Reply to a query on the Chandrasekhar Conference Articles
This letter was written in April 2003, in reply to an E-mail message asking if the Chandrasekhar Conference coverage is a parody or relates actual events from the conference
Hello Alan: Thanks for your question.
Part II of "Chandrasekhar" both is and is not a parody. Let's see. Part I is not a parody at all. In fact there was a physicist whose name was something like Varadarajan. Obviously from India. He did in fact
look at me in a supercilious way and say " I suppose
you expect me to impart some 'wisdom' to you"-an
absolutely stupid thing to say but in line with the
attitude of many scientists who grow bloated
with contempt once someone states he's a journalist.
Of course he was implying that Western journalists
only talk to Hindus because they imagine they're all
gurus.
Part II is mostly parody. It's content is however related to several incidents which did happen over the years and I think you'll appreciate:
- Martin Rees did in fact deliberately bump into
me in the corridor of the IAS during the Einstein
Centennial Symposium in 1979. He was angry because I'd
suggested that between the Big Bang and the
Cosmological Principle (universal isotropy and
homogeneity) one could prove just about anything. What
made him even more angry was that he didn't know my
credentials, and did in fact send along a colleague to
ask me, not too subtly, what my academic affiliation
was. I told him I was a professor of Philosophy of
Science at Columbia University, an egregious fiction.
However, at the Chandrasekhar Conference Martin Rees was
very friendly. Indeed my impression was that he
was happy to see me again after so many years. I'm glad that somethings make him happy; you probably know that he's recently published a jeremiad "Our Final Hour", predicting the end of civilization before the end of the 21st century.
-
Roger Penrose did in fact try to sell me the
hardback version of Volume II of Twistors and Spinors by himself and Wolfgang Rindler after the paperback had come out.This happened at the
11th General Relativity and Gravitation conference in
Stockholm in 1986.
My report on this conference is even more than a parody, its an exercize in Surrealism and the New Novel. You can find it in the
Conference Folder. Some of the
articles in this folder are parodies, some aren't.
The account of the Quantum Limits to the Second
Law conference for example, last summer in San Diego,
is quite sober - if that's the word )
I did't want the Twistors book, but a Dutch friend
and colleague, Dolf van Rede ( Sadly deceased from
about 4 years ago), bought it and made me a present of
it. I found it totally indigestible, even with a good
mathematics background, and finally sold it to the
Strand Bookstore in New York City for $10. They only
wanted to give me $5, but I persuaded them that
Penrose was a very famous man and his signature was
worth something.
-
Kip Thorne was in fact rude to me at that
conference, though I exaggerate the extent of it in my
article. My apologies.
-
I am always annoyed by the way participants, at the dinners
after these events, scream shop-talk
across the tables all through the meal while ignoring
anything else someone sitting next to them is trying to say to them.
Thus at the end of my article, I've got Valerie Ferrari shouting info across two tables about "quasi-normal" modes. At the end of the mock "dinner" we hear scientists
shouting out the wierd names of persons associated
with various theorems,methodologies, coinages and ideologies in astrophysics and cosmology. These are all real by the way, I didn't make any of
them up.
-
John Archibald Wheeler did in fact stand up
during a question period ( after Penrose's talk in
fact), and say that Inflationary Theory was complete
nonsense. Of course this sent off ripples all through the auditorium.
-
Ed Witten did in fact present himself as the
prophet of the "new geometry", claiming that "M-brane
theory" was the first real advance in geometry since
Euclid.
-
Everyone mentioned was in fact at the conference
or dinner, though all the conversations are of course
invented.
-
The tribute of Lalitha Chandrasekhar after the
dinner was not invented. It was very moving.
Thanks for writing. R.L.
Return to