance, should be anathema to any rational scientist. Nevertheless, most physicists have made peace with it; they either remain agnostic on the subject or believe it to be an essential, inescapable feature of quantum physics. Because standard quantum theory describes probabilities but not particle dynamics, nonlocality is perceived to be everywhere — in wavefunction collapse, single-particle interference, the quantum mirage, and interaction-free measurement. Correlation at a distance is taken as evidence of action at a distance. HQAs have demonstrated that if we adopt de Broglie’s physical picture of quantum dynamics, we need not invoke nonlocality for any such effects. In short, HQAs suggest that quantum nonlocality is a misinference that is rooted in the incompleteness of quantum theory. While nonlocality is a feature of quantum theory, it need not be a feature of quantum physics.

I've quoted the whole paragraph to ensure that context is provided, but the main problem I have is with the very first sentence of this paragraph.  Should "action at a distance" be "anathema to any rational scientist"?  I am reminded of Bohr's response to Einstein, who said "God does not play dice."  Bohr replied, "Don't tell God what to do."

Newton's original formulation of his gravitational law was manifestly an action-at-a-distance phenomenon.  Yes, it has been superseded by a local field theory, Einstein's general relativity. But is it fair to accuse Newton of not being a "rational scientist"?  (Perhaps so given his interest in alchemy and biblical chronology, but surely not because of his gravity theory!)  What about the 19th century action-at-a-distance rivals to Maxwell's theory (such as Weber's electrodynamics).  Note how Coulomb's law resembles Newton's.  Again, the rival theories were essentially cast aside as incomplete or even wrong once Maxwell's local field theory was fully understood and accepted, but does that make Coulomb, the Webers, and others failures as rational scientists?

Bush gives no citation nor even an argument as to why action at a distance is unworthy of a "rational scientist".  This is because it is nothing more than an opinion, a preference of the author.  He is just offended by the notion of nonlocality in nature.  Offended!

It's okay to be offended.  Such attitudes drive research on the foundations of quantum theory, in defiance of the "shut up and calculate" mentality.  Such research has led to quantum information science, quantum computing, etc.  This is all good stuff!

All I'm saying is that Bush's dictum, that nonlocality should be anathema to rational scientists, is the least persuasive sentence in this article.  The sentence is itself irrational, as it is based on neither reason nor evidence - it is a purely emotional expression as it stands.  And yes I am also making an emotional expression when I condemn it.  

Perhaps there is a good reason that nonlocality should not be considered rational science, and I'm sure other physicists and philosophers have advanced such reasons.  But Bush fails to do so in this article, nor did he cite those who do.  It's nothing but a cheap shot.  In this, he has not served his readers well.

Finally, I realize that it's quite funny that I wrote an entire blog post about one pesky sentence in an otherwise intriguing and informative article :-)

 

"The Grand Design" by Hawking and Mlodinow

I have just finished reading The Grand Design, by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow (New York:  Random House).  The book was originally published in 2010, and I acquired a glossy-paged edition in 2013, but it sat on my shelf unread, until a few months ago.  I have been meaning to read it for a long time.  Hawking died in 2018, so this book belongs to the final decade of his career, and I regret not getting to it until long after his passing.

Sadly, since the book was published, both authors (as well as many, many top physicists) have been associated with Jeffrey Epstein.  However as far as can be determined at this time, any allegations of improper or illegal conduct by either Hawking or Mlodinow have not been substantiated.  

On to the book itself.  Much of it is science popularization, and though I am conversant in the more familiar parts of physics exposited, the book did clarify a couple things for me, which I appreciated.  For example, I have often been confused by the use of the term "effective theory" in physics, and the book explained it in layman's terms.

The important point made by the book is a strong endorsement of supersymmetry and M-theory.  On the final page, the authors write that "M-theory is the only candidate for a complete theory of the universe"(italics original).  They also advocate the multiverse concept, and the strong anthropic principle.  Along with these, they present a metaphysical principle, "model-dependent realism", which superficially appears to be a hybrid of instrumentalism and realism.  However, I'm not sure if you can really eat your cake and have it too.  The principle appears to be crafted specifically to accommodate M-theory, which is actually an infinite number of theories, each with its own domain of applicability, though where the domains overlap, the theories make the same predictions.  I don't see what is realist about "model-dependent realism"; it appears to me to be a variant of instrumentalism.

