http://tinyurl.com/6jkujuc wrote:
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Brian Greene's restaurant at the end of the parallel universe
By Monica Hesse, Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 4, 2011; 9:44 PM
<<Brian Greene is one of the most famous theoretical physicists in the
world. He specializes in the super-brainy field of string theory, he
has degrees from Harvard and Oxford, he has written four books, he is
one of the few people in the world who has an Erdos-Bacon number,
meaning that he can be traced back to both Hungarian mathematician
Paul Erdos and to Kevin Bacon. So naturally, we are talking about
cheese.
Inasmuch as string theorists can have groupies, Greene has them: grad
student physicists, tinfoil cappers, Madeleine L'Engleites, bored desk
jockeys who like to read Greene's books in prominent, public places
and casually mention their own theories. People see a term like
"theoretical physicist" and mentally lop off the "physicist" part,
leaving a misguided notion that Greene's research is basically a bunch
of guesswork.
"It's kind of an occupational hazard," he says of the fans who to
share their own "research." "On the one hand, I love it because it
shows how curious we are as a species. . . .
On the flip side, when I
get a manuscript where someone says, 'I've been working on this for 36
years, and my wife has almost left me, but *HERE it IS* , I've got the
answer' - and its pages and pages of largely incoherent ideas, there's
something deeply sad about that."
"In their minds," he says, "they have Einstein [who was toiling in
obscurity at the patent office when he had some of his most revelatory
thoughts] as an example of how discovery can happen." >>