The problem of scientific greatness and the role of ordinaryscientists
Nathan Hagen, 2020-Mar-09

arXiv:submit/3078925 [physics.soc-ph] 9 Mar 2020

Abstract: Textbooks in physics use science history to humanize the subject and motivate students for learning, but they deal exclusively with the heroes of the field and ignore the vast
majority of scientists who have not found their way into history. What is the role of these invisible scientists — are they merely the worker ants in the colony of science, whose main utility is
to facilitate the heroes of the field?

1

Introduction

colleagues’ names has not survived, their efforts have nevertheless been essential for the advances achieved by science.

As students of the sciences, we start our studies filledwith enthusiasm and ambition, drinking up technical details while reading about the theories and experiments ofour great predecessors — Newton, Darwin, Einstein, et al.
After years of study, as we gain in ability and reach the frontiers of knowledge in our chosen disciplines, we encounterthe harsh realities of research and struggle to push forward.
While some succeed and receive the accolades of their peers,
many give up and leave science altogether, some tire of the
struggle and focus on teaching, while others push on without wide recognition of their work. These latter two groups
form the majority of practicing scientists — the 99% whose
work rarely finds a place in the standard textbooks and yet
who are nevertheless responsible for the majority of scientificpublications. How are these to see their role in the whole
effort? Are they really, as the disregard of most science biographies seems to imply, merely worker ants in the colonyof science, whose main utility is to facilitate the work of ourbetters?
While this tension between ambition and reality is hardly
unique to the sciences, it is something that most scientific researchers face, even if only subconsciously. Physicist Koichi
Mano once wrote to his former teacher Richard Feynman of
his feelings of inadequacy, to which Feynman replied by explaining how most of what the famous scientist had worked
on was in fact second-rate work or outright failure: “I haveworked on innumerable problems that you would call humble, but which I enjoyed and felt very good about because
I sometimes could partially succeed.... No problem is too
small or too trivial if we can really do something aboutit.” [[1], p. 201.] This feeling of progress and achievement,even if on only small problems, is important to the psychology of all creative work. In his reply, Feynman continues by
explaining that the ideals imbibed by students — the idealsof the heroic model of science — are impractical for day-today research work. Even some scientists considered great by
their contemporaries have suffered from feelings of inadequacy, as Paul Ehrenfest did in the 1930s.[2]Framing a dramatic narrative for the biographies of famous scientists has been central to creating these impractical
ideals. In these stories, a successful scientist’s life is typically
depicted as a hero’s quest, and the vanquishing of the unknown as the conquest. While this convenient framework
motivates each biography and drives its narrative, heroes ofhistory are often figureheads for the armies that they lead.
Without the armies to support them, they can achieve littleof lasting value. And so it is with science, though scientificbiographers work hard to draw a contrast between the primary subjects of their study and the often nameless groupof colleagues surrounding them. While recognition of these2

What makes a scientist great?

Some geniuses stand so far above us in their insights thatthey seem alien in their ability. Isaac Newton formulated
the laws of motion, discovered a mathematical descriptionof gravity, created calculus, invented the first practical reflecting telescope, built the theory of color based on the light
spectrum, and added a host of other scientific accomplishments. Any one of these would have immortalized his namein science, and yet he did them all. Einstein discovered thephotoelectric effect and thus the first convincing proof of theexistence of photons as quanta; he derived the equivalence
formula for mass and energy, saw that the Lorentz contraction implied the relativity of frames of reference, and realized that inertial motion having no preferential frame further
implied a change to the laws of gravity, among many more
accomplishments. The achievements of these two great scientists, however, stand so high that even to the scientific eliteof today their accomplishments appear incredible. What historical narratives often fail to capture, however, is that theseaccomplishments are built upon the prior work of other (often forgotten) scientists, and that even the greatest achievements of the scientific elite merely move the timeline of science forward a little. If Newton had succumbed to sickness
as a child, then it is difficult to imagine that the science of
today would be much retarded by the change. His discoveries would have remained hidden by Nature for perhaps a
few decades, but would have been discovered nevertheless.
Almost nothing in science has the sense of being without adirect antecedent.
The two characteristics that we generally associate mostwith great scientists are their productivity for creating usefulideas and the profundity of those ideas. Two additional characteristics that go largely unmentioned, however, is theiroutstanding ability to communicate, and that many of them
have been lucky. While both of these latter characteristics are
not what we usually associate with scientific greatness, they
are nevertheless critical for achieving the highest status andrecognition.
Researchers with greater skill in writing and speaking have a huge advantage over their less fluent peers ingarnering recognition for their work. Clear explanations
and proper emphasis makes it easier for others to understand new ideas. Moreover, announcing a discovery to theright people, and in the right way, brings rapid acceptance,
whereas publishing a result in turgid prose within an obscure journal is little better than dropping the results intoa trash bin. Elite scientists do a recognizably better job at1

