How I got my unpronouncable name?

(see also ChaosBook.blogspot.com/2010/10/whuz-yr-name.html )

Zu meinem Nachnamen: Der Name meines Adoptivvaters Cvitanović (Cvit = Blume, tanov = Sohn von, ić = Kleiner) ist ein verbreiteter kroatischer Bauern- und Fischername. Mein Name (Pre = zu viel, drag = wertvoll) stammt aus einem serbischen Epos über zwei Straßenräuber „Predrag und Nenad“, einer Nacherzählung der Geschichte von Kain und Abel. Nenad („unerwartet“, auch „Keine Hoffnung“) stammt von meinem kroatischen leiblichen Vater, der seine Studentenkollegin, die Tochter eines serbisch-orthodoxen Priesters, unerwartet schwängerte; das Ergebnis war mein älterer Halbbruder Nenad Belić. Daher wird der 2. Sohn „Predrag“ genannt. Die beiden Väter haben sich also verschworen, um meinen Namen für fast jeden auf der Welt unaussprechlich zu machen.

Der Familienname meiner Mutter, Golmajer (früher Gollmayer / Gollmayr geschrieben), macht mich zu einem Österreicher: Die Gollmayers waren Leibeigene, die von ihrem deutschen Herrn im frühen XVII Jahrhundert nach Slowenien gebracht wurden. Jahrhundert nach Slowenien gebracht wurden. Es gibt auch Ungarn in der Mischung, insbesondere die Familie Esterházy und auch General Josip Filipović, der die österreichisch-ungarische Besetzung von Bosnien und Herzegowina im Jahr 1878 leitete. Die Folgen kennen Sie.

[Übersetzt mit DeepL.com]

About my surname: my adoptive father's name Cvitanović (Cvit = flower, tanov = son of, ić = little one) is a common Croatian peasant and fisherman name. My name (Pre= too much, drag=precious) comes from a Serbian epic about two highway robber men "Predrag and Nenad", a retelling of the Cain and Abel story. Nenad ("unexpected", also "No hope") comes from my Croatian biological father, who got his university student colleague, daughter of a Serbian orthodox priest, unexpectedly pregnant, result being my older half-brother Nenad Belić. Hence the 2nd son gets to be "Predrag". Thus the two fathers conspired to make my name unpronounceable to almost anybody on the planet.

My mother's family name Golmajer (previously spelled Gollmayer / Gollmayr) makes me Austrian: Gollmayers were serfs, brought to Slovenia by their German lord in early XVII century. There are also Hungarians in the mix, in particular, the family Esterházy, and also general Josip Filipović who led the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878. The consequences you know.

The History of Byzantium

 

I'm back to where I was in November 2016. Now (and then) I've deleted my account in the fascist cesspool of X, and my Washington Post subscription. On YouTube I only watch my moron physics colleagues pine that the Nobel Prize in Physics was this year given to computer programmers. This, after they had given one to that weatherman Parisi.

The only podcast I listen to is "The History of Byzantium" . He is now at the year 1328, with episode 311. Only 125 years to go. They are typically 25 min each, my ride back or to work. But I've forgotten everything I had learned back in November of 2016,  so I'm restarting with the prelude to the year 476 episodes.

Other than that, inspired by certain Vattay's contribution to ChaosBook.org, I have discovered that the PhD theses of certain Artuso and Aurell are wrong in a subtle way (see p. 42 here, or listen to yet another bombastic video here). I do not know how to have these faulty PhD titles revoked, so I'm forced to labor alone on the correct theory . It would be fun to do this together, but all of the above have tenure, so... (see Not-Jamie Dimon's conjectures here).

As long as they do not come for me, I'll be OK.

Alberto Martínez "Beyond 1905: Einstein's Light, Love, and Lies"

(Alberto Martínez gave us a fascinating history of science lecture with above title)

Liebe Albert(o)

I think your combination of human miseries of young Einstein and what really took to get to relativity is just wonderful. Thanks for a great lecture!

I bow my head in shame. In spite of being friends with Abraham Pais and Engelbert Schuking, I knew nothing of what you taught us. I teach relativity like a late 20th century barbarian, as a triviality, first teach them SO(n) and then SO(4)=SU(2) x SU(2), then confuse them a bit with SO(1,3) and spinors. Done.
Life is even easier for Dr. Zangwill whose happy life never required learning any gruppenpest. He takes time to be pure imaginary. Done. Legitimized by real menschen, Pauli and t'Hooft.

I think why someone like Bram Pais would not bother including into a scientific biography of Einstein his "Die Leiden des jungen Alberts" sexual triumphs, pregnancies and miseries, as they were standard for any educated bourgeois male of late 19th, early 20th century. Bram's own biography would be like that - who saved him from Nazis and Dutch collaborators through the 2nd WW? And this misery might be standard again, if our crypto-fascist christian ayatollah succeed returning this country to pre-French Revolution feudalism.

