Q: When, how, and why did you become interested in light?
A: I grew up in a house where we made just about everything, including science toys. My dad was a physicist, and we would spend weekends building pinhole shoebox cameras, arc lamps from dismantled batteries, and once even a solar hot dog cooker made out of a sledding saucer covered in aluminum foil. He would also bring home surplus items from his lab, like head-sized Fresnel lenses and chunks of sapphire lasers. He also set up a black-and-white darkroom in the attic where I spent much of my childhood and adolescence. My mother was creative as well and introduced me to painting, drawing, tie-dying and such. There were no computers yet, and our TV only got two channels (three if my little brother stood in just the right spot), so I had plenty of time to fiddle around.
As for why…well, light is beautiful. What’s more wonderful than the light filtered through new leaves on a windy, Spring day? Or the green bioluminescence trailing your limbs as you swim on a moonless night? The stars alone are worth having eyes for. I can’t imagine not studying light.
In a press release posted online this week (http://www.arl.org/sparc/media/12-0117.shtml), SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), lauded Michael Nielsen’s work “for bringing Open Science into the mainstream,” and added him to a prestigious list of SPARC Innovators.
The timing for this announcement couldn’t be better as the ScienceOnline conference is set to get underway tomorrow and Michael was featured in a New York Times article by Thomas Lin yesterday.
SPARC cites Michael’s popularization of Open Science–in particular his hefty tour schedule of 2011 and his book Reinventing Discovery–in their announcement. They also have a wonderful profile with comments from SPARC Executive Director Heather Joseph, Melissa Hagemann from the Open Society Foundations, biochemist Cameron Neylon, and John Dupuis, the head of the Steacie Science and Engineering Library at York University (the blogger behind Confessions of a Science Librarian).
Princeton University Press is happy to join in with congratulations to Michael on this tremendous honor!
We were thrilled to read Jennifer Schuessler’s terrific story on the popular phenomenon of bar lecturing (and not in an intoxicated way, but a learned way!) Check out her story here. It looks like alcohol and science is a powerful (and successful) formula.
The Press is pleased to have had the pleasure of working with the Secret Science Club as they’ve hosted talks for a handful of our science authors. In particular, I was delighted to see friend-of-the-Press Dorian Devins at the SSC getting a mention!
This anthology brings together the year’s finest mathematics writing from around the world. Featuring promising new voices alongside some of the foremost names in the field, The Best Writing on Mathematics 2011 makes available to a wide audience many articles not easily found anywhere else—and you don’t need to be a mathematician to enjoy them. These writings offer surprising insights into the nature, meaning, and practice of mathematics today. They delve into the history, philosophy, teaching, and everyday occurrences of math, and take readers behind the scenes of today’s hottest mathematical debates. Here Ian Hacking discusses the salient features that distinguish mathematics from other disciplines of the mind; Doris Schattschneider identifies some of the mathematical inspirations of M. C. Escher’s art; Jordan Ellenberg describes compressed sensing, a mathematical field that is reshaping the way people use large sets of data; Erica Klarreich reports on the use of algorithms in the job market for doctors; and much, much more.
Be sure to check out all of the wonderful series featured in this catalog, including In a Nutshell and Princeton Frontiers in Physics, as well as our great textbook options. New and forthcoming titles include How to Build a Habitable Planet by Charles H. Langmuir & Wally Broecker, Strange New Worlds by Ray Jayawardhana, Reinventing Discovery by Michael Nielsen, The Ultimate Book of Saturday Scienceby Neil A. Downie, and more. Many new paperbacks and ebooks are also available. It’s easy to download the catalog to your smartphone or tablet for browsing.
We’re at this year’s AAS meeting in Austin, TX. Stop by and visit us at booth #211.
James Kasting, author of How to Find a Habitable Planet, will be speaking at the Christopher Ingold Chemistry Lecture Theatre on Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 5:30 pm. A wine reception and book signing will follow the lecture. This event is free to attend, but please register tickets at: www.eventbrite.com/event/2278312494
“In their 2000 book, Rare Earth, Peter Ward and Don Brownlee argue that complex life (i.e., animal life) is rare in our galaxy for a variety of reasons, some of which are based on the idea that habitable planets are themselves rare. Possible reasons for this include: 1) Plate tectonics (possibly necessary to stabilize planetary climates) is rare; 2) large moons (possibly necessary to stabilize planetary obliquities) are rare; 3) magnetic fields (possibly necessary to retain atmospheres) are rare; 4) the Sun is anomalously metal-rich; 5) Jupiter-sized outer planets (possibly necessary to protect the Earth from frequent large impacts) are rare. In my talk, I will review these Rare Earth arguments and show that most, or all, of them are less troubling than Ward and Brownlee supposed. Despite this, perhaps there are other factors that could make habitable planets scarce. But this should not discourage us from building the types of large space telescopes required to actually answer this question.”
The authors of the new textbook Engineering Dynamics: A Comprehensive Introduction have written a short Primer to the notation used in their book. The notation differs from that used in the traditional suite of introductory texts (Meriam, Bedford & Fowler, Hibbeler, Beer & Johnson), but this more sophisticated notation is necessary because, as Kasdin explains, this textbook is more comprehensive than anything else currently available. Much of the material that requires this notation, such as multiple frames or three-dimensional rigid body rotation, are not covered in other textbooks.