3

communicating their work. Richard Feynman is widely respected as much for his non-technical writing and his teaching as for his scientific discoveries. For what is probably his
most famous discovery — the Feynman diagrams — Feynman spent years talking to people, explaining, and basicallyproselytizing to get his idea recognized and understood. [[3],p.29] Einstein’s scientific papers are written with an unrivalled crystalline clarity and an apparent effortlessness thatmakes his ideas easy to follow. These communication skills
are not just that of narrating a theory but rather of framing
a story in which the theory is a part, in order to shape ourunderstanding of its physical significance and importance.

The great man theory

The “great man theory” is an idea that has been aroundthroughout the ages but was promulgated in the 19th century and still influences historical writing and thinking today. Its central thesis is that there are men and womenwhose personal abilities (intelligence, charisma, etc.) are
so far above the ordinary that they have a widespread andlasting influence over events. Accepting the great man theory, however, implies that one must also take seriously theidea that there could also be a corresponding “negative greatman”. This does not mean an insignificant man, but rather
someone who is highly influential in a negative way, by impeding progress.[8] There are more than a few physicists
who view Niels Bohr’s influence on quantum mechanics inthis vein.[9, 10] In the late 19th century, an unsympathetic
view may put Lord Kelvin’s evangelizing for the vortex atom
theory, despite its lack of empirical validation, in a similar
category. These are physics’ equivalent of the incompetentmonarchs in Europe’s early modern period — kings andqueens whose decisions were more ruinous to their kingdoms than no decision at all.
Although influential, the “great man” concept is notwithout a countertheory. The obverse does not have a catchy
name, but can be called the social constructivist theory —that influential figures are the products of their environments and societies, so that their success is contingent on thesocial conditions around them. In other words, they were
lucky, and they had help. The biographies of most scientists can be re-framed in this context — that it is by theirteachers and by the friendship of their peers that great scientists learned to focus their thoughts and achieve new insights. This perspective has influenced modern historiography to shift narratives away from individual leaders to social
frameworks that describe the wider forces that shape history
beyond those of single individuals. Thus, modern historical writing emphasizes that Alexander the Great would nothave achieved such a wide influence over history if his father had not produced an army for him that was primed
for conquest. Likewise, Caesar had the stolid Roman legions, Napoleon the élan of revolutionary France’s soldiery.
In each case, these leaders would not have achieved “greatness” without their situation being prepared for them. They
were not just unusually smart, they were also lucky. Similarly, some scientists arrive at the scene with just the right
set of ideas to achieve impressive results.
Conflicting opinions about these two theories drives
much discussion, but while the great man and the social constructivist theories are often phrased as being incompatible
with one another, the truth clearly lies somewhere between.
Men and women of outstanding genius clearly exist, but it isalso clear that genius alone is not enough to lead them to extraordinary achievements. For that, they need luck and thehelp of their peers.