A key passage is this (p. 58):

Regarding the laws that govern the universe, what we can say is this:  There seems to be no single mathematical model or theory that can describe every aspect of the universe.  Instead...there seems to be the network of theories called M-theory.  Each theory in the M-theory network is good at describing phenomena within a certain range.  Wherever their ranges overlap, the various theories in the network agree, so they can all be said to be parts of the same theory.  But no single theory within the network can describe every aspect of the universe--all the forces of nature, the particles that feel those forces, and the framework of space and time in which it all plays out.  Though this situation does not fulfill the traditional physicist's dream of a single unified theory, it is acceptable within the framework of model-dependent realism.

Later, they write (p. 143):  "We seem to be at a critical point in the history of science, in which we must alter our conception of goals and of what makes a physical theory acceptable". 

I am glad that I read this book after I read Jim Baggott's Farewell to Reality, which was published in 2013 (by Pegasus Books), and which I acquired less than a year after acquiring The Grand Design.  I read it within a year, and reviewed it on this blog in 2014.  In the decade since, I think it is fair to say that empirical evidence for supersymmetry has not yet been found, though back then, expectations were high that such evidence would be found within a decade.  This has weakened the case for The Grand Design and strengthened the critique given by Baggott.  Indeed, Baggott uses the phrase "Grand Delusion", which sounds like direct mockery of The Grand Design.  

On balance, reading The Grand Design was not a waste of my time.  It was important for me to know the views of one of the greatest physicists of my lifetime, and I did learn a few things.  However I am doubtful about its main conclusions, though I have a benefit of hindsight -- 15 years of physics progress since the book was published -- to reinforce my doubts.  If you're interested, don't let me stop you from reading The Grand Design, but if you do, do yourself the favor of also reading Baggott's Farewell to Reality in conjunction, to get a more balanced perspective.

 

 

 

The worst year in U.S. science since this blog began

Today I will depart from my usual avoidance of political matters, because of the extraordinary shift in the relationship between the U.S. government and its nation's scientific community this year.  I alluded to certain aspects of it in an earlier post, and I won't give a thorough discussion of the topic here.  Others more eloquent than me have done so elsewhere.  However DTLR cannot end the year without at least acknowledging the shift, for it has affected nearly every corner of the scientific community in the United States.

This blog began in July, 2013; now we are 12.5 years later in a completely different world.  In that time, incredible scientific tragedies were witnessed, such as the global COVID-19 pandemic, and two outbreaks of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (the second, currently ongoing) in North America.  However, thus far, 2025, has been the worst year of all for science, since this blog began.  For we have witnessed the conscious, deliberate choice by the nation's leaders to cripple itself in many ways, including by crippling its scientific community.   Many scientists (including me) have been left in a prolonged state of under- or un-employment as a result.  Others have fled the United States, and many, many talented scientists have chosen not to even come to this country to learn or to work. At the same time, the People's Republic of China has been expanding its investment in science and in scientists, and could not have wished for a better boost for its scientific community than what the United States has voluntarily done to itself.  Investments in science, engineering, technology, and medicine are massive stimuli for a nation's economy, public health, and national security.  In this enterprise, the United States has used 2025 to build up China (including its ruling Communist Party) and weaken itself.  

In the big picture, this is not simply the fault of one particular homegrown party or group of politicians.  Collective blame should be shared with their domestic predecessors/opponents, whose multidimensional failures paved the way for the current regime's election.  Much of the damage will thus be irreversible.  Future leaders of any party will politicize and weaponize elements of "science" at their convenience, and use scientific funding to reward and punish.  The nonpartisan civil service, including its scientists,will never fully recover, and even if someday allowed to pursue its work without interference, will never be trusted by the taxpaying public again.

DTLR does not approve.  

