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All of us have our own eccentricities. If someone says she doesn't have any, THAT is her eccentricity.
Eccentricities of great people are well known...from Socrates to Feynman.
J A Wheeler spoke about 'crazy ideas for a crazy world' when he was maybe in his nineties:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4vvQfyUvXg
http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/08/0421/wheeler/
JAW is known for almost single-handedly reviving interest in GR and Gravity in the US. And guided the most number of students. And wrote, with them, the Bible of GR: MTW.
And coined exotic words like black hole, worm hole, quantum foam, apart from anthropomorphic theorems like:
"Black holes have no hairs"
One fine day I received from his co-author, EFT, a coffee table book written all by JAW on glossy paper with fancy binding. It was pure pleasure handling it. But every page of it had, in its margins, original poems composed by JAW himself bordering on GR and his pet theory of the geometrical foundations of GR, titled "A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime" (1990).
Frankly his poetry was distracting...and I think I gave away that book to the CTS Library at IIT KGP upon my retirement.
A joke about how his younger co-authors felt writing books with a stalwart like JAW:
Q: Where does a 800-pound gorilla sit?
A: Wherever he likes
I have to check with IM but I recall I heard this from him:
Ghazal Kumar, a young alumnus of the Phy Dept of IIT KGP, was visiting Princeton while he was touring the US and asked that he be taken to JAW for a courtesy call. And JAW (90) was as pleased as Ghazal Kumar, but after a few minutes, looked at him and asked in a mock serious tone:
"I hope you are not from the FBI"
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My guide SDM never spoke to me in any language but English while he spoke to DB in no other language but Bengali. For, he was convinced I knew no Bengali.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudhansu_Datta_Majumdar
In the month of June 1974, I completed writing up the Introduction Chapter to my Ph. D. Thesis, and delivered it to SDM for his comments.
And he asked me to meet him at his Qrs A-26 on the coming Saturday afternoon by 2 PM and he would pass on the corrected manuscript to me. And from 2 PM to 9 PM he talked about everything in the world except my Introduction. And would say sorry and ask me to meet him on Sunday at 2 PM sharp. And it was a repeat telecast. This went on for all of 6 months till December. Finally, one Sunday evening at 5 PM, he opened his bag, took out my 40-page hand-written manuscript (I wrote as legibly as I could), looked at it, grimaced, and said he was in no mood to read it, but instead asked me to read it aloud to him. It took just 30 minutes. And he passed it and asked me to get the thesis typed and bound. I could see that he was feeling as desolate as a fisherman who saw his fish escape and swim away from him....no more gossip sessions.
On every weekend those six months, Mrs SDM would announce Tea at 5 PM; and I would try to run away. But he was in no mood to let me go. And sensing this, Mrs SDM would ask me too to come in for Tea. And SDM and me would sit facing each other on the dining table. And SDM would sit glum. He was fond of food and relished his quota of 4 loochies with aloo subji and Tea.
And Mrs SDM would guess the reason for his discomfort and assure him in Bengali (which I understood and she knew I understood):
"Don't worry...I made 4 extra loochies for him too!"
And then he would blossom like a shrinking flower sprinkled with water...and the gossip would continue.
This happened EVERY weekend evening for all of six months...SDM never knew the passage of time...
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My wife would often claim that I am the craziest fellow she had ever seen. I think I should trust her judgment...
For all of the 33 years we lived together (in KGP and Hyderabad), I always had a dozen new pants and a dozen new shirts. All folded neatly in 2 separate stacks. My wife's complaint was that I never wore more than the top two 2 pairs of pants and shirts on their stacks, on alternate days, that too because after a week she would wash the one I was wearing. The other ten pants and shirts would all be lying there untouched. And as I outgrew them (belly-wise) they would all become useless and she would get me newer ones stitched.
This, she felt, was crazy...no woman does it with her wardrobe...but I guess it is fairly common with teachers who have nothing to exhibit but their genius in the class room.
Her other complaint was that I have about 25 banians and I change my banians five times every day. For, I have this habit of taking bath (without always soaping) about five times a day at the very least...KGP was so infernally humid and I sweat like hell. And it became an obsession.
Any competitors?
**********************************************************************************
P.S.: The two photos in this blog are rather apt...JAW was the thesis examiner of SDM.
