Ciro Santilli @cirosantilli 34

This due is a beast, he knows both the physics and the history of physics, and has the patience to teach it. What a blessing: Section "How to teach and learn physics".

Affiliation: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Doctoral advisor: Murray Gell-Mann.

A charismatic, perfect-English-accent (Received Pronunciation) physicist from University of Cambridge, specializing in quantum field theory.

He has done several "vulgarization" lectures, some of which could be better called undergrad appetizers rather, a notable example being Video "Quantum Fields: The Real Building Blocks of the Universe by David Tong (2017)" for the prestigious Royal Institution, but remains a hardcore researcher: scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=felFiY4AAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate. Lots of open access publications BTW, so kudos.

The amount of lecture notes on his website looks really impressive: www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/teaching.html, he looks like a good educator.

David has also shown some interest in applications of high energy mathematical ideas to condensed matter, e.g. links between the renormalization group and phase transition phenomena. TODO there was a YouTube video about that, find it and link here.

Ciro Santilli wonders if his family is of East Asian, origin and if he can still speak any east asian languages. "Tong" is of course a transcription of several major Chinese surnames and from looks he could be mixed blood, but as mentioned at www.ancestry.co.uk/name-origin?surname=tong it can also be an English "metonymic occupational name for a maker or user of tongs". After staring at his picture for a while Ciro is going with the maker of tongs theory initially.

This dude is generally viewed as a God. His incredibly understated demeanor and tone certainly help.

www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFw1phnddYWXtVkRW8eUVlqx Edward Teller interview by Web of Stories (1996) Date shown at: www.webofstories.com/play/edward.teller/1. Listener: John H. Nuckolls

Died of cancer at age 53. Ciro Santilli just can't help but speculate that it is linked to radioactivity exposure.

1932 Nobel Prize in Physics for cyclotron.

Ciro's theory for his disappearance is that he became a Majorana fermion and flew off into the infinite.

Ciro Santilli's admiration for Dyson goes beyond his "unify all the things approach", which Ciro loves, but also extends to the way he talks and the things he says. Dyson is one of Ciro's favorite physicist.

Besides this, he was also very idealistic compassionate, and supported a peaceful resolution until World War II with United Kingdom was basically inevitable. Note that this was a strategic mistake.

Dyson is "hawk nosed" as mentioned in Genius: Richard Feynman and Modern Physics by James Gleick (1994) chapter "Dyson". But he wasn't when he was young, see e.g. i2.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/freemandyson_child-1.jpg?resize=768%2C1064&ssl=1 It sems that his nose just never stopped growing after puberty.

He also has some fun stories, like him practicing night climbing while at Cambridge University, and having walked from Cambridge to London (~86km!) in a day with his wheelchair bound friend.

Ciro Santilli feels that the label child prodigy applies even more so to him than to Feynman and Julian Schwinger.

Bibliography:

Head of the theoretical division at the Los Alamos Laboratory during the Manhattan Project.

Richard Feynman was working under him there, and was promoted to team lead by him because Richard impressed Hans.

He was also the person under which Freeman Dyson was originally under when he moved from the United Kingdom to the United States.

And Hans also impressed Feynman, both were problem solvers, and liked solving mental arithmetic and numerical analysis.

This relationship is what brought Feynman to Cornell University after World War II, Hans' institution, which is where Feynman did the main part of his Nobel prize winning work on quantum electrodynamics.

Hans must have been the perfect PhD advisor. He's always smiling, and he seemed so approachable. And he was incredibly capable, notably in his calculation skills, which were much more important in those pre-computer days.