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The 'Search Module' in my blogspot is as temperamental and arresting as a certain Lady CM...
...I couldn't find the number of times 'Feynman' occurs in my blogs...she says "nil"...so also for 'SDM' and 'Supratim's Foreword' although the last is right there under her nose in today's title.
Some days she responds instantly like the hound of baskervilles.
But I guess 'Feynman' is next only to 'SDM' in its frequency of occurrence here.
But your Feynman is different than mine...you must have read the 'Feynman Joker' book much before you read his Lectures (if at all). Vinit said that even his school-going son browses the Feynman bestsellers in his bookshelf.
When I joined IIT KGP in 1965, 'Feynman' was to become shortly a fashion statement like Contract Bridge, Capstan Cigarettes (packets, tins and pouches) and IBM 1620.
One smart-aleck just returned from the US and dressed in jeans and T-shirts used to talk of Feynman as if he was his chum-buddy...he had to run back to his US as IIT KGP found out that it was too small a place for him.
That year Feynman won one-third of a Nobel sharing it with Schwinger and Tomonaga...yet no one claimed that the latter two were their buddies...my 'blogspot' spell-checker lets 'Feynman' and 'Schwinger' pass through but disallows 'Tomonaga' with a red underbelly...some racism there...yet she disallows herself too...ruddy tempestuous program!
What is there in a name?...Looks like a lot.
When I entered the Central Library which was as cozy a place as the present Harry's, I found Feynman's books 'Quantum Electrodynamics' and his 'Path Integrals' (with his student Hibbs)...but both were as forbidding as Madame Defarge.
Except SDM, who grimaced at their mention (he never liked perturbative techniques in QED), all other jeans-clads talked about 'Feynman Diagrams' as if they were French Fries. Only Sikand Saheb could bring them down a peg or two asking what is the apparent weight of an open-caged 2-kg parrot when she starts flapping her wings.
And in a few months appeared the 3 PL-480 Red-Covered Volumes of Feynman Lectures plus their Problem Banks for all of Rs 36 minus 12% discount at Thackers. Seeing the word 'Feynman' @ Rs 32, all campus intellectuals bought them and cold-stored them beside Tagore's Gitanjali...each taken out as often as the other.
It was once again Sikand Saheb who asked me to buy them and read them too.
Which I did...the second volume cover to cover in a few sittings (I was teaching EM to the Class of HNB's daughter). I browsed through the first volume and flipped through the third...it took twenty good years for me to read and digest the third volume, the best of the lot.
I too 'used' the 'Feynman Card' judiciously and with profit.
As I said earlier, T Pradhan was the expert in my interview for the esteemed post of AP...SDM had a grouse against APs..he felt they had a chip on their shoulders like the Pawn about to become the Queen in just one step.
TP asked me about evanescent waves. And instead of giving the math, I quoted Feynman's 'Nosy Parker' description...that led TP ask about JCB's work and the rest was as smooth as a knife going through butter.
And towards the end of my stay at KGP, there was this feared all-powerful Review Committee whose 'remarks' decide the continuance and advancement of our UG Programs and Lab Funds.
The then HoD asked me to show off the Fourth Year Lab of which I was then the Dronacharya and the present HoD his fond disciple, Arjunjee...the then HoD admitting in so many words: "since the Fourth Year Lab is our showpiece".
My spies told me that there was a rather forbidding theoretician from Calcutta in the Review Committee. So, we agreed that instead of showing them the double-beam oscilloscopes, lasers and breadboards, we should show off the Feynman Path Integral Programs just developed by Ed Taylor which we got as a free gift. By then, Mathur Saheb had prevailed upon the then Diro to install the latest Pentium-driven PC with a color monitor.
And as we showed off a snappy and snazzy demo of FPI, the said theoretician came forward and boasted:
"You know, I no longer start from the Schrodinger Equation in my Intro QM Course...I start from FPI straightaway...that is just the thing to do!"
I agreed wholeheartedly...
But, as you know, I would do that on my dead body...I would stick with the First Lecture in Feynman Volume 3...
One Feynman against the other...but Feynmans all the way... as that old lady rebuked Hawking saying:
...Posted by Ishani
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The 'Search Module' in my blogspot is as temperamental and arresting as a certain Lady CM...