 

 

The women cited in Lamb's Hydrodynamics

I was skimming through the index of the sixth (and final) edition of Horace Lamb's Hydrodynamics (Cambridge University Press,1932), when I stumbled upon the name of "Miss Fawcett".  Later was a "Miss Swain".  And I also found Sophie Kowalewski, a famous female mathematician (better known as Sofya Kovalevskaya, 1850-1891).  These were the only obviously female names I could find in the index.

Let's start with Kovalevskaya.  I knew she had worked in mathematical physics, primarily because of her work on rigid body dynamics and the "Kovalevskaya top", well discussed in Roger Cooke's book about her mathematics (Springer, 1984, Ch. 7).  However Cooke also discusses (Ch. 4) her reformulation of Laplace's model of the rings of Saturn, a self-gravitating liquid annulus.  It is this 1885 paper that Lamb cites in his Art. 376.  It was published in the Astronomische Nachrichten, 111 (3):  38-48.  The first page is reproduced here:

  

Now, who are Miss Fawcett and Miss Swain?  Both were British mathematicians.

Philippa Garrett Fawcett  (1868-1948) was the first woman to achieve the top score at Cambridge University's Mathematical Tripos examinations.  In 1893 she published "Note on the motion of solids in a liquid" in the Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, 26:  231-258.  Here is the first page:

 

This is the paper cited by Lamb in his Art. 130.

Finally Lorna Mary Swain (1891-1936) is another Cambridge grad, who has two papers cited in Lamb's Hydrodynamics.  The first is a 1915  joint paper with Lamb himself, "On a tidal problem", The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, series 6, 29 (174):  737-744.  (Lamb did not insert his own name into his book's name index.)  Here is the first page of the Lamb and Swain paper:

 

The second is a 1923 paper with Arthur Berry, "On the steady motion of a cylinder through infinite viscous fluid", Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A,102 (719):  776-778.  Lamb cites this in his Art. 339.  Here is what the first page looks like.

 

I find it interesting that both Miss Fawcett and Miss Swain are referred to as such in both the journal articles themselves, and Lamb's book.  

Lamb's monograph is probably the oldest of the "classic" fluid mechanics texts that can still be found on researchers' bookshelves today, thanks to a Cambridge Mathematical Library reprint edition. So it is notable that at least 4 papers by at least 3 female authors/coauthors were cited even in the venerable Lamb.  I also found Ben Franklin in the index as well!

 

 

 

What ails science

DTLR rarely tackles political matters related to current events.  Unfortunately recent years have seen the erosion of public support and trust for science and especially scientists, and this blog cannot completely ignore these trends.

Earlier this month in Science, Megan Ranney (Dean of the School of Public Health at Yale) reviewed a new book by Michael Mann and Peter Hotez, Science Under Siege.  I have not read this book and am not closely familiar with the work of either author, though I did meet Prof. Mann once at a book signing of his.  Since I haven't read the book I won't comment on it.  Instead I'd like to highlight some passages from Dean Ranney's review that I completely agree with.  Among her criticisms of the book, we find this:

It could also have done more to highlight the ways in which science has been undermined from within, such as the rise of poor-quality open-access journals or the publish-or-perish ethos that drives some scientists to unethical behavior.  If we are to restore trust, we must confront the problems within our ranks alongside the far more powerful external threats.   

Not only is the above passage sound in my opinion, the situation is even worse.  Many conventional practices in the sciences that are considered ethical and "normal" are actually traditions of methodological sloppiness.  Examples include HARKing, the winner's curse, the file drawer problem, and the "garden of forking paths" (Gelman and Loken). This has been well documented in Science, Nature, and this blog over its lifetime; for an introduction, see Richard Harris' book, Rigor Mortis.  Scientists need to fix their own house and earn each others' trust before we can expect the general public to support and trust what we are doing.

