Saturday, July 16, 2011

The scientist who cried "Breakthrough!"

The Boy who cried wolf is one of Aesop's fables. It illustrates the problem of losing credibility due to developing a reputation of make false claims in order to get attention. Yet, the tragedy occurs when a true statement is made; it is ignored because of the lack of credibility of the speaker.
Does it apply in science? I think so. After you have been in science for a while I think there are certain people you just ignore because of previous experience of seeing their claims not bearing the test of time.

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Rodney Baxter (1940-2025): Mathematical Physicist

I recently learnt that Rodney Baxter died earlier this year. He was adept at finding exact solutions to two-dimensional lattice models in st...