Math Files

In 1926–27, J. Robert Oppenheimer repeatedly interrupted Max Born's quantum mechanics seminars at Göttingen, sometimes taking over the blackboard.

Maria Göppert, a future Nobel laureate, helped organize a student petition threatening a boycott.

Born left the petition visibly on his desk and briefly stepped out while Oppenheimer was visiting.

Oppenheimer read it. No confrontation followed. The interruptions stopped.

An unusual episode involving two physicists who jointly developed the Born–Oppenheimer approximation in 1927.

One second contains 10¹⁸ attoseconds.

To understand this scale, imagine stretching one second into 31.7 billion years. One attosecond would then correspond to just one second.

Scientists use ultrashort light pulses to study electron dynamics in atoms and molecules.

This work earned Agostini, Krausz and L’Huillier the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics.

An amusing mathematical coincidence:

M = 13
A = 1
T = 20
H = 8

13 + 1 + 20 + 8 = 42.

Why does an hour have 60 minutes and a circle 360°?

The answer goes back to Mesopotamian mathematics.

The Babylonians used a positional base-60 system, inherited from the Sumerians.

Since 60 has 12 positive divisors, it makes many fractions convenient.

Their mathematical legacy survives every time we read a clock or measure an angle.

In a 1926 interview with Collier's magazine, Nikola Tesla envisioned a world connected through wireless communication.

He described instantaneous global contact, seeing and hearing distant people, and communication devices small enough to fit in a vest pocket.

A striking anticipation of mobile communication and video calling, nearly a century before their widespread use.

Tesla envisioned the possibilities, not the detailed technology of today's smartphones.