The second little-acknowledged characteristic of thegreat scientists is that they were generally lucky.[4] This may
take the form of being born into a family of means for supporting their higher education, but also of having parents
who foster scientific thinking from an early age. Later intheir careers, luck may take the form of having just the righttiming, of selecting just the right mentor, or of choosing justthe right research project, to achieve results of fundamental importance.[5, 6] Physicists Lawrence Bragg and Brian
Josephson have their names attached to discoveries madewhile in their early 20s, while pursuing research under theguidance of a senior scientist. While these examples may
seem to indicate a lucky choice of direction for research,
many people feel that even if a great scientist had not madethe specific discoveries for which he or she later became famous, he or she would have worked on something else andhave found something important there instead. That is, they
feel that their greatness is robust. But if we accept that luck
is at least partly a factor, and that many of the great scientists are really only known for one great accomplishment,
then the robustness of their greatness feels less convincing.
Thomas Bayes, for example, was respected by his peers but
is now known only for his work on developing one equation,and that published posthumously, with the rest of his life’s
work having no significant influence on modern science.
The advantages of luck and skillful communication,
while not belonging to the technical part of scientists’ discoveries, thus play a critical role in immortalizing many scientists’ work and in deciding who receives the primary recognition for the achievement. Whether fair or not, scientists
hampered by poor luck and poor communication skills areoften left unrecognized.[7] So much of scientific historical
writing, including that written by scientists themselves, ignores these factors and builds a mythology founded on its
heroes. This mythologizing, however, obscures the truththat the great scientific advancements were shaped by luck
and writing skill, and were assisted by the efforts of forgotten researchers. The scientific elite themselves all began
their careers in this category, as unrecognized researchers
slowly working their way up through the hierarchy with asuccession of accomplishments. Thus, there are many scientists who may be boosted into the ranks of the great withthe award of a great prize, or the making of a single important new discovery. These often require being lucky,
or being friendly with the right people. Without the extra
lift provided by these symbols of recognition, many scientists would be categorized as “merely successful” rather thangreat. Max Planck, for example, was highly regarded among
his peers around the end of the 19th century, but it is hard
to believe that his name would be much recognized today if
he had not decided to attack the problem of blackbody radiation. Although his solution is testament to his brilliance,
we can also recognize in it a strong element of chance — thetimeliness of his choice and of his being so well prepared in
the theoretical tools needed to find the quantum solution.

4

Scientific discoveries as the tip of a pyramidof achievements

Since most scientists are ignored by history, should we consider them just as worker-ants and an unfortunate waste ofresources? This kind of condescending perspective follows
the natural hierarchy in which many scientists prefer to view
scientific endeavors, placing theoretical work at the pinnacle, experimental work filling out the middle, engineering at
the bottom, and, one supposes, the nonscientific population
trudging through the dirty unlit caverns underpinning thewhole structure. This view persists even though engineer2

mer (1937) all contributed towards advancing the theory andmaking it into the useful tool so widely applied today.[12]The decision to attach Mie’s name to the overall constructthus occurred long after the publication, by selecting his paper as the first to frame the problem in a way suited to computer calculation.
A second example of scientific teamwork is the Kalmanfilter — a signal processing technique named for Rudolf E.
Kálmán, though Peter Swerling simultaneously developed asimilar algorithm. Stanley Schmidt is generally credited with
developing the first implementation of a Kalman filter. He —or a member of his team of engineers — made the importantpractical realization that the filter could be divided into two
distinct parts, with one part for time periods between sensor
outputs and another part for incorporating measurements,
dramatically improving its utility. Later he and his groupalso realized that modifying the problem to linearize about
the estimated state rather than the current state further improves performance, and is now referred to as the “extended
Kalman filter”.[15] James Potter next found a way to improve the algorithm’s numerical stability through the procedure now known as square-root filtering. Finally, Richard S.
Bucy also contributed to the theory, showing how to convert
its use for continuous functions.[16] Thus, while Kalman’s
initial concept was the starting point, it required a team ofscientists to adapt it and improve upon it in order for it tobecome the important tool that it is today.
These are two important discoveries where the name attached to them did only a secondary part of the effort, andsequence of smaller discoveries by a team of researchers built
upon the initial theoretical concept to make it both morepractical and more general. In this way, discoveries which
immortalize a scientist’s name are often derived from thework of a team, and can arise out of often-disdained technical drudgery of small improvements. Thus, it can be surprisingly difficult to appraise the quality of a scientist’s oeuvre and decide on his or her greatness until long past theirtime, and even then we find that many discoveries are misattributed to someone else.[17] Implicit in this conclusion
is that there must be many scientists who were regarded
as of the 1st rank during their lifetimes but who were later
downgraded to merely “good”. And indeed there are many,though it requires a close reading of the contemporary scientific literature to find them.

