A snippet from Bill Bryson’s ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything,’ which would be of particular interest to Arunn and Lakshmi…
Physicists are notoriously scornful of scientists from other fields. When the great Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli’s wife left him for a chemist, he was staggered with disbelief. “Had she taken a bullfighter I would have understood,” he remarked in wonder to a friend. “But a chemist…”
It was a feeling [Ernest] Rutherford would have understood. “All science is either physics or stamp collecting,” he once said, in a line that has been used many times since. There is a certain engaging irony, therefore, that his award of the Nobel Prize in 1908 was in chemistry, not physics.
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வணக்கம விஜய! I don’t know much about being a physicist (or a chemist) but I wanted to drop in and let you know that I’m still taking my free moments to learn the alphabet. Who knows! I may actually get someplace with this!
Hi Vijay,
I married a “chemist”, but a physical chemist as he was always careful to describe himself, not one of those dreadful inorganic or organic guys. My son did graduate work in theoretical physics, getting his masters but giving up before he completed his doctorate.
Now he’s a chartered accountant, counting the stamps.
Wonder what the mathematicians think of the physicists? Probably johnny jumpups, if the truth’s known.
Regards
jmb
I love Bryson’s book!