A book that might be helpful in capturing the zeitgeist of pre-Nazi takeover Mittel Europa / central Europe is Margaret MacMillan, Paris, 1919: Six Months That Changed the World. I recommend it as a true Oyropeen intellectual (AKA, I have not yet read it myself): YouTube.com/watch?v=T7iXNZJsa6s&t=4s.

Regarding our conversation about Einsteins human rights activism in 1931: Albert Einstein and Heinrich Mann sent a letter to the International League for Human Rights in Paris to protest the murder of Milan Šufflay, appealing for protection of Croatian people from the oppression of Yugoslav regime.

New York Times.com 1931/05/06 article

A series of such high profile political assassinations, as well as murders of ordinary Croats, eventually led to horrific, Hitler-Mussolini sponsored civil war, a war within the 2nd World War, and then to the second, post-communist 1991-1995 war, a preview of the current Russian assault on Ukraine.

How you can do all this  without speaking German of Goethe, Heine and Kafka is beyond my ken. Should I mention that young Šufflay spoke French, German, Italian, English, all the Slavic languages, as well as Latin, old Greek, and middle Greek? Before his assassination by Serbian police, he had also learned modern Greek, Albanian, Hebrew, and Sanskrit. 

Fortunately, with AS (Artificial Stupidity) no one will ever have to waste time on learning a foreign language again. Or learning anything at all 🙂

 

"This is not physics!" or "Why did the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics go to two computer scientists"

Wonderful prize! I totally agree with the choice and reasoning for the choice.

 

My "fundamental" physics colleagues (particle physics, general relativity, strings, ...) have been more idiotic than usual. 

The funniest thing is the chorus of particle  physicists and such,   croaking

  "That's not physics!"

Sabine Hossenfelder is under impression that Hopfield is a computer scientist:)  But what for did he get the Buckley Prize, the Dirac Medal, the Boltzmann prize, was a President of APS, what for, then? Couldn't they, like, check the wiki before dismissing as prominent a physicist as Hopfield for the sin of having opened a new path forward?

 

October 18th klogW (APS GSNP and GDS) virtual seminar on the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics is excellent, especially in emphasizing the importance of this work for the development of contemporary computational neuroscience (not Large Language Models). About minute 43 into the video, Sara A. Solla tells the story of Hopfield 's 1983 APS March Meeting plenary talk, and how the work was received by Hopfield 's colleagues:

  "Very interesting. But. It's not physics, is it?"

 

There are some well based considerations about who should have also been included. I've been told Daniel Amit, but he had already committed suicide. Some people think Amari:

 

F writes: Amari in 1977 introduced the Hebbian learning and thus the 1982 Hopfield Network. Go figure what's going on! There are similar issues with the Nobel Prize in Medicine. The wife of one of the Nobel laureates is the first author, along with her husband, on the key paper that led to him receiving the prize.  

For this, the required viewing is The Wife, with Glenn Close. Amazing movie. Especially for me, as S is taking me to the Nobel festivities in Stockholm as her spouse. Though, she did all her work with no interference from me 🙂.

S had been Amari's guest at RIKEN, and has fun stories to tell about what is it to be a famed physicist visitor from Bell Labs (while visiting as a woman 🙂)

Shun-ichi Amari is universally respected, cited by Hopfield in The Paper, and I am not  aware of any contentious Nobel Prize priority claims from him.

Benny Lautrup: Så megen venlighed 1953

 Bennys erindringer: 

"Min mor gled i en hundelort på Vesterbrogade i København, da min far tilfældigvis kom gående forbi. Han hjalp hende op, og derfor er jeg."

Fra yumpu.com - fra Benny's nbi.dk konto
Benny Lautrup - populære artikler, anmeldelser og foredrag
bibliotek.dk articles - da.wiki

Benny died age 85, on January 3, 2025. Alzheimer was the cause.
NBIA obituary

Birthe: "Benny har de sidste måneder oplevet alvorlige skred i sin sygdom. Og især inden for de sidste to uger er det gået drastisk ned ad bakke, hvor han så yderligere pådrog sig en lungebetændelse, mistede sin bedste ven på plejehjemmet, og holdt op med at spise og indtage væske. I formiddags kl. 11 døde han fredfyldt, efter jeg og hans drenge havde haft to vågenætter hos ham. Hvor meget jeg end vil savne ham, er jeg glad for, han nu har fået ro, for han var så stærkt svækket af sin sygdom, at livskvaliteten var forsvundet.

Han holdt meget af dig, og så ofte på jeres fælles 2005 billede."

 

 

Translated with DeepL.com :

In recent months, Benny has experienced serious slips in his illness. Especially in the last two weeks, he went drastically downhill, contracting pneumonia, losing his best friend at the nursing home, and stopping eating and drinking.

This morning at 11am, he died peacefully after his boys and I had spent two nights awake with him. As much as I will miss him, I am glad that he is now at peace, because he was so weakened by his illness that the quality of his life had disappeared.

He loved you very much and often looked at your picture together.