ing problems have inspired many of the greatest scientists totheir highest accomplishments.
Many discoveries exist in the gray region between thegreat and the merely useful — discoveries that have had asubstantial impact but which have not been widely recognized. One example might be that of the Fourier transform
spectrometer (FTS), which helped many fields of science totake measurements that were difficult or impossible with existing instrumentation. It also provided the first strong evidence for the advantages of computational sensing, a fieldthat has expanded greatly with the increase in computing
power over the past decades. However, since the inventionof the FTS was a collective effort by a number of individuals, most of whom were not attention-seeking, no single
researcher’s name has become associated with it, and thismay contribute to its unexpected obscurity. In modern science, most scientific achievements are the product of collective effort by many scientists that accumulate into a single recognized fundamental advance. Once the achievement
is clearly demonstrated and acknowledged, the backgroundwork needed to get there is no longer useful and disappears
from memory. Planck’s great discovery of the equation forblackbody radiation built on the empirical law discoveredby Wilhelm Wien, a less-known but still prominent physicist,
who himself built his ideas on the work of the little-known
English physicist George Searle.[11] In this way, progress inscience is more an accumulation of small efforts than a set of
distinct “heroic” leaps in our understanding.
Further weakening the wall separating the great from therank-and-file, we can examine two examples of great innovations which made an individual researcher famous, butwhich were actually the cumulative effort of a team of scientists and engineers, most members of which are little remembered. The first example is Mie scattering, a theory thatis used throughout physics for calculating the distributionof light scattered from spherically symmetric particles larger
than the light wavelength, such as for water droplets in air.
The German mathematician Alfred Clebsch (1861) was thefirst to deal with this problem, and worked out much ofits mathematical details, but these were not widely recognized as important at the time. The Danish theorist Ludvig
Lorenz (1890) later published a monumental memoir on thesubject, building on the work of Clebsch, but published in alittle-read journal and died soon afterwards, so that his work
never received attention.[12] The next 50 years were to see aseries of famous names independently produce the results
which can be found in Lorenz’ long manuscript. The next
to deal with the subject were J. W. Nicholson (1906), Peter
Debye (1908), and Gustav Mie (1908) himself. Rather thanderiving a series of new fundamental results, Mie’s innovation was primarily to express the equations in a form moresuitable to numerical calculations, and to assume that the
optical constants of bulk metal materials can be used to represent optical properties of metal nanoparticles as well.[13]This latter assumption allowed him to apply the theory to
an example of contemporary interest: the colors producedby colloids of gold particles, but it was the former innovation that was crucial for associating his name with the theory. In fact, Mie’s paper was not recognized as foundationalby the scientific community at the time, since its application
required prodigious calculations. Even Mie himself did notseem to give it much weight, and it was only with the adventof computers in the 1950s that the computations could bemade practical.[14] By that time, the theory had been refinedby another series of researchers that worked to generalize
the approach so that it could be applied to a wider realm of
scattering problems: T. J. I’A. Bromwich (1920), G. N. Watson(1918), F. P. White (1922), B. van der Pol (1937), and H. Brem-5

Deep discoveries and shallow drudgery

Much of the conversation among scientists centers aroundpraise for great achievements and indirectly derogates ordinary science as drudgery. Yet in our daily lives as scientists, even for the greatest among us, it is in combating theseordinary tasks that we spend most of our time. And it isoften this drudgery that fuels the insights needed to pushfurther into the unknown. Tycho Brahe’s time-consuming
toil of building precision astronomical data was necessary
for Johannes Kepler to found a new theory of planetary orbits. Kepler himself condemned as a “treadmill of mathematical calculations” the laborious work needed to prove hismost famous results, while constantly desiring to return tohis “philosophical speculations”.[18] Yet it is for the insights
derived from his tedious labors that he is still known today,
while his philosophical speculations are generally regarded
as uninteresting. All research involves tedium. While someof the tedium leads nowhere much, some of it also leads toimportant results, and it is only in hindsight that we can see
the difference.
From the examples of achievements given lesser recogni3

6tion, we can see that what scientists regard as the defining
difference between the great and the merely good is profundity much more than productivity. A productive engineer
is treated with a degree of grudging respect, but little morethan that, while a profound new theory is treated with a degree of awe. The following quote from a theoretical physicist
is a typical outgrowth of this perspective: [19]Why focus on priority?

