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My Guru, SDM, born a century ago, was a perfectionist in his publications.
When his pioneering paper "A class of exact solutions of Einstein's field equations" was first sent to the Bulletin of the Calcutta Mathematical Society in a spell of misplaced patriotism during our Independence Movement, it was rejected summarily from the Editor's desk. He then sent it to Physical Review without an Abstract (the page was soiled by the tea cup of the Editor of BCMS). The American referee himself wrote its Abstract so that there was no delay in its publication (Phys. Rev. 1947).
SDM never sent any of his later papers to any Indian journal...he was happier with even a Romanian journal (with me as his celebrity co-author)...this journal never sent any acknowledgement, not to talk of referee reports and proofs but we did get a fat bundle of 100 free reprints after an year and more. But the printing was flawless.
1950s were the years when physics journals were not yet broke and authors used to receive galley proofs first, and, after corrections, a page proof for final corrections if any, and a bundle of free reprints.
And I found not a single error of printing or physics in any of his papers that I read.
His favorite World War joke that he used to narrate with gusto went like this:
A local newspaper in England published a tribute to an eminent General with his picture. The legend had this phrase:
"Our Battle-scared General..."
The General then went into the editor's room with his horsewhip and the editor promised to insert an apology and a bold correction which came out next day on its front page as:
"Our Bottle-scarred General..."
I used to wonder why proofs of papers are called proofs. The proof that stuck in my head was that of the Pythagoras Theorem which we had to mug up in our Class X.
I Googled for it just now under the heading:
"Proof of the pudding is in the eating"
And discovered that proof had an ancient meaning of 'test'.
And recalled that I used to wonder in my hated Organic Chemistry classes why 'proof spirit' was called so...it was after all an alcohol that had little connection with Pythagoras.
SDM used to tell me, in some of his famous moods, that he wanted to die doing physics. As it turned out, he lost his wife soon after his retirement and lived to 83 in a North Calcutta apartment.
But his wish was granted and among other things he came up with the idea of writing a comprehensive text book on Quantum Mechanics, having some of his own celebrated contributions on Angular Momentum, 3-j symbols (C-G coefficients) 6-j symbols (Racah coefficients) and such, of which I had little knowledge nor inclination to learn.
It turned out to be a classic work in the mold of QM books of his own student days' vintage at the Calcutta University...it was mostly mathematics and very unlike say:
"Quantics" by Levy-Leblond and Balibar (1990)
which had no mathematics at all but lovely graphs lifted from the latest physics journals on how QM is used in practice in research labs. I used to teach a few topics from Quantics and also wrote a paper which referred to it.
SDM was already too old to learn and use the Microsoft Word (that I learned from my son). So he had to write up all those horrendous equations in long hand using his favorite Swan fountain pen and Sulekha blue ink. And give it to a typist in Calcutta who was perhaps happy only with clattering Remington typewriters. And SDM used to howl at him and had to correct all the typing mistakes in the tiny margins...he was closing in on his 80s.
And he could only find an Indian publisher who was perhaps happy only with John Gutenberg printing machines...the compositor in his lungis with his lead types must have tried his best...no offense meant.
When the proofs of the book started arriving, SDM went into as dark a mood as a toothless tiger. And tried correcting all the hundreds of printing errors without taking his horsewhip to the compositor.
But the publisher was perhaps in a hurry and the book came out with many of the errors uncorrected.
I bought a copy of the book from Thackers.
SDM then took his proverbial horsewhip to the publisher's agent in Calcutta and got a promise that further copies of the book would come out with an elaborate Errata.
I don't know if such a version came out subsequently.
Knowing SDM's passion for perfection I guess he must have died of a broken heart.
Not that American Publishers are any the better.
Once I saw a hardbound copy of a new book in the physics section of Central Library of IIT KGP with the bold title on its cover page:
Phew!
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SDM
My Guru, SDM, born a century ago, was a perfectionist in his publications.
When his pioneering paper "A class of exact solutions of Einstein's field equations" was first sent to the Bulletin of the Calcutta Mathematical Society in a spell of misplaced patriotism during our Independence Movement, it was rejected summarily from the Editor's desk. He then sent it to Physical Review without an Abstract (the page was soiled by the tea cup of the Editor of BCMS). The American referee himself wrote its Abstract so that there was no delay in its publication (Phys. Rev. 1947).
SDM never sent any of his later papers to any Indian journal...he was happier with even a Romanian journal (with me as his celebrity co-author)...this journal never sent any acknowledgement, not to talk of referee reports and proofs but we did get a fat bundle of 100 free reprints after an year and more. But the printing was flawless.
1950s were the years when physics journals were not yet broke and authors used to receive galley proofs first, and, after corrections, a page proof for final corrections if any, and a bundle of free reprints.
And I found not a single error of printing or physics in any of his papers that I read.
His favorite World War joke that he used to narrate with gusto went like this:
A local newspaper in England published a tribute to an eminent General with his picture. The legend had this phrase:
"Our Battle-scared General..."
The General then went into the editor's room with his horsewhip and the editor promised to insert an apology and a bold correction which came out next day on its front page as:
"Our Bottle-scarred General..."
I used to wonder why proofs of papers are called proofs. The proof that stuck in my head was that of the Pythagoras Theorem which we had to mug up in our Class X.
I Googled for it just now under the heading:
"Proof of the pudding is in the eating"
And discovered that proof had an ancient meaning of 'test'.
And recalled that I used to wonder in my hated Organic Chemistry classes why 'proof spirit' was called so...it was after all an alcohol that had little connection with Pythagoras.
SDM used to tell me, in some of his famous moods, that he wanted to die doing physics. As it turned out, he lost his wife soon after his retirement and lived to 83 in a North Calcutta apartment.
But his wish was granted and among other things he came up with the idea of writing a comprehensive text book on Quantum Mechanics, having some of his own celebrated contributions on Angular Momentum, 3-j symbols (C-G coefficients) 6-j symbols (Racah coefficients) and such, of which I had little knowledge nor inclination to learn.
It turned out to be a classic work in the mold of QM books of his own student days' vintage at the Calcutta University...it was mostly mathematics and very unlike say:
"Quantics" by Levy-Leblond and Balibar (1990)
which had no mathematics at all but lovely graphs lifted from the latest physics journals on how QM is used in practice in research labs. I used to teach a few topics from Quantics and also wrote a paper which referred to it.
SDM was already too old to learn and use the Microsoft Word (that I learned from my son). So he had to write up all those horrendous equations in long hand using his favorite Swan fountain pen and Sulekha blue ink. And give it to a typist in Calcutta who was perhaps happy only with clattering Remington typewriters. And SDM used to howl at him and had to correct all the typing mistakes in the tiny margins...he was closing in on his 80s.
And he could only find an Indian publisher who was perhaps happy only with John Gutenberg printing machines...the compositor in his lungis with his lead types must have tried his best...no offense meant.
When the proofs of the book started arriving, SDM went into as dark a mood as a toothless tiger. And tried correcting all the hundreds of printing errors without taking his horsewhip to the compositor.
But the publisher was perhaps in a hurry and the book came out with many of the errors uncorrected.
I bought a copy of the book from Thackers.
SDM then took his proverbial horsewhip to the publisher's agent in Calcutta and got a promise that further copies of the book would come out with an elaborate Errata.
I don't know if such a version came out subsequently.
Knowing SDM's passion for perfection I guess he must have died of a broken heart.
Not that American Publishers are any the better.
Once I saw a hardbound copy of a new book in the physics section of Central Library of IIT KGP with the bold title on its cover page:
"Relativistic Theory of Elections"
Phew!
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