Sleeping Beauties

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Yesterday's post "Idiosyncrasies" generated this comment from Supratim:

"Prof X always used to sit in the front row for every talk but would invariably fall asleep during the post-lunch sessions. That itself was a sight to see but then he would soon start snoring loudly much to the amusement of the audience and the discomfort of the speaker. Since he was the senior-most person with a certain stature in the field, others were hesitant to shake him awake and no amount of throat-clearing or gentle nudging would wake him from his reveries."

This reminded me of Wigner's invitation to sundry Monster Minds to attend Feynman's first talk in Princeton:

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From Surely You Are Joking, Mr Feynman (Page 64):

......A day or two before the talk I saw Wigner in the hall. "Feynman," he said, "I think that the work you're doing with Wheeler is very interesting, so I have invited Russell to the seminar." Henry Norris Russell, the famous great astronomer of the day, was coming to the lecture!

Wigner went on, "I think Professor von Neumann would also be interested." Johnny von Neumann was the greatest mathematician around. "And Professor Pauli is visiting from Switzerland, it so happens, so I've invited Professor Pauli to come"---Pauli was a very famous physicist--- and by this time I am turning yellow. Finally Wigner said, "Professor Einstein only rarely comes to our weekly seminars, but your work is so interesting that I've invited him specially, so he is coming too."

By this time I must have turned green, because Wigner said, "No, no! Don't worry! I'll just warn you though: If Professor Russell falls asleep--and he will undoubtedly fall asleep--it doesn't mean that the seminar is bad; he falls asleep in all the seminars. On the other hand, if Professor Pauli is nodding all the time, and seems to be in agreement as the seminar goes along, pay no attention. Professor Pauli has palsy".....

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I say, I taught Wigner-Eckart theorem for maybe 15 continuous years, filling two blackboards with matrix elements of spherical tensor operators and such weird stuff but never thought of Wigner as a human being...that shows how scientists are trained to hide themselves behind their scientific writings...I mean European scientists...

On the other thigh, Wheeler, the American Giant (and Guru of Feynman) not only coined the term "Black Holes" but also invented the theorem: "Black Holes have no hair"...

One of his lifelong collaborators wrote to me that Wheeler was vastly influenced by the humanitarian aspects of his terminology.....


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