Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Mike Towler - Grad Course on De Broglie-Bohm (Jan 2009)

Mike Towler is a Royal Society research fellow in the Theory of Condensed Matter (TCM) Group at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge and a College Lecturer at Emmanuel College.

One year ago he taught a graduate lecture course on the foundations of quantum mechanics, specializing in pilot-wave theory (otherwise known as Bohmian mechanics or deBroglie-Bohm theory).

You can access the lecture by clicking here.

I profess ignorance (or worse - just enough knowledge to be dangerous in discussing it) in all things De Broglie-Bohm Theory, except yesterday when I realized it is an excellent starting point for understanding the burgeoning field of Quantum Hydrodynamics. So now I have to re-visit this much-damned theory, because in some cases, apparently, it is quite useful. It is certainly misunderstood.

Here is a picture of Mike:

4 comments:

Jérôme Chauvet said...

Mike Towler looks like Garrett Lisi with a beard, doesn't he?

Steven Colyer said...

Hey, maybe it is Lisi! lol Since Lubos likes to point out how few references his pre-print gets, maybe he feels he must go undercover, maybe? But wait, what's that in his arms? A child? For some reason I don't think of A. Garrett Lisi as the settling down kind.

Jérôme Chauvet said...

There are so many things of which Mr Motl makes fun. He should have begun with making fun of himself, then perhaps deal with others' weaknesses. Self-mockery is said to be the best way ever to prove one's intelligence...

I can give here a nice example of this. When Einstein discovered the notation rule that bears his name, he said something like: I elicited a revolution in Mathematics... Yes, I found one can get rid of the great sum symbol in sum series if keeping the indices alone.

And that was it. Einstein knew he wasn't a very great mathematician, and made fun of himself for that.

Or another example would be Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, who said to journalists things like: Of coure I do mistakes... Then he could talk for hours about those mistakes he did, and which led him to brand-new interesting views.

There is the elegance of the mind.

Best,

Steven Colyer said...

From Towler to Lisi to Lubos to Einstein.

The Germans are right. There truly are no more than six degrees of separation between people.