Frank Jewett: Difference between revisions
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|content=On January 21 1946, McInnes suggested to [[Frank Jewett]] a radical conference based around the UNTESTED young people rather than the failed leaders. As head of the [[National Academy of Sciences (NAS)|National Academy of Sciences]], Jewett allocated a grand total of...wait for it...$1500 for a conference in Long Island. | |content=On January 21 1946, [[Duncan McInnes|McInnes]] suggested to [[Frank Jewett]] a radical conference based around the UNTESTED young people rather than the failed leaders. As head of the [[National Academy of Sciences (NAS)|National Academy of Sciences]], [[Frank Jewett|Jewett]] allocated a grand total of...wait for it...$1500 for a conference in Long Island. | ||
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|content=That isn't the issue. The issue is that the leadership is not passing the baton and there are no McInnes or Jewett figures. And professors now don't even know this history it seems! Don't they teach this in Physics class? Maybe it's too dangerous to learn how physics works. ;-) | |content=That isn't the issue. The issue is that the leadership is not passing the baton and there are no [[Duncan McInnes|McInnes]] or [[Frank Jewett|Jewett]] figures. And professors now don't even know this history it seems! Don't they teach this in Physics class? Maybe it's too dangerous to learn how physics works. ;-) | ||
|timestamp=8:14 AM ¡ Jan 26, 2023 | |timestamp=8:14 AM ¡ Jan 26, 2023 | ||
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Revision as of 19:08, 13 December 2025
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Snark is so much more fun when academics forget their own subjects and need to be reminded of their own history by...checks notes...a podcast host who's not a physicist.
I'm guessing you have no idea of how the stagnation in Quantum Field Theory of 1928-47 was broken. https://x.com/MBKplus/status/1618356997107355649
From the birth of Dirac's Quantum Electrodynamics in 1928, the subject couldn't compute results because infinities infested the calculations. This went on for nearly 20 years as the aging leaders of the field proposed crazy fixes that didn't work. Enter Duncan McInnes.
On January 21 1946, McInnes suggested to Frank Jewett a radical conference based around the UNTESTED young people rather than the failed leaders. As head of the National Academy of Sciences, Jewett allocated a grand total of...wait for it...$1500 for a conference in Long Island.
Beginning on June 1, 1947 at the Rams Head Inn on Shelter Island NY and ending on Weds June 4th, 24 mostly untested participants "hung out" together.
The actual cost of the meeting was...[drum roll please]...$872.00 in 1947 dollars. Which is about $12,000.00 in 2023 dollars.
So by simply getting rid of most of the failed 1928-1947 leadership and focusing on the most promising untested physicists, a $12K slush fund in today's dollars changed history ending a two decade stagnation debuting Feynman's Path Integral, the Lamb Shift & the two Meson theory.
So why do I suggest Hundreds of thousands rather than tens of thousands? Good question! First, it is harder to get rid of the failed leadership because our stagnation as of Februrary 2023 is 50 years old not 19. But also, Shelter Island needed two companion conferences in 1948-9.
The Pocono Manor Inn meeting in Pennsylvania & the Oldstone conference in Peeskill NY were around $1200 each in 1948 and 1949 respectively. As it turned out, the electron mass in the QED theory and the measured mass had been set equal when they were distinct quantities. Who knew!
According to many of the participants these three conferences (but particularly Shelter Island) were the most important conferences of their entire careers. Feynman was in his late 20s. This is how you get unstuck. How you build leadership. How you stop failing year after year...
Those 3 conferences fixed the problem of infinites destroying the explanatory power of QED.
So I padded the HELL out of those numbers because I think the stagnations are similar with the major problem being leadership. I could be wrong. But it might take $1/2 Million to test it.
So...feel free to try to snark your way out of this. But I'll stand my ground. We don't need to go "Funeral by Funeral", but I'm tiring of "Calabi-Yau Phenomenology" or Multiverse excuses as a replacement for actual physics. We need to go back to science. https://snarxiv.org/vs-arxiv/
As to what's wrong with modern physics: let's start with Quantum Gravity. Bryce DeWitt started a failed 70 year wild goose chase in 1953 that is not working. If we lost 20 years on conflating Bare v Dressed masses, we just lost 70 years on Quantum Gravity. Maybe take a time out?
I have thought this through. It isn't a cheap shot. And I have waited until the 50th anniversary to be this frontal about it. But it has never been controversial since Planck to suggest that aged failed leaders are a huge issue. I'm not the Funeral by Funeral guy. He was. ;-)
Lastly, I can't stand anti-collegial snark. We can escalate if you want, but if instead you would like to have a serious discussion next time, it would be my pleasure. Shall we try this again?
I'm Eric. Huge fan of what you guys do. Big supporter. Nice to meet you. Thanks.
@MBKplus Sorry to be slow, but you used a screenshot so I wouldnât see your response rather than a quote tweet.
Not big on snark. But here is a proper response. Didnât know the history had become so obscure to modern physicists. My bad.
Thread:
This was a proper fuck you đ¤
Nah. Itâs a sensitive topic. Almost 40 years of string theology. 50 years of stagnation. 70 years of quantum gravity not shipping a theory.
I get it. But snark is a tell. The youngest Nobel particle theorist is over 70. I think 8 are alive. Itâs really bad.
I have no underlying animosity towards Mike. Letâs see what happens next.
Honest to god, what are you talking about? In your mind does 'fundamental physics' consist solely of an oddball sitting in his dorm room at Oxford moving a magnet through a coil? (& yes, I know that was Faraday at the RI & Newton was at Oxford, but I'm painting a picture here).
See I was thinking pads of paper, pens, and a whiteboard or blackboard. Maybe some coffee. A bit of LaTeX.
But thatâs just me not getting it. Forgive me.
So you're confusing theoretical physics with 'fundamental physics', an honest mistake, consider yourself forgiven.
Thanks for the help. But I must regretfully decline.
The LambâRetherford experiment was experimental physics. And Solid State theory would not be fundamental physics.