We may go on deleting sections of our history but in the world outside where there are multiple centres of research into the Indian past, and many scholars, there these expunged sections from books used in India will continue to be studied. They will be subjected to new methods of analyses, will be commented upon, …
Continue reading “Marginalia: Romila on textbooks, Rapido ad, Nobel nonsense”
Peter Woit has blogged about an oral history interview with theoretical physicist Sheldon Glashow published in 2020 by the American Institute of Physics. (They have a great oral history of physics series you should check out if you’re interested.) Woit zeroed in on a portion in which Glashow talks about his faltering friendship with Steven …
Continue reading “The question of Abdus Salam ‘deserving’ his Nobel”
The Royal Society’s appointment of its first Brazilian member since 1871 brings an underappreciated form of our colonial hangover to the fore.
Primacy is a false virtue imposed by the structures of modern science – yet it is also necessary to right some wrongs.
Who would have been the most iconic woman physicist of all time if the Nobel Prizes didn’t exist?
There’s a phenomenon in high-energy particle physics that I’ve found instructive as a metaphor to explain some things whose inner character may not be apparent to us but whose true nature is exposed in extreme situations. For example, consider the case of Charles Lieber, an American chemist whom a jury found guilty earlier today of …
Continue reading “Charles Lieber case: A high-energy probe of science”
On December 12, Iron Man, a.k.a. Robert Downey, Jr., and David Lang coauthored an op-ed in Fast Company that announced a grant-giving initiative of theirs designed to help fund scientists doing work too important to wait for the bureaucracy to catch up. Their article opened with a paragraph that, to my eye, seemed to have …
Continue reading “Some thoughts on Robert Downey, Jr.’s science funding idea”
Katie Langin’s report for Science on October 12 is an eye-opening account of one reason why the committees that pick every year’s Nobel Prize winners almost never pick women: because they aren’t nominated. Given the Nobel Foundation’s frustrating policy of secrecy, there aren’t many numbers available for us to work with, but Langin’s report adds …
The Association for the Advancement of AI conferred its ‘Squirrel AI Award’ on Cynthia Rudin, and Duke University – her employer – published a press release celebrating it. Here’s one para from the release: “Only world-renowned recognitions, such as the Nobel Prize and the A.M. Turing Award from the Association of Computing Machinery, carry monetary …
Continue reading “Are major science prizes a form of philanthropy?”
The sciences part of this year’s Nobel Prize announcements have concluded. These are the new laureates: Physics – Syukuro Manabe 🇯🇵 🇺🇸, Klaus Hasselmann 🇩🇪 and Giorgio Parisi 🇮🇹Chemistry – Benjamin List 🇩🇪 and David W.C. MacMillan 🇬🇧Medicine/physiology – David Julius 🇺🇸 and Ardem Patapoutian 🇺🇸 I have yet to come across a more overt …
Continue reading “The Nobel Prize, its men and climate change”
Random Sunset 