Re: Today's jaw dropper

[Richard Grandy <rgrandy@ruf.rice.edu>]

There seems to be a curious, i.e., questionable,  presumption in recent
posts to this thread that there are established correlations between a
person being:
1.  a significant scientific innovator
2.  a good teacher
3.  a model for, or judge of, moral behavior
I see no reason to think that these are necessarily correlated.  Einstein's
comments on relativity I accept with great respect--his pronouncements on
world peace or marriage I evaluate critically.  If I agree with the latter
I may well quote them for rhetorical effect, but I don't give them any
special weight as I do not think him particularly expert on world peace or
monogamy.

> But it is an interesting question. I have never heard of a student of
> Dirac's being well-known. If there was one, I'd be interested in knowing.

I see no reason to think that brilliance in research has any correlation
with teaching excellence.  And no reason to think that even excellent
teaching can turn a good student into a significant innovator.
Non-brilliance in, non-brilliance out.  A good teacher facilitates a Ph. d.
in transit.


> But if not, that's not unusual. I don't believe that Einstein, Schroedinger
> or Feynman turned out any notable (i.e., famous) students.

I don't think Einstein ever had an academic position where he would have
had students.  (This is an impressionistic statement based on the fact that
he was at the Institute for Advanced Study, which has no students, from the
mid30s,and that I don't know that he had a long term academic position
before that. To have students you must be at a major university during a
stable period--hardly anything was stable in Europe from 1905-1935. I could
well be wrong and would be happy to be corrected.)





> There were some places and teachers who did turn out lots of top flight
> students. Rutherford and Thomson did, and many of the early quantum
> theorists in Germany did.
Yes, but we should question closely  whether it was the place or the
teacher that "turns them out".  Cambridge (both of them) attracts and
accepts the brightest--it is not surprising, if they can do a reasonable
job of admissions, that they turn out the best. Brilliance in, brilliance
out!

Whether the *teaching* makes any difference is totally unknown, so far as I
can see.  For all we know, being there and spending time with the other
brightest students in the country, perhaps the world,  may compensate for
the negative effects of the teaching! The same may hold for Gottingen and
Heidelberg in their prime, as for Padua in the sixteenth century.


I have heard a story told of Chandrashekar (Nobel Prize 1983 Physics) that
he once taught a course with two students enrolled. (U Chicago 19??)  In
spite of the class size, he lectured formally as he would have to a class
of dozens or hundreds.  Both students, as the story goes, later won Nobel
prizes.  Maybe someone can fill in the details of students names, or debunk
the story.  Maybe someone can tell me what this proves  if it is true in
some form:  The optimal class size is 2, potential Nobel prize winners gain
from being in small classes, potential Nobel prize winners are not
adversely affected by small clases, the U of Chicago attracts brilliant
students, . . .