Dyson Yi Ferman: In addition to witty, hard work is the theme of life

Legendary physicist Ferman is always connected to the word "genius". In addition to his academic achievements, but also because of his "performance", he always finds the fun of discovering in joke. From the perspective of Ferman's close friend Friman Dyson, the "clown" on the stage is Ferman's life choice, but it is not his main theme. Ferman in the physical world is a conservative. His achievements that can stand the test and benefit each physician are built in a long, slow, and hard work. This is the core theme of his scientific career.

Written article | Friman Dyson

Translation | Li Pan

Image source: Shelley Gazin/Corbis

This is a great collection of selection. The adventure story about Dick Ferman in the book is all true. When I read these stories, I heard Dick's voice and saw him holding gestures. All Ferman's friends owed Lalf Leiden alone. It was preserved these stories in the tape and printed them into books. My favorite story is "Don't make trouble, Mr. Ferman!" ", This is the first formal tea party at Dick at Princeton University. At that time, the hostess asked him to add cream or lemon in the tea, and his answer was "I want it." This answer shows the core of Dick's personality: he does not refuse everything, whether it is cream or lemon, whether it is comedy or tragedy. That's why he has so many crazy adventure experiences and has spent a creative life. Ferman knows the pain of chronic diseases and the pain caused by early death, but like Shakespeare, he knows that there is a comedy moment in every tragedy. The tragedy will stand aside at this moment to put his stage The location is given to the clown. Keep a soberness like Ferman when the tragedy occurs, and it is helpful to be a clown. Even when the unlimited self -effort of Cornell University and electronics, or when it was excavated in Florida to excavate the tragedy of the "Challenger" spacecraft, even when Albekki's young wife Alin accompanied him, these were in these. At the most serious moment, he is not a serious person.

In this foreword, I mainly want to write a favors of Feiman's hard work. From the related stories told by Ferman itself and others, people are prone to such an impression: Ferman is pretending to be stupid or experienced an interesting adventure most of the time, but occasionally interrupts this kind of carefree life, highly focused on focusing on Outstanding scientific discovery during scientific research and during this period. This impression is not completely wrong, but the most important part of his personality is omitted. The core theme of his life is a long, slow, and hard work. All his strength is consumed in the hard work of scientific problems until the problem is resolved. Those adventures and jokes are real, but they are not the main theme. Those stories are misunderstood to some extent, because Ferman's contribution to science has a contradictory disorder between style and substance. His scientific style is wonderful and impressive. He described nature with a simple and easy -to -understand schematic, instead of obscure differential equations. He used dramatic gestures and sound effects instead of writing the blackboard with deep symbols to assist the lecture.

But the essence of his scientific research is conservative. The way he obtained his own opinion was not a talented creation, but to screen the old theory and experiments. He is not a revolutionary. He retains the old theory as much as possible and adapts to new experiments by extending them. On the basis of the old theory, he built a new theory that belongs to him. Everything he established was not finished, and all his achievements were tested by time. As he often said, when some revolutionary new ideas are proposed, whether these concepts are more important than whether they are wonderful. Whether it is the basis of reconstructing physics or the result of interpreting a new experiment, he will spare no effort to ensure the correctness of the details. He said that the task of scientists is to listen carefully, rather than telling nature how to act.

As a physicist, Ferman has two very creative periods in his life. The first period lasted for 10 years. From 1939 to 1949, from Princeton University to Cornell University, a time spent in Los Alamos was inserted in the middle. The second period also lasted for 10 years, from 1960 to 1970, at the California Institute of Technology. During the Princeton-Cornell, he reconstructed the theory of atoms and radiation and interaction between the two in his own way. During the California Science and Technology period, he rebuilt theory of nuclear and strong interaction particles. In these two periods, he has integrated many confusing experiments and uses them to build a coherent picture of natural operation. He relies as little on existing theory as much as possible, and strives to experimenting the facts as much as possible. He built his theoretical picture little by little, just like facing a puzzle composed of mathematical fragments; he tried hundreds of different combination methods until he found the right one. He also spent many years to find possible answers, but it was proved to be contradictory or wrong.

