Sidney Coleman was a physicists’ physicist. With science historian David Kaiser, we are working to gather and publish a collection of his correspondence. One of us (Diana, Sidney’s wife) is already in possession of many fascinating letters that document his life from his youth in Chicago through his education at Caltech and his long career in Harvard University’s physics department. Letters written by Sidney to colleagues and family, and those he received and chose to keep, exhibit his renowned warmth and humor and paint a portrait of a man engaged across the breadth of physics.
Over the years, Sidney said several times that he went into theoretical physics “because it makes my head feel funny.” He was probably thinking of the weirdness of quantum mechanics, the spