Murray Gell-Mann is also held to be one of the finest pick-pockets of the age. My bet is that he had your passport in his possession at the time.
The accent prediction is impressive, but even more so for an American. I can just about spot different accents from North, East, West and South of the US, but with one or two exceptions I can’t narrow it down any further than that.
I’m envious. I watched a lecture that he gave once (YouTube I think) on the quantum world, his style was meandering and mostly off-topic. Like Richard Feynman, he seemed/seems to be able to engage an audience beyond the dryness of the subject, and yet you’d leave having learned something.
He wrote it partly because he was annoyed at Stephen Hawking’s fame and wealth after A Brief History of Time, and The Quark & the Jaguar is a much better book. But he was particularly wound up that the book was a publishing flop (MG-M not being the most sanguine person I’ve ever encountered).
Still, having met a few of the physics greats, including Ed Whitten, he’d be my nominee for No1 superbrain.
Originally posted by @Furball
Still, having met a few of the physics greats , including Ed Whitten, he’d be my nominee for No1 superbrain.
I’m intrigued - can I ask in what capacity?
Yep, he’s a wonderfully engaging public speaker and never feels the need to talk down to his audience (while having a quite developed sense of his own place in the world). Looking around his (quite modest) gaff, if anyone had to be a pickpocket it should have been me. One of his other abilities is to spot art trends before almost anyone else. I’ll leave it at that…
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In one of my past lives I specialised in making science and natural history docs for Aunty, et al.
Whitten was definitely one of the stranger encounters. I was ushered into his office in CalTech (he’s at Princeton, in Einstein’s office, but was on sabbatical), and I sat there for about 10 minutes before he recognised that there was anyone else in the room. He looked up, looked at me, clearly had another think about M Theory while he stared at me, then just said ‘Yes’ as if he’d worked out the answer to something (my being there? Another dimension in the multiverse?) When my co-director asked him to do a shot walking along the street, this involved taking a right turn. He did it as if he’d hit a wall. So think Sheldon Cooper but with more Sheldon. I rather liked him.
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18 Founding Centurion badges left!
I know may be missing something but
115 member plus 18 vacanct slots does not equal 100 centurions
You are missing something. They need to be claimed by visiting your profile page. People have created an account and never claimed them.