Kasdin notes that the goal of the primer is threefold: “to show that the notation serves a specific purpose and has pedagogical value, to show that it is not as extensive and different as people think (i.e., it can be categorized into a small number of elements), and that we did not invent it, but rather followed common practice, adopting it from many sources, and merely tried to make it more consistent, systematic, and clear.”
He also emphasizes that there are other more complete and advanced books that have adopted some variation of the notation used in Engineering Dynamics, so there are precedents already in place for their decision to utilize this notation.
Even though the cover is reversed, that galley is easily recognizable as Reinventing Discovery by Michael Nielsen. We expect finished books in October, but so far most of the reactions have been, well, you can see for yourself…
Have a bad case of paraskevidekatriaphobia, or fear of Friday the 13th?
The 13th of a month will fall on a Friday more than any other day of the week. In a 400 year cycle, the 13th of the month will fall on Friday 688 times, just beating Wednesday and Sunday.
-Chapter 13, from the book:
Math–the application of reasonable logic to reasonable assumptions–usually produces reasonable results. But sometimes math generates astonishing paradoxes–conclusions that seem completely unreasonable or just plain impossible but that are nevertheless demonstrably true. Did you know that a losing sports team can become a winning one by adding worse players than its opponents? Or that cones can roll unaided uphill? In Nonplussed!–a delightfully eclectic collection of paradoxes from many different areas of math–popular-math writer Julian Havil reveals the math that shows the truth of these and many other unbelievable ideas.
Over at The Atlantic, Edward Tenner writes: “Decades after the genius’ death, the question of who controls his publicity rights continues. Even his prodigious imagination could not predict the media world of the early 21st century.”
This reflection comes on the heels of the news that Evelyn Einstein, granddaughter to Albert Einstein, has recently passed away. Her battle to receive a portion of the licensing fees for her grandfather’s image and name is documented at the philosophy of science portal.
While who owns the rights to license Einstein‘s image, face, and name might be up in the air, the provenance of his writings has been well-documented. His literary estate was gifted to Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Princeton University Press is proud to partner with them on the Einstein Papers Project which is now housed at Caltech.
This particularly fruitful and important venture has resulted in 12 volumes (and counting) of Einstein’s collected papers! To peruse the volumes, visit this site.
Featuring commentary and interviews from Princeton University Press authors, the PUP Blog is a highly respected, timely and indispensable source for learning, understanding and reflection.
Via Mark Thoma, and drawing upon James Bullard at the St. Louis Fed, MacroMania writes: I think that Bullard makes a persuasive case that the amount of household wealth evaporated along with the crash in house prices should likely be viewed as a “permanent” (highly persistent) negative wealth shock. Standard theory (and common sense) suggests […]
Bryan Caplan has a very good post on the human capital and signalling models of education. The key point is this, under the human capital model someone who forgets knowledge is no better than someone who failed to learn the same knowledge. Under the signaling model, however, failing and forgetting are very different. Bryan illustrates: […]
Here are some 2nd-year Cooper's Hawks (birds in their first adult plumage) with retained juvenile flight feathers (the pale brownish ones). Note the lack of any grayish color and the more distinct banding of the juvenile feathers. […]
From Ricardo Hausmann: Greece will have to bring its current account deficit down to zero at some point. This can happen in two ways: either Greece exports more or spends less. Adjusting the current account by spending less would require an additional fall in GDP of 25 per cent, given that in Greece only one […]
If you're reading this blog, you probably didn't fail a lot of classes in school. But I bet that you've totally forgotten a lot of those classes. I got A's in junior high and high school Spanish, but barely speak a word of it.Now ask yourself this:How would your career have been different if you had failed all the classes you've to […]
I heard a rumor that a famous economist was asking about my book in progress, The Case Against Education. So I sent him the following email:I heard you were asking about me at the GMU dinner earlier this week. I am indeed working on a book defending the empirical importance of the signaling model of education. I'm happy to discuss my project at lengt […]
A little while ago I came across this delightful essay, On Being the Right Size, by , courtesy of the always-interesting Farnam Street blog. An essay that seems to be about biology (and for more on this see 2010′s Royal … Continue reading → […]
1. There is no great stagnation: the horizontal shower. 2. What if Star Trek had social networks? 3. The culture that is Iceland. 4. New economics blog from Phillips Exeter Academy. 5. TGS for musical instruments? 6. Profile of Scott Stern’s work on the economics of science. 7. Kristof has quite a reasonable review of […]
When I spoke at Princeton last year, I talked with neuroscientist Sam Wang, who told me about a project he did surveying incoming Princeton freshmen about mental illness in their families. He and his coauthor Benjamin Campbell found some interesting results, which they just published: A link between intellect and temperament has long been the […]
The New Republic has assembled a symposium on what the United States should do about Syria. Among others, contributors will include Larry Diamond, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and... er... me: The New Republic wouldn’t be soliciting my take if there was an easy solution to this policy conundrum. Indeed, Syria is such a tough nut to crack that I fear the best appro […]
Quinn Fusting, PUP’s editorial assistant in the life sciences, has conducted a Q&A with Sönke Johnsen, the author of The Optics of Life: A Biologist’s Guide to Light in Nature.
