How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist
staff.science.uu.nl
How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist
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Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist
#2Off topic: This seems to be an odd emphasis on the word "good". Can a native English speaker confirm?
Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist
#3I'm happy to see that there is someone who is trying to help those who don't want to or can't go the traditional route of undergrad => grad school. Certainly I'm sure there are many others like me who have a strong, but amateur interest in a subject. Here I mean amateur in the sense that it is unpaid and done only out of love, as opposed to some measure of skill.
Sadly I have no intention of studying theoretical physics. If anyone could point me towards something for theoretical computer science and algorithms I would be most grateful
Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist
#4Off topic: This seems to be an odd emphasis on the word "good". Can a native English speaker confirm?
I agree that use of "good" is questionable here. One would think that without the skills mentioned, one wouldn't be a theoretical physicist at all. (Is every person who lacks these skills a "bad theoretical physicist"? Only in a vacuous sense.)
That said, I think we should interpret "how to become a good theoretical physicist" as "how to gain the competencies that are expected of s theoretical physicist."
Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist
#5Off topic: This seems to be an odd emphasis on the word "good". Can a native English speaker confirm?
The author of the submitted website is a native speaker of Dutch, but his English looks fine to me (a native speaker of English). I think his choice of emphasis, which I didn't try to reproduce when I submitted the website here on Hacker News, makes the point that people can become mere amateurs or even cranks[1] about theoretical physics unless they prepare carefully. I have seen a few examples of theoretical physics cranks[2] over the years.
[1] I mean "crank" in the second sense shown at the Merriam-Webster dictionary site.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crank
[2] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/in-physics-t...
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/01/10/a-profound-misu...
Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist
#6Off topic: This seems to be an odd emphasis on the word "good". Can a native English speaker confirm?
The emphasis is because he wrote two articles:
"How to become a good theoretical physicist" (http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html), and "How to become a bad theoretical physicist" (http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theoristbad.html).
Later, the advice on how to become "good" was re-designed to look better, but split the content across multiple pages (http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~gadda001/goodtheorist/).
Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist
#7Wow, I originally clicked on the article thinking it was tongue-in-cheek, but it's fantastic! Glad to see that someone is taking time to help others (like me)
Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist
#8I'm happy to see that there is someone who is trying to help those who don't want to or can't go the traditional route of undergrad => grad school. Certainly I'm sure there are many others like me who have a strong, but amateur interest in a subject. Here I mean amateur in the sense that it is unpaid and done only out of love, as opposed to some measure of skill. Sadly I have no intention of studying theoretical phys…
Aside: that phrase "someone who is trying to help" makes me wonder whether you know that _this_ someone is a Nobel laureate (shared with Veltman in 1999), as he casually mentions in the text.
Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist
#9I'm happy to see that there is someone who is trying to help those who don't want to or can't go the traditional route of undergrad => grad school. Certainly I'm sure there are many others like me who have a strong, but amateur interest in a subject. Here I mean amateur in the sense that it is unpaid and done only out of love, as opposed to some measure of skill. Sadly I have no intention of studying theoretical phys…
Aside: that phrase "someone who is trying to help" makes me wonder whether you know that _this_ someone is a Nobel laureate (shared with Veltman in 1999), as he casually mentions in the text.
I did read it so yes I did know. I just feel like most active researchers would be able to point people in the right direction, so the fact that he's a Nobel laureate wasn't particularly relevant.
Re: How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist
#10Wow, I originally clicked on the article thinking it was tongue-in-cheek, but it's fantastic! Glad to see that someone is taking time to help others (like me)
Same here. It's actually a really good post!
Regarding his comment about hearing from amateurs who think they've solved the world, that is something I've heard from a lot of physics professors, that they get a lot of emails with crazy stuff like this: http://i.imgur.com/QTt6ZTq.gif
Why does that happen in physics and not chemistry, bio, econ, comsci or any other subject?