After the long look into what makes an elite and what makes
an ordinary scientist, a reader may come to feel that theconstant focus on priority for discoveries seems senseless.
Whether Newton or Leibniz, or for that matter some unknown John Smith, invented calculus has no real bearing
on the working of science today. Establishing priority andcelebrating discovery may be the currency by which scientists are rewarded, but if someone else independently discovered the same thing a year later, then it is hard to exalt
the original advance as fundamental and unique.[?] Instead,such discoveries have the feeling of being inevitable in thelong run, so that the timing of the original discovery is contingent on a lucky confluence of conditions. Modern sciencein particular is pervaded with these discoveries. Scientificpublications these days are all reports of small advances, not
big leaps, and build heavily upon the prior work of otherresearchers, so that the interconnectedness of the whole process often makes it difficult to attribute primacy to a single
individual or a small group.
Viewing the sociology of science from a distance inthis way, it becomes hard to take seriously the innumerable squabbles over priority, especially when the antagonists
protest their dedication to the purity of scientific pursuit andindifference towards compensation. Thankfully, not everyone joins in the bickering. Peter Fellgett, after looking backover his career, reflected that [21]Many people can solve a problem. But the [important] skill is to come up with ... the right problems. [Problems] that are not going to be only
incremental progress but [which] really could
make a difference. ...That is what distinguishes
great scientists from good scientists — the ability
to [see] what is really worth working on.
Many researchers have been given similar advice. In a series of interviews with Nobel laureates, Robert Merton concluded that “Almost to a man [Nobel laureates have in interviews laid] great emphasis on the importance of problemfinding, not only problem-solving. They [emphasize theneed to seize] upon problems that are of fundamental importance [in contrast to the pedestrian work involving] endless detail or work just to improve accuracy....”[20] And yet
Nobelists have also been notoriously bad at doing this. Constant striving for profundity can often lead to failure, stiflingprogress and turning a scientist’s attention away from what
is curious to what is “deep”. This trap has caught many
physicists attracted by their ambitions, ignoring the fact thatlittle problems sometimes turn out to be important piecesof bigger problems, and which by luck may turn out to bepieces of deep puzzles.
This behavior of working with an eye towards achieving recognition also underlies the vexing behavior of modern science where researchers hop from one trendy research
topic to another, as the pulse of the crowd changes fromyear to year. Young researchers seeking the acclaim of theirpeers are forced to focus on creating a research program thatwill be influential rather than what is scientifically interesting. While it is hard to disagree that this is good advice fora successful career in modern science, it illustrates the degree to which science has become a profession rather than an
avocation. Using the hierarchical language reflexively usedby many physicists, perhaps we’re all engineers now, eventhose who vehemently protest otherwise.
Despite our yearning for success on deep problems, scientific work involves much tedium and care towards wearisome detail, so that our daily lives contrast with our ambitious goals. However, if see this “problem of greatness” inthe eye that we view our own publications, then much of
the tension between ambition and reality falls away. Scientific publications show a polished version of actual events,
displaying the successes and only rarely the failures encountered to reach the conclusions. While this polishing process
has been maligned by many as a kind of dissembling, we
can also recognize it as being inevitable. Anyone who hasread through another person’s scientific journals likely understands that there is little that is more tedious and uninteresting. While reading we have to suppress the constant urge
to flip through the pages and get to the conclusion. This is exactly what the polished publication does for us. In the sameway, when a scientific advance achieves recognition for being important, the polished version of it is what survives inpeoples minds, and the messy work of getting there is forgotten as uninteresting. But that is a different thing from sayingthat it is unimportant; the tedium is necessary to build thefinal result. We may forget the little achievements needed to
get there, but the result would have been impossible without
them.

the greatest pleasure ... comes from recalling
how, when we were all striving to create something new, there were from time to time inevitably disagreements and tensions, yet when
we meet today these have been purged by timeand experience and ... [we see how the] ideas
originating from each of us were plied and woven into ... the tapestry of human achievement.
Thus, many scientists do see these quarrels over priority as
unseemly, and have shown ambivalence towards pushingpriority on their own discoveries. Outright dismissing ofpriority may seem an option, but is not one that the scientific community has been willing to accept as it disaffirms thevalue of originality and promotes wasteful repetition. Thistension between insisting on valuing priority versus recognizing its unseemliness forces on each individual a difficult
choice over how to deal with the conflicting norms.[22]7Conclusion

