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The sad story of Heisenberg's doctoral oral exam (1998)

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Re: The sad story of Heisenberg's doctoral oral exam (1998)

#111

Post by Invictus0 »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #30

Interestingly, this type of entrenchment has not changed in my opinion. There is always a professor of distinguished, but long forgotten and superseded past-expertise on the orals. They will insist on nuanced competence in an area no longer necessary to forge ahead. They become petty and claw with every breath to maintain relevance, despite all the others on the panel fully aware of the opposite. Academia is a cesspo…

Did we read the same thing? The article goes on to describe that the exact thing that the professor insisted was important for Heisenberg to know, was later on important for Heisenberg to know.

Re: The sad story of Heisenberg's doctoral oral exam (1998)

#112

Post by keeganpoppen »

nothrowaways wrote: post #38
abhv wrote: post #15

A Turing Award winner (keeping it anonymous) related a similar story to me about his phd qualifier exam (when I was taking mine). This winner is a theoretical computer scientist who skipped most of his computer hardware courses. Near the time of his graduation, he was informed that he needed to pass a hardware course because it was required for graduation. He worried; his advisor begged the hw professor to give him a…

Nice story, except the TLDR.

it's a Mark Twain reference fwiw

Re: The sad story of Heisenberg's doctoral oral exam (1998)

#113

Post by kleiba »

my-god-hn wrote: post #104
arglebarnacle wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very funny to me that on the way out of the room Wittgenstein allegedly "clapped the two examiners [Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore] on the shoulder and said, 'Don't worry, I know you'll never understand it.'"

Probably because it was a bunch of nonsense. Wittgenstein has no place in the same sentence as Bertrand Russell.

"When Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was originally published—in German in 1921, and in English in 1922—Bertrand Russell was much better known. In fact, Wittgenstein relied on Russell to get his manuscript published in the first place, and it was Russell’s introduction to the Tractatus that encouraged publishers to consider accepting it at all. While Wittgenstein was grateful for Russell’s efforts, he was dismayed by his introduction, feeling that not even his former professor understood him. For Russell’s part, he was by this time exhausted by his relationship with the young Austrian who had been his student at Trinity in the years leading up to the First World War." [1]

[1] https://dearbertie.mcmaster.ca/letter/wittgenstein

Re: The sad story of Heisenberg's doctoral oral exam (1998)

#114

Post by beezlebroxxxxxx »

my-god-hn wrote: post #104
arglebarnacle wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very funny to me that on the way out of the room Wittgenstein allegedly "clapped the two examiners [Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore] on the shoulder and said, 'Don't worry, I know you'll never understand it.'"

Probably because it was a bunch of nonsense. Wittgenstein has no place in the same sentence as Bertrand Russell.

Wittgenstein is generally considered to be one of most important philosophers of the 20th century, if not the most important. Analytic philosophy has largely lost interest in Russell's works (Kripke was far more important and is generally considered the person who "cleaned" a lot of Russell's deadend projects), while analytic and "continental" philosophy still avidly discuss Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, and the fallouts from that work were a profound reassessment and shake up of philosophy. Russell is probably more well known nowadays as a popularizer of certain ideas in philosophy, as a general interest and political writer, and as a philosopher that typified the particular era in which he wrote, and less so for the actual philosophical ideas he sought to argue for. His History of Western Philosophy book for instance is quite famously bad.

Most people today would question if Russell should be put in the same sentence as Wittgenstein.

Re: The sad story of Heisenberg's doctoral oral exam (1998)

#115

Post by hankman86 »

Not so much sad, but rather ignorant. Heisenberg knew that an experimental physicist would sit on the panel. What kind of questions did he expect to get asked?

In those days, the expectation for a physics PhD was to be well-versed in different branches of the art. Think of this as you may, but it seems like Heisenberg simply didn’t prepare properly.

Re: The sad story of Heisenberg's doctoral oral exam (1998)

#116

Post by pvaldes »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #93
galaxyLogic wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"could not overcome Heisenberg's complete lack of interest and gave up the effort" We all want to excel so naturally we pick topics which seem easy to us and thus can expect to excel further in them. If we did not do well in some topic earlier, we are not very interested in it, because the best we can hope is to do ok in that subject. I did not like "technical drawing" in my first year and so I found a way to pass wi…

Why Technical Drawing is important? Because anything we envision in our mind is in essence a 3-D model. If we can draw it on paper it helps to clarify our thoughts. We can not envision anything 4-D, can we? Being able to draw 3-D objects on paper(or computer) with correct perspective is invaluable I now think.

> We can not envision anything 4-D, can we?

We definitely can draw 4-D in paper. It just needs much more work.

Re: The sad story of Heisenberg's doctoral oral exam (1998)

#117

Post by max-ibel »

my-god-hn wrote: post #104
arglebarnacle wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very funny to me that on the way out of the room Wittgenstein allegedly "clapped the two examiners [Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore] on the shoulder and said, 'Don't worry, I know you'll never understand it.'"

Probably because it was a bunch of nonsense. Wittgenstein has no place in the same sentence as Bertrand Russell.

I found the book "The world as I found it" by Bruce Duffy to be a fairly good read on this subject.

Re: The sad story of Heisenberg's doctoral oral exam (1998)

#118

Post by max-ibel »

lqet wrote: post #78

> The result was that Heisenberg received the lowest of three passing grades in physics and the same overall grade (cum laude) for his doctorate I don't think that's accurate - there are usually 4 passing grades for dissertations in Germany, the lowest passing grade being "rite". It would be surprising if "cum laude", which literally means "with praise", was the lowest passing grade at Heisenberg's university (edit:…

Perhaps you have to read the OP in the spirit of Futurama:

Professor Ogden Wernstrom : I give your invention the worst grade imaginable: an A-minus-minus.

Re: The sad story of Heisenberg's doctoral oral exam (1998)

#119

Post by coyotespike »

meindnoch wrote: post #106
yummypaint wrote: post #84

As a physicist i find this quite comforting. It's good to keep in mind that even the most transformative thinkers in the history of science had reasons to experience impostor syndrome. Einstein famously had a lot of trouble with math as well. No matter how good you are, physics will regularly present you with problems that you can't solve. Statistically speaking, most of the time spent doing science is spent being wr…

>Einstein famously had a lot of trouble with math as well This is false.

Yes, Einstein himself directly addressed the myth, noting he'd mastered calculus by about 12.

It is probably true that he was not the mathematician that many other theoretical physicists are. How would you compare him with von Neumann?

But that's a different thing than the common myth that he was bad at math!

Re: The sad story of Heisenberg's doctoral oral exam (1998)

#120

Post by trombonechamp »

mattkrause wrote: post #99
trombonechamp wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the classic 4th Floor SHM committee

Indeed---Daeyeol was the RL person! I'm guessing we just missed each other in grad school?

I knew it had to be him when you said Sutton and Barto.

Yeah, I think we just missed each other since your name sounds familiar.

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