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Robert Finkelstein J
Publication date
2016
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
Authors
Robert J. Finkelstein
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A short autobiography written for a centennial party.
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An early phase of theoretical high energy physics in Israel specifically that connected with Yuval Neeman and a small group of my classmates, myself, and several others who worked around him after his return to Israel on the Eight-fold way as seen by me is briefly described.
From his observations of the A.D. 1572 super-nova and the A.D. 1577 comet, Tycho Brahe concluded that such transient celestial objects are outside the Earths atmosphere, and he quoted the 9th century A.D. Persian astrologer and astronomer Abu Mashar: Dixit Albumasar, Cometa supra Venerem visus fuit, i.e. that he had reported much earlier that comets were seen beyond Venus. However, even from a more detailed Latin translation, the observations and logic behind Abu Mashars conclusion were not understandable. We present here the original Arabic text (MS Ankara, Saib 199) together with our translation and interpretation: Abu Mashar reported that he had observed Venus in (or projected onto) the tail of a comet and concluded that the comet was behind Venus, because he had observed the extinction of Venus due to the cometary tail to be negligible (light of Venus was unimpaired). He then concluded that the comet would be located behind Venus. He also mentioned that others had observed Jupiter and Saturn in cometary tails, so that those comets would even be located beyond those two outer planets - in the sphere of the stars. The dates of the observed close conjunctions were not mentioned; using known orbital elements for a few comets, we found a few close conjunctions between comets and planets from A.D. 770 to 868, but we cannot be sure regarding which conjunctions were reported. While the argument of Abu Mashar is not correct (as cometary tails are optically thin), parts of the conclusion - namely that comets are outside the Earth atmosphere and beyond the moon - is correct. This may have helped Tycho Brahe to come to his revolutionary conclusion.
With Cyrano, Voltaire, and Verne, France provided important milestones in the history of early science fiction. However, even if the genre was not very common a few centuries ago, there were numerous additional contributions by French-speaking writers. In this paper, we review two cases of interplanetary novels written in the second half of the eighteenth century and sharing a rare particularity: their authors were female. Voyages de Milord Ceton was imagined by Marie-Anne de Roumier-Robert whereas Cornelie Wouters de Wasse conceived Le Char Volant. While their personal lives were very different, and their writing style too, both authors share in these novels a common philosophy in which equality -- between ranks but also between genders -- takes an important place. Their works thus clearly fit into the context of the Enlightenment.
Scientific research is and was at all times a transnational (global) activity. In this respect, it crosses several borders: national, cultural, and ideological. Even in times when physical borders separated the scientific community, scientists kept their minds open to the ideas created beyond the walls and tried to communicate despite all the obstacles. An example of such activities in the field of physics is the travel in the year 1838 of a group of three scientists through the Western Europe: Andreas Ettingshausen (professor at the University of Vienna), August Kunzek (professor at the University of Lviv) and P. Marian Koller (director of the observatory in Chremsminster, Upper Austria). 155 years later a vivid scientific exchange began between physicists from Austria and Ukraine, in particular, between the Institute for Condensed Matter Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Lviv and the Institute for Theoretical Physics of Johannes Kepler University Linz. This became possible due to the programs financed by national institutions, but it had its scientific background in already knotted historic scientific networks, when Lviv was an international center of mathematics and in Vienna the School of Statistical Thought arose. Due to the new collaboration, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine became the first country to join the Middle European Cooperation in Statistical Physics (MECO) founded in the early 1970s with the aim of bridging the gap between scientists from the Eastern and Western parts of Europe separated by the iron curtain.
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