...I couldn't find the number of times 'Feynman' occurs in my blogs...she says "nil"...so also for 'SDM' and 'Supratim's Foreword' although the last is right there under her nose in today's title.
Some days she responds instantly like the hound of baskervilles.
But I guess 'Feynman' is next only to 'SDM' in its frequency of occurrence here.
But your Feynman is different than mine...you must have read the 'Feynman Joker' book much before you read his Lectures (if at all). Vinit said that even his school-going son browses the Feynman bestsellers in his bookshelf.
When I joined IIT KGP in 1965, 'Feynman' was to become shortly a fashion statement like Contract Bridge, Capstan Cigarettes (packets, tins and pouches) and IBM 1620.
One smart-aleck just returned from the US and dressed in jeans and T-shirts used to talk of Feynman as if he was his chum-buddy...he had to run back to his US as IIT KGP found out that it was too small a place for him.
That year Feynman won one-third of a Nobel sharing it with Schwinger and Tomonaga...yet no one claimed that the latter two were their buddies...my 'blogspot' spell-checker lets 'Feynman' and 'Schwinger' pass through but disallows 'Tomonaga' with a red underbelly...some racism there...yet she disallows herself too...ruddy tempestuous program!
What is there in a name?...Looks like a lot.
When I entered the Central Library which was as cozy a place as the present Harry's, I found Feynman's books 'Quantum Electrodynamics' and his 'Path Integrals' (with his student Hibbs)...but both were as forbidding as Madame Defarge.
Except SDM, who grimaced at their mention (he never liked perturbative techniques in QED), all other jeans-clads talked about 'Feynman Diagrams' as if they were French Fries. Only Sikand Saheb could bring them down a peg or two asking what is the apparent weight of an open-caged 2-kg parrot when she starts flapping her wings.
And in a few months appeared the 3 PL-480 Red-Covered Volumes of Feynman Lectures plus their Problem Banks for all of Rs 36 minus 12% discount at Thackers. Seeing the word 'Feynman' @ Rs 32, all campus intellectuals bought them and cold-stored them beside Tagore's Gitanjali...each taken out as often as the other.
It was once again Sikand Saheb who asked me to buy them and read them too.
Which I did...the second volume cover to cover in a few sittings (I was teaching EM to the Class of HNB's daughter). I browsed through the first volume and flipped through the third...it took twenty good years for me to read and digest the third volume, the best of the lot.
I too 'used' the 'Feynman Card' judiciously and with profit.
As I said earlier, T Pradhan was the expert in my interview for the esteemed post of AP...SDM had a grouse against APs..he felt they had a chip on their shoulders like the Pawn about to become the Queen in just one step.
TP asked me about evanescent waves. And instead of giving the math, I quoted Feynman's 'Nosy Parker' description...that led TP ask about JCB's work and the rest was as smooth as a knife going through butter.
And towards the end of my stay at KGP, there was this feared all-powerful Review Committee whose 'remarks' decide the continuance and advancement of our UG Programs and Lab Funds.
The then HoD asked me to show off the Fourth Year Lab of which I was then the Dronacharya and the present HoD his fond disciple, Arjunjee...the then HoD admitting in so many words: "since the Fourth Year Lab is our showpiece".
My spies told me that there was a rather forbidding theoretician from Calcutta in the Review Committee. So, we agreed that instead of showing them the double-beam oscilloscopes, lasers and breadboards, we should show off the Feynman Path Integral Programs just developed by Ed Taylor which we got as a free gift. By then, Mathur Saheb had prevailed upon the then Diro to install the latest Pentium-driven PC with a color monitor.
And as we showed off a snappy and snazzy demo of FPI, the said theoretician came forward and boasted:
"You know, I no longer start from the Schrodinger Equation in my Intro QM Course...I start from FPI straightaway...that is just the thing to do!"
I agreed wholeheartedly...
But, as you know, I would do that on my dead body...I would stick with the First Lecture in Feynman Volume 3...
One Feynman against the other...but Feynmans all the way... as that old lady rebuked Hawking saying:
"You're very clever, young man, but it's no use -- it's turtles all the way down."
...Posted by Ishani
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