The data above are from an article by Dr. Herbert
Friedman of Naval Research Laboratory. Our Baker
Street Irregulars have just established a pipeline to Dr.
Van Flandern; if major new data become available before
this book is closed for press, I will add a line to this.
3) In Where To see prediction number fourteen, page
341: At the Naval Academy I slept my way through the course in physics; nothing had changed since I had covered the same ground in high school. "Little did I dream" that a young man at Cambridge, less than five years older than I, was at that very moment turning the world upside down. This quiet, polite, soft - spoken gentleman was going to turn out to be the enfant terrible of physics. This has been the stormiest century in natural philosophy of all history and the storms are not over. We would not today have over 200 "elementary" particles (an open scandal) if Paul Dirac had not simplified the relation of
spin and magnetism in an electron into one equation over fifty years ago, then shown that the equation implied antimatter.
Many thousands of man - hours, many millions of dollars have been spent since then exploring the byways opened up by this one equation. And the end is not yet. The four forces (strong, weak, gravitic, electromagnetic) are still to be combined into one system. Einstein died with the work unfinished, Hawking (although young) is tragically ill, Dirac himself has reached the age when he really should not climb stepladders (as I know too well; I'm not that much younger).
E = me2 everybody knows; it's short and simple. But the Dirac equation, at least as important, is known only to professionals - not surprising; it's hairy and uses symbols a lavutan never sees.
I include it here just for record; I won't try to explain ii. For explanations, gel a late text on quantum mechanic and be prepared to learn some not - easy mathematics. Lotsa luck!
LATE BULLETIN:
Newton's "Constant" of Gravitation is a decreasing variable.
Just as I was about to dispatch this book to New York, through the good offices of Dr. Yoji Kondo (astrophysicist NASA Goddard) I received from Dr. Thomas C. Van Flandern a preprint of his latest results. They tend to confirm Dr. Dirac's 1937 prediction even more closely.
I have just telephoned Doctor Van Flandern. With caution proper - to a scientist he does not say that he has "proved" Dr. Dirac 's prediction ... but that data to date support it; no data that he knows of contradict it.
I don't have to be cautious; this man has established the fact beyond any reasonable doubt. Twenty - odd years of endless Lunar data, done by atomic (cesium) clock, electrically - automatically timed occultation’s of stars, backed by both triangulation and radar ranging, counterchecked by similar work done on the inner planets by other astronomers at other observatories - Certainly he could be wrong... and I could be elected President!
T. C. Van Flandern turns out to be the sort of Renaissance Man Dirac is, but a generation younger (38 years). B.S. mathematics, Xavier, Cincinnati; Ph.D. astronomy, Yale - he has three other disciplines: biochemistry, nutrition, psychiatry. (When does he sleep?)
Reread that list of sciences affected (p. 486), then batten down the hatches! Dirac has done it again, and the World will never be the same.
LARGER THAN LIFE
A Memoir in Tribute to Dr. Edward E. Smith
August 1940 - aback road near Jackson, Michigan - a 1939 Chevrolet sedan:
"Doc" Smith is at the wheel; I am in the right-hand seat and trying hard to appear cool, calm, fearless - a credit to the Patrol. Doc has the accelerator floor boarded ... but has his head tilted over at ninety degrees so that he can rest his skull against the frame of the open left window - in order to listen by bone conduction for body squeaks.
Were you to attempt this position yourself - car parked and brakes set, by all means; I am not suggesting that you drive - you would find that your view of the road ahead is between negligible and zero.
I must note that Doc was not wearing his Lens.
This leaves (by Occam's Razor) his sense of perception, his almost superhuman reflexes, and his ability to integrate instantly all available data and act there from decisively and correctly.
Sounds a lot like the Gray Lensman, does it not?
It should, as no one more nearly resembled (in character and in ability - not necessarily in appearance) the Gray Lensman than did the good gray doctor who created him.
Doc could do almost anything and do it quickly and well. In this case he was selecting and road - testing for me a secondhand car. After rejecting numberless other cars, he approved this one; I bought it. Note the date:
August 1940. We entered World War Two the following year and quit making automobiles. I drove that car for twelve years. When I finally did replace it, the mechanic who took care of it asked to be permitted to buy it rather than have it be turned in on a trade... because, after more than thirteen years and hundreds of thousands of miles, it was still a good car. Doc Smith had not missed anything.
Its name? Skylark Five, of course.
So far as I know, Doc Smith could not play a dulcimer (but it would not surprise me to learn that he had been expert at it). Here are some of the skills I know he possessed:
Chemist & chemical engineer - and anyone who thinks these two professions are one and the same is neither a chemist nor an engineer. (My wife is a chemist and is also an aeronautical engineer - but she is not a chemical engineer. All clear? No? See me after class.)
Metallurgist - an arcane art at the Trojan Point of Black Magic and science.
Photographer - all metallurgists are expert photographers; the converse is not necessarily true.
Lumberjack
Cereal chemist
Cook
Explosives chemist - research, test, & development
- product control
Blacksmith
Machinist (tool & die maker grade)
Carpenter
Hardrock miner - see chapter 14 of FIRST LENSMAN, titled "Mining and Disaster." That chapter was written by a man who had been there. And it is a refutation of the silly notion that science fiction does not require knowledge of science. Did I hear someone say that there is no science in that chapter? Just a trick vocabulary - trade argot - plus description of some commonplace mechanical work - So? The science (several sciences!) lies just below the surface of the paper.. . and permeates every word. In some fields I could be fooled, but not in this one. I've been in mining, off and on, for more than forty years.
Or see SPACEHOUNDS OF IPC, chapters 3 & 4, pp. 40 - 80... and especially p.52 of the Fantasy Press hardcover edition. Page 52 is almost purely autobiographical in that it tells why the male lead, "Steve" Stevens, knows how to fabricate from the wreckage at hand everything necessary to rescue Nadia and himself. I once discussed with Doc these two chapters, in detail; he convinced me that his hero character could do these things by convincing me that he, Edward E. Smith, could do all of them... and, being myself an experienced mechanical engineer, it was not possible for him to give me a "snow job." (I think he lacked the circuitry to give a "snow job" in any case; incorruptible honesty was Dr. Smith's prime attribute - with courage to match it.)
What else could he do? He could call square dances. Surely, almost anyone can square - dance ... but to become a caller takes longer and is much more difficult. When and how he found time for this I do not know - but, since he did everything about three times as fast as ordinary people, there is probably no mystery.
Both Doc and his beautiful Jeannie were endlessly hospitable. I stayed with them once when they had nine houseguests. They seemed to enjoy it.
But, above all, Doc Smith was the perfect, gallant knight, sans peur et sans reproche.
And all of the above are reflected in his stories.