Stan’s Obligatory Blog

There is an egret who sometimes hangs around the Caltech campus. There are a few little pools that are stocked with frogs and mosquito fish, and apparently the little fish and tadpoles are very tasty. So the egret hangs around the ponds and eats. It’s an interesting bit of actual nature, red in tooth and claw, in the middle of the big city.

I just read that Hans Bethe has died:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14079-2005Mar7.html

He was one of the giants of 20th-century physics. When I was in college, his name came up often in the quantum mechanics and nuclear physics textbooks.

One day not long before I graduated from college in 1982, I stopped by the Bonner Nuclear Lab at Rice to talk to my professor, Dr. Phillips. While we were chatting, his secretary buzzed him:

“Dr. Phillips, I have Hans Bethe on the phone for you.”

So he excused himself and picked up the phone:

“Hello Hans! How are you?”

I thought it was really amazing that I knew someone who was actually on a first-name basis with one of the legends of physics.