Chapter3: Luie - The Diigo Meta page

• 05 Nov 09
  

  Isk Aldur

  " What makes a good scientist? As the years began to pass, I noticed that the smartest students didn't always become the best researchers. That gave me some hope, since my course work was only slightly better than average. What was it they hadn't learned? I was awed by the careers of several of the faculty at Berkeley. There were more Nobel laureates at Berkeley than in the entire Soviet Union. And there was Luie, who had no Nobel Prize then but seemed to have more important discoveries to his credit than any of the scientists who had won the honor."
  
  
  
  
  Luie claimed to be driven by a sense of curiosity, but if that were true he could have spent his time becoming a scholar. With so much physics to learn, why work hard trying to discover a few small facts in physics that nobody else knows? The truly curious don't waste their time fitting together jigsaw puzzles, since there were so many beautiful pictures to be seen in books and museums. Does anybody really solve jigsaw puzzles in order to see the picture? No, they do it because of the fun of solving the myriad of little puzzles along the way. Luie was a puzzle solver, an adventurer, an explorer.
  
  

  research how-to-learn

• 04 Nov 09
  

  Al Wong

  •   I
    was embarrassed. "But I don't understand anything yet. I don't know how
    to help. I'd just be in the way," I protested.

    
    

          I
    remember his answer very clearly "That doesn't matter," he said.
    "just go over there and hang around. Do anything anybody asks you to
    do. Sooner or later someone will see that you're there, and they'll ask you
    to hold a screwdriver. Get your hands dirty Pretty soon you'll know how things
    are constructed. Once they have seen that you're around a lot, they may ask
    you to help test the apparatus.

• 

  Alex Ko

  research philosophy self-improvement collaboration physics

  • The real problems
    to solve are not the ones at the end of each chapter in the textbook. The
    real problems come in dealing with the unexpected. The questions are vague
    and fuzzy. How do you pick a research topic? How long do you study a subject
    before you publish? What do you do when things don't look like you expected
    them to look, when your results surprise you? How do you recognize when to
    quit a not-completely-hopeless endeavor?
  • The real problems
    to solve are not the ones at the end of each chapter in the textbook. The
    real problems come in dealing with the unexpected. The questions are vague
    and fuzzy. How do you pick a research topic? How long do you study a subject
    before you publish? What do you do when things don't look like you expected
    them to look, when your results surprise you? How do you recognize when to
    quit a not-completely-hopeless endeavor? Coping with these problems is the
    art of physics, and it is very similar to the art of business, or the art
    of art.
  • 18 more annotations...
  • • It was a research area
      in which many people could work together, be they great scientists or only
      mediocre. Some people would fit more pieces together than others, and some
      were particularly good at finding that hard piece, the one that everyone else
      had given up on. But everybody was able to find some little way to help.
    • He intro duced himself with
      "I'm Luie Alvarez," avoiding the title "professor," which
      many other faculty members obviously favored.
    • At the end of the tour, Alvarez
      asked me, "When can you start?" I had not understood much of what
      I had seen, and I didn't think I had asked any intelligent questions. In addition,
      Alvarez hadn't had a chance to check my grades or to look at my record in the Physics Department office, so he had
      no way of knowing whether I was a good student. But it was an offer I couldn't
      refuse.
    • Alvarez's
      whole approach to physics was that of an entrepreneur, taking big risks by
      building large new projects in the hope of large rewards, although
      his pay was academic rather than financial. He had drawn around him a group
      of young physicists anxious to try out the exciting ideas he was proposing.
      Many of these people were later to leave basic research and become entrepreneurs
      themselves of one kind or another. The true rewards for this kind of work
      were in the challenge, in the adventure. Alvarez seemed to care less about
      the way the picture in the puzzle would look, when everything fit together,
      than about the fun of looking for pieces that fit. He loved nothing more than
      doing something that everybody else thought impossible. His designs were clever,
      and usually exploited some little-known principle that everyone else had forgotten.
    • You can read memos anytime, in the evenings, at home, but you can only learn
      experimental physics by being in the laboratory, by doing it
    • Even today, when I visit someone's laboratory and they sit me down in a nearby
      office to hear a lecture on their experiment, I protest. I want to go see
      the hardware, if possible to touch it.
    • In the Greek legend, the wrestler Antaeus
      was invincible as long as he touched the ground. Hercules defeated him by
      lifting Antaeus above his head, out of reach of the Earth, where he was able
      to squeeze him to death. This legend may have originated as a reminder to
      farmers to stay in close touch with the land, the source of their sustenance,
      and not to relegate all the manual work to hired laborers. The reminder applies
      equally well to experimental physicists, who must return periodically to their
      apparatus, to get their hands dirty, lest they forget why it often takes an
      hour to put in a screw.
    • To become an experimental physicist,
      Alvarez seemed to feel, you had to destroy some expensive equipment. It was
      a rite of passage. "Don't do anything differently," he advised.
      "Keep it up."
    • There were more Nobel laureates at Berkeley than in the entire
      Soviet Union. And there was Luie, who had no Nobel Prize then but seemed to
      have more important discoveries to his credit than any of the scientists who
      had won the honor.

    • But it wasn't the art of invention, but the art of discovery that
      I most wanted to learn. How did he do it? What secret knowledge enabled him
      to make discovery after discovery? If only I could identify what it was, then
      I could try to learn it.

      
      

            Skepticism,
      the ability not to be fooled, was clearly important, but it is also cheap.
      It is easy to disbelieve everything, and some scientists seemed to take this
      approach. Sometimes Luie was skeptical, but more often he seemed to embrace
      crazy ideas, at least at first. He rarely dismissed anything out of hand,
      no matter how absurd, until he had examined it closely. But then one tiny
      flaw, solidly established, was enough to kill it. His openness to wild ideas
      was balanced by his firmness in dismissing those that were flawed. He had
      a finely honed skepticism. Perhaps that was part of his secret talent.

    • the
      key to discovery was not being "lazy."
    • The
      hardest discoveries to take seriously are often your own.
    • Walter Alvarez never came that close to a Nobel Prize again,
      but he made sure that his son learned the lesson.
    • he hadn't looked long enough
    • The
      art of physics consists in knowing what to work on and for how long.
    • Luie
      worked out virtually all the details before he even told anybody what he was
      thinking of, and he put these in a memo.
    • The gaps in his
      knowledge were surprisingly large, but not detrimental to his work.
    • He seemed to have a knack for learning just the right amount about everything,
      and for spending the time he saved inventing and bringing together ideas from
      disparate fields.

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