Inward Bound by Abraham Pais (1988) Updated 2025-07-16
The book unfortunately does not cover the history of quantum mechanics very, the author specifically says that this will not be covered, the focus is more on particles/forces. But there are still some mentions.
Islamic sect Updated 2025-07-16
Isolation (database systems) Updated 2025-07-16
Determines what can or cannot happen when multiple queries are running in parallel.
See Section "SQL transaction isolation level" for the most common context under which this is discussed: SQL.
Isomorphism Updated 2025-07-16
Something analogous to a group isomorphism, but that preserves whatever properties the given algebraic object has. E.g. for a field, we also have to preserve multiplication in addition to addition.
Other common examples include isomorphisms of vector spaces and field. But since both of those two are much simpler than groups in classification, as they are both determined by number of elements/dimension alone, see:we tend to not talk about isomorphisms so much in those contexts.
Italy Updated 2025-07-16
If the choice of what to learn depend on a years long dependency graph of other obligations, which currently are the increasingly interlinked:
you end up without much choice at all.
The lock-in periods must be much more fluid and shorter term than those, otherwise it makes the almost inevitable pivots to success impossible.
This is something that Ciro Santilli has heard from several people at the end of their undergrad/PhD degrees. Some online mentions:
When I realized the biggest reason to continue my pdh was to be dr helps, that's when decided I should probably leave.
Elsevier Updated 2025-07-16
Arline Greenbaum Updated 2025-07-16
Feynman's first wife, previously his local-high school-days darling. Feynman was like an reversed Stephen Hawking: he married his wife knowing that she had a serious illness, while Hawking's wife married him knowing that as well. Except that in Feynman's case, the disease outcome (tuberculosis) was much more uncertain, and she tragically died in 1945 much earlier while Feynman was at Los Alamos Laboratory, while Hawking, despite his decline, lived much longer.
Feynman first noticed Arline on the beaches on the region of his home in Far Rockaway, in the Queens, New York, near Long Beach. She lived a bit further inland in Cedarhurst. Arline was beautiful and boys competed for her, but Richard persisted, stalking her at an after-school social league sponsored by the local Synagogue and joining an art class she went to, until he eventually won it out. The region was highly Jewish, and both were from Jewish families, as also suggested by their family names.
Reading about her death e.g. at Genius: Richard Feynman and Modern Physics by James Gleick (1994) is a major tearjerker, it's just too horrible. The book mentions on chapter "The Last Springtime" that at last, during the last months of her life, after much hesitation, they did fuck in the sanatorium Arline where was staying at in Albuquerque, the nearest major city to Los Alamos (154 km), despite the risk of Feynman being infected, which would be particularly serious given that Feynman would be in constant contact with students and possibly infect others as part of his career as a researcher/teacher. Feynman would visit her on weekends by bus, and stay in Los Alamos during the week.
Arline finally died on June 16th 1945, exactly one month before the Trinity nuclear test was carried out. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a little later on 6 and 9 of August 1945.
On one of his last trips to Oak Ridge town late 1945, after her death, Feynman walked past a shop window and saw a pretty dress. He thought to himself, "Arline would have liked that", and the reminder made him cry for the first time after Arline's death.
It is even sadder to think that the first antibiotics for tuberculosis, streptomycin, finished its first major clinical trial at around 1948, not long after her death.
Figure 1. . Source. TODO date, location, original source.
Figure 2. . Source. TODO date, location, original source. Seems like in a hospital.
Video 1.
Abacus scene from the film Infinity (1996)
Source.
The film suggests that Feynman and Arline fucked a lot before the final Los Alamos fuck, that fuck story from book being only "fuck after tuberculosis diagnosis", after which they had to slow it down a bit.
This is likely true given how long they had been together for at that point. Ciro Santilli is such a pure soul for not having thought that! They were not very conservative at all those two.
Also their wedding got slowed down because there was a clause in Feynman's scholarship at Princeton University stating that the recipient could not be married, those were different times altogether.
Josephson equations Updated 2025-07-16
Two equations derived from first principles by Brian Josephson that characterize the device, somewhat like an I-V curve:
where:
Note how these equations are not a typical I-V curve, as they are not an instantaneous dependency between voltage and current: the history of the voltage matters! Or in other words, the system has an internal state, represented by the Josephson phase at a given point in time.
To understand them better, it is important to look at some important cases separately:
Archaea Updated 2025-07-16

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