CosmoPhys

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Joe Polchinski: Memories of a Theoretical Physicist [arxiv:1708.09093] | Tribute on reddit | Wikipedia bio | AIP Oral History Interview | His memoir is a marvelous read. Not only was he a great physicist of this modern era, Joe was an exceptionally kind and considerate person. Especially note the anecdote told by Robert McNees in the reddit tribute. See footnotes 1 – 3 for other tributes. A Dec. 2018 KITP symposium was held with talks on areas strongly impacted by his work.

John Archibald Wheeler: A Biographical Memoir by Kip Thorne [arxiv:1901.06623] | reddit post | Wikipedia bio | AIP Oral History Interviews | Web of Stories interview videos | I always love reading the little human interest anecdotes from the lives of physicists. Two quick examples: (1) Kip characterizes Wheeler as “unfailingly polite”, with the one exception he knows about being a sharp, cutting retort that Wheeler once made to Richard Feynman (page 4 of the memoir), and (2) the humorous anecdote about how Kip addressed him as a graduate student until a comment came from Wheeler's wife (bottom of page 2 and top of page 3 of the memoir).

Dennis Sciama: AIP Oral Histories Interview | reddit post | Wikipedia bio | It was interesting to hear about Sciama's experiences getting into cosmology at an early time when it was “not considered a respectable part of physics...my being a cosmologist must have made many people feel I was very much on the sidelines if not an actual crank.” There is a marvelous and very humorous anecdote about his meeting with Einstein in the AIP Oral Histories interview, which I highlight in the reddit post, along with some other interesting items. Also, his doctoral students included Stephen Hawking and Martin Rees. Highly recommended first-person narrative on a part of the early history of cosmology.

Jim Peebles: A one-hour+ talk titled My Life in Physical Cosmology, presented on 13-Dec-2019 while visiting the Oskar Klein Centre and the Department of Physics at Stockholm University shortly after being awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology.

A couple favorite passages:

As Sciama noted in the post above, echoing the considerable reservation that many physicists of that era had about working in cosmology, Peebles mentions that in 1964, when Bob Dicke suggested that Jim look into the theoretical significance of a hot early universe, “I was uneasy because the empirical basis seemed so slight, but I could think of a few things to analyze after which I imagined I would return to something more substantial.”

Beginning at 25:45, Peebles beautifully describes his early work involving the recombination epoch. Speaking of a theoretical plot of the cosmic microwave background power spectrum made in the late 1960s, “Who knew back then...that this effect would be detected. I certainly didn't imagine that. I just did these calculations because I found them interesting.”

Neils Bohr: Edward Teller's anecdote – Drinking Tea with Neils Bohr | Wikipedia bio |

Murray Gell-Man: Web of Stories interview videos | Wikipedia bio |

Richard Feynman: Physicists reminisce about Feynman on Web of Stories | Wikipedia bio |

The twitter collections on scientists by physics prof Robert McNees: Women in STEM | OTD Science Tweets | Neutrinos |

Footnotes: 1: Matt Strassler: In Memory of Joe Polchinski, the Brane Master 2: Joseph Polchinski: A Biographical Memoir, by Raphael Bousso, Fernando Quevedo, Steven Weinberg 3: The final paragraph in the Acknowledgements section of Daniel Harlow's [1802.01040] TASI Lectures on the Emergence of the Bulk in AdS/CFT on page 56 is another touching tribute to Joe Polchinski.

Tags: #physics