Moreover, Dean Ranney goes on to say "the book misses the fact that many people are rightfully fed up with the state of the world and that many lump scientists (and science) in with all the other structures that they feel have failed them."  She continues:

People's distrust of science is certainly being fed by bad actors and a vitriolic online culture. But it is also seeded by individuals' and communities' own experience with broken systems.  Think of the opioid epidemic, which resulted from a confluence of not just many of the same factors that Mann and Hotez identify but also the well-meaning recommendations of scientists and doctors; or the need for organizations such as ACT UP...to force access to trials and medications in the early days of the AIDS epidemic.  Populism has always been a strain in American society, and it gets stronger when people feel abandoned.  We will not make progress on antiscience sentiment until we collectively fix the underlying structural issues, for the sake of all.  Nor will we make progress without creating space for everyone to be part of the solution.

In my view, these comments by Dean Ranney deserve to be circulated more widely than in its current form as part of a book review.  Sadly I suspect the wisdom reflected in these words could be ignored by the vast majority of the scientific community, due to lack of awareness. Hence I highlight them here.

Environmental physics in the undergraduate physics curriculum

Earlier this week, the U.K.'s Physics World featured an excellent op-ed by Peter Hughes about environmental physics education.  He noted the importance of the topic, its practical value, and its incredibly wide disciplinary scope.  His definition, for example, is as follows.

Environmental physics is defined as the response of living organisms to their environment within the framework of the physics principles and processes. It examines the interactions within and between the biosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the lithosphere, the geosphere and the atmosphere. Stretching from geophysics, meteorology and climate change to renewable energy and remote sensing, it also covers soils and vegetation, the urban and built environment, and the survival of humans and animals in extreme environments. 

He writes mainly from the perspective of the British university system.  One of his conclusions is "I believe a module on environmental physics should be a component of every undergraduate degree as a minimum, ideally having the same weight as quantum or statistical physics or optics."

While the thought is commendable, let's consider some reasons why it might not fly very far in the United States.

First, at many universities there already exist a robust academic ecosystem in the Earth and environmental sciences, with departments spanning soil physics in the school of agriculture, to atmospheric and oceanic sciences, geosciences, hydrology, civil and environmental engineering, and so on.  I live near a university where most of these disciplines have their own departments.  A physics student interested in this topic would be well advised to pick one of these disciplines as a minor or double major.  I personally find the multidiscplinary aspect of these fields to be quite exciting, but the key is to get out of the physics department and work directly with people who are well trained and active in one or more of these fields.

This leads to my second concern, which is that most physics faculty in the United States are ill equipped to teach or do research in any of these fields, with the possible exception of energy-related technologies.  I claim that within academia, environmental physics is primarily carried out by non-physicists (unless geophysicists are included - however, mostly they are found outside academic physics departments). Let's take a basic subject like fluid mechanics, which is essential for meteorology, climatology, and physical oceanography.  Most physicists have never taken a full class in this subject, and would hardly be qualified to teach one, given the outrageous things they teach about fluids in introductory physics classes.  A crowning example of this is the still often taught "explanation" of aerodynamic lift using Bernoulli's equation.  Granted, some physicists do work with fluid mechanics on a daily basis - plasma physicists, some astrophysicists, some condensed matter physicists, for example - but their focus is not necessarily on the aspects of fluids (like rotating frames of reference) relevant to environmental issues.

Third, it is difficult for me to imagine what, from this incredibly wide field of Earth and environmental physics, could be stuffed into a single undergraduate class.  It would end up being highly dependent on the individual professor teaching it.  I don't know if the Brits have managed to create a standardized curriculum for environmental physics.  

I see there are a few U.S. universities that involve their physics departments in environmental physics, but this is still rare here.  Kudos to them.  For the rest, the fastest way to get a program up and running is to partner with the other departments at the university that have been doing environmental physics from their birth.  In the longer run, physics departments would have to start hiring faculty explicitly in environmental physics.  It could take a decade or so to build a strong program, and not all departments would be well positioned to do so, especially given the hostile funding situation for academia currently prevalent in this country.

While I don't foresee environmental physics being on part with quantum physics, statistical physics, and optics, perhaps eventually it could be on par with solid state physics, astrophysics, or other elective physics courses in the undergraduate program.  However it would take a level of effort and commitment that may not be available in this time of shrinking enrollments and disappearing funding.