========================================================================
All of us have our own eccentricities. If someone says she doesn't have any, THAT is her eccentricity.
Eccentricities of great people are well known...from Socrates to Feynman.
J A Wheeler spoke about 'crazy ideas for a crazy world' when he was maybe in his nineties:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4vvQfyUvXg
http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/08/0421/wheeler/
JAW is known for almost single-handedly reviving interest in GR and Gravity in the US. And guided the most number of students. And wrote, with them, the Bible of GR: MTW.
And coined exotic words like black hole, worm hole, quantum foam, apart from anthropomorphic theorems like:
"Black holes have no hairs"
One fine day I received from his co-author, EFT, a coffee table book written all by JAW on glossy paper with fancy binding. It was pure pleasure handling it. But every page of it had, in its margins, original poems composed by JAW himself bordering on GR and his pet theory of the geometrical foundations of GR, titled "A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime" (1990).
Frankly his poetry was distracting...and I think I gave away that book to the CTS Library at IIT KGP upon my retirement.
A joke about how his younger co-authors felt writing books with a stalwart like JAW:
Q: Where does a 800-pound gorilla sit?
A: Wherever he likes
I have to check with IM but I recall I heard this from him:
Ghazal Kumar, a young alumnus of the Phy Dept of IIT KGP, was visiting Princeton while he was touring the US and asked that he be taken to JAW for a courtesy call. And JAW (90) was as pleased as Ghazal Kumar, but after a few minutes, looked at him and asked in a mock serious tone:
"I hope you are not from the FBI"
*******************************************************************************************************
My guide SDM never spoke to me in any language but English while he spoke to DB in no other language but Bengali. For, he was convinced I knew no Bengali.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudhansu_Datta_Majumdar
(wiki page created by Saswat among others).
In the month of June 1974, I completed writing up the Introduction Chapter to my Ph. D. Thesis, and delivered it to SDM for his comments.
And he asked me to meet him at his Qrs A-26 on the coming Saturday afternoon by 2 PM and he would pass on the corrected manuscript to me. And from 2 PM to 9 PM he talked about everything in the world except my Introduction. And would say sorry and ask me to meet him on Sunday at 2 PM sharp. And it was a repeat telecast. This went on for all of 6 months till December. Finally, one Sunday evening at 5 PM, he opened his bag, took out my 40-page hand-written manuscript (I wrote as legibly as I could), looked at it, grimaced, and said he was in no mood to read it, but instead asked me to read it aloud to him. It took just 30 minutes. And he passed it and asked me to get the thesis typed and bound. I could see that he was feeling as desolate as a fisherman who saw his fish escape and swim away from him....no more gossip sessions.
On every weekend those six months, Mrs SDM would announce Tea at 5 PM; and I would try to run away. But he was in no mood to let me go. And sensing this, Mrs SDM would ask me too to come in for Tea. And SDM and me would sit facing each other on the dining table. And SDM would sit glum. He was fond of food and relished his quota of 4 loochies with aloo subji and Tea.
And Mrs SDM would guess the reason for his discomfort and assure him in Bengali (which I understood and she knew I understood):
"Don't worry...I made 4 extra loochies for him too!"
And then he would blossom like a shrinking flower sprinkled with water...and the gossip would continue.
This happened EVERY weekend evening for all of six months...SDM never knew the passage of time...
********************************************************************************************************
My wife would often claim that I am the craziest fellow she had ever seen. I think I should trust her judgment...
For all of the 33 years we lived together (in KGP and Hyderabad), I always had a dozen new pants and a dozen new shirts. All folded neatly in 2 separate stacks. My wife's complaint was that I never wore more than the top two 2 pairs of pants and shirts on their stacks, on alternate days, that too because after a week she would wash the one I was wearing. The other ten pants and shirts would all be lying there untouched. And as I outgrew them (belly-wise) they would all become useless and she would get me newer ones stitched.
This, she felt, was crazy...no woman does it with her wardrobe...but I guess it is fairly common with teachers who have nothing to exhibit but their genius in the class room.
Her other complaint was that I have about 25 banians and I change my banians five times every day. For, I have this habit of taking bath (without always soaping) about five times a day at the very least...KGP was so infernally humid and I sweat like hell. And it became an obsession.
Any competitors?
**********************************************************************************
P.S.: The two photos in this blog are rather apt...JAW was the thesis examiner of SDM.
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