For someone who focuses on immortalizing his or her
achievements into the history of science, failing to achieve
greatness is a problem of unfulfilled ambition for personal
gain. However, for a scientist who learns to focus instead on
the joy of learning and discovery, and leave the disputes overpriority to others, then the labor is its own reward. For those
who adhere to the latter view, the annual outcry over theawarding of the Nobel prize is a pointless waste. Whethera scientist is widely recognized enough to be awarded sucha high-profile prize should not be a reflection on whether
or not their work is valuable. Peter Fellgett, in response tohearing one such complaint, replied that “It may be true thatsome laboratories make the ‘pursuit of Nobel prizes [as] theultimate aim’. If so, the more fools they [are].... One expects scientists to have something better to do than to display the envy of socialites denied admittance to an exclusive
club.”[23]In modern science, the faster pace of communicationmeans that the piecemeal advances of science are becoming
4steadily smaller and more numerous. Scientific publications
exhibit smaller research advances than before, and the work
is increasingly distributed among team members than a solitary effort. As a result, the “greats” of today have less leisure
to let their theories mature before deciding to publish. There
are more mistakes, more partial results, more knitting of results among multiple researchers. The time of great discoveries by individuals has largely passed. And perhaps thescientists left unrecognized are more important than sciencegenerally credits us to be.

10. T. Norsen, Foundations of Quantum Mechanics: An Exploration of
the Physical Meaning of Quantum Theory (Springer, 2017).
11. W. Wien, “Über die Möglichkeit einer elektromagnetischen Begründung der Mechanik [On the Possibility of an Electromagnetic Foundation of Mechanics],” Annalen der Physik 310,
501–513 (1900).
12. N. A. Logan, “Survey of some early studies of the scattering ofplane waves by a sphere,” Proc. of the IEEE 53, 773–785 (1965).
13. G. Mie, “Beiträge zur Optik trüber Medien, speziell kolloidaler
Metallösungen" [Contributions to the optics of turbid media,
particularly of colloidal metal solutions],” Annalen der Physik
330, 377–445 (1908).
14. H. Horvath, “Gustav Mie and the scattering and absorption oflight by particles: historic developments and basics,” J. Quant.
Spect. Rad. Trans. 110, 787–799 (2009).
15. M. S. Grewal and A. P. Andrews, “Applications of Kalman filtering in aerospace 1960 to the present,” IEEE Control Systems
Mag. 30, 69–78 (2010).
16. T. Kailath, “A view of three decades of linear filtering theory,”
IEEE Trans. Info. Theory 20, 146–181 (1974).
17. J. D. Jackson, “Examples of the zeroth theorem of the history ofscience,” Am. J. Phys. 76, 704–719 (2008).
18. D. A. D. Liscia, “Johannes Kepler,” in The Stanford Encyclopediaof Philosophy, Summer 2018 ed., E. N. Zalta, ed., ??? (???, 2018).
19. N. Rao and S. Das, “Good scientists solve problems,but great scientists know what’s worth solving” (2015).
(url: thewire.in/science/good-scientists-solve-problemsbut-great-scientists-know-whats-worth-solving)
20. R. K. Merton, “The Matthew effect in science: the reward andcommunication systems of science are considered,” Science 159,
56–62 (1968).
21. P. B. Fellgett, “Three concepts make a million points,” Infrared
Physics 24, 95–98 (1984).
22. R. K. Merton, “Priorities in scientific discovery: a chapter in thesociology of science,” Amer. Soc. Rev. 22, 635–660 (1957).
23. P. B. Fellgett, “The reward system,” Nature 255, 366 (1975).

References
1.

2.

3.
4.

5.
6.
7.

8.

9.

Richard P. Feynman, Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from theBeaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman (Basic Books,
2008).
E. Johnson, “The perils of being Paul Ehrenfest, a forgotten physicist and peerless mentor” (2019). (url:
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/paul-ehrenfestforgotten-physicist/)
L. Mlodinow, Feynman’s Rainbow (Vintage, 2011).
A. Pluchino, A. E. Biondo, and A. Rapisarda, “Talent versus
luck: the role of randomness in success and failure,” Adv. Complex Sys. 21, 1850014–1850044 (2018).
H. Zuckerman, Scientific Elite: Nobel laureates in the United States(Transaction Publishers, 1996).
I. Giaever, “I am the Smartest Man I Know”: A Nobel Laureate’s
Difficult Journey (World Scientific, 2017).
O. A. A. S. Nichols, “Soleillet’s formalism of coherence and partial polarization in 2D and 3D: application to fluorescence polarimetry,” J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 35, 1254–1260 (2018).
A. O. Scott, “‘Vice’ review: Dick Cheney and the negative great
man theory of history” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/
movies/vice-review.html.
J. S. Bell, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (Cambridge University Press, 1993).

5