When I was a student at Cornell University, watching Ferman's work reminded me of an economist John Merrine Cainez's description of Isaac Newton. Kanes has the habit of collecting and studying Newton's manuscripts. He wrote: "Newton's unique talent is that he can put a pure brainpower problem in his mind and continue thinking until the core of the problem. The strongest and most durable intuition for human beings. "This description of Newton can also be used on Ferman, which accurately describes Ferman's working method. He put the problem of calculating the interaction between radiation atoms under Einstein's relativity framework for ten years in his mind, and gave up until he found the answer. I was fortunate to know him in the tenth year of the answer to the answer to the answer of the atom and radiation. In the last year, the puzzle finally began to return. But when I saw that he struggled in the last year, he would still fall into the quagmire of mathematics or the dead end of the physics. Revelation is not a genius lighting, but after experiencing a difficult and long night, it appears slowly in the dawn in a difficult way. During his tenure in California, Ferman studied a much more complicated problem in a similar way: the nuclear nuclear of the interaction was combined to synthesize related images. The reason why this problem is more complicated is that the types of particles and interactions are dazzling. Ferman solved half of the problem. He established a theory that the observed particles were composed of a smaller group of basic components called "part of the child". Based on the behavior of relatively simple part of the sub -component as a guide, he found the rules for calculating observation particle behavior. His rules explained the experimental results, but left a lot of details to be improved in the future. In the process of this research, he has been exchanging opinions with the younger California college colleagues Murry Gelman and Georgezwig. Gelman and Zwig have established their own theories first. Although they are similar to Ferman's theory, their descriptions of some children are more specific. Gelman called his part of "Quark", and Zaweig was called "ACES". Today, it has been more than 50 years since then, and only Quark is remembered, and some sons and A son have been forgotten. Gelman's nuclear quark model has become a standard model in teaching and being accepted by everyone. Ferman has always given generous praise to the discovery of Garman and Zwog, thinking that the theory of the two of them has surpassed themselves. Because of this discovery, Ferman recommended them to the Nobel Prize jury in his personal name in 1977. If the award is award, this will be Garman's second Nobel Prize, but the Nobel Prize jury did not accept Ferman's recommendation.

Ferman's greatness as a scientist does not depend on a specific discovery. His greatness is that he creates a language used by physicists around the world. Nowadays, if you want to describe the way of nature, everyone will take his "space -time method" and schematic diagram naturally. The core of time and space is to literally understand what ancient Greek philosopher Hillak Litt said. According to the theory of space -time method, naturally flow from the initial state to any final state, to pass all possible history at the same time. There is a scaring of each possible history, and there is another quantity and one phase. If you want to calculate the possibility of reaching the final state, you only need to add all these history before that and calculate the sum of the sum of the amplitude. By adding the contribution of a group of history describing each history, you can get a range corresponding to this history. This method of describing nature through "history of history" is a great unity in the history of science.

In addition to the clarification of atoms and nuclear physical foundations in the past ten years, Ferman has also studied various other problems. He was very interesting about everything and dared to devote himself to unfamiliar fields. It took a year to do a virus experiment in the Biology Department of California Polytechnic. At the end of that year, he found some interesting facts about the mutation of the virus gene, but he still judged that he was not the material as a biologist, so he returned to the physics community with the enthusiasm of reunion. At that time, the biology was all experiments without theory, and the theory could not be tolerated by the theory. After returning to the field of physics, he obtained the most beautiful discovery: describes a new natural law of how a particle called a region and material interaction.

In any branch of science, as long as someone discovered the mystery, Ferman would push it in. In the 1950s, the most tempting mystery was in the field of low temperature physics. In 1938, the Soviet physicist Peter Carpicha discovered that liquid crickets would become ultra -streaming at a temperature close to absolute zero. After 15 years of Kippicha, the interpretation of ultra -fluid is still a well -known unsolved mystery. Ultra -flow is a wonderful material state. Once the substance of the supercopic state is moving, it will continue to flow and never slow down. Ferman accepted the challenge and established a super -flow theory based on historical and calculating methods. He pointed out that ultra -fluid state is a natural result of liquid history, provided that you must consider that all the apex atoms are exactly the same. Because the atomic atom is exactly the same, you must add all history together, including the result of the interchange and arrangement of the atom in all possible ways. Ferman proves in a simple way to prove that the liquid movement will make itself a vortex. As long as there is no external interference, it will continue to rotate forever. This theory explains why the liquid is overcurrent. After Ferman established this theory, the California Institute of Technology verified it in detail with new experiments, and the results confirmed that theory was correct. Ferman's theory of "history of history" proposed by Ferman has both philosophical depth and practical use. It gives us a fast and simple way to calculate what will happen. At the same time, it also provides us with an in -depth insight, let us know why we are misleading for the common sense of material and movement. Ferman knows that the way of nature is as saying as Arthur C. Clark said, not only strange than we imagine, but also more strange than we can imagine. For the strangeness of nature, the theory of history and theory gives us an intuitive and vivid experience. But Ferman's computor identity is always the first, followed by philosophers. For him, the most important thing is to ensure that all details are correct.

Just like his physical reality history and theory, Ferman's insight into human nature also has both philosophical depth and practical use. Some of his stories are as profound as his physical research. In this preface, I emphasized the side of Ferman science, not much to others. The reason for this is because most of the book is talking about the side of others. If you want to know the human side of Ferman, I recommend you to read the article about his first wife Alling's life. This story was orally by Ferman. In the concentration, "Why do you care what others think? " This is the longest article in this book, and it is also the most difficult story of Ferman. His spirit was always shining with her soul.

This article is authorized by the preface of "Classic Ferman: A Curious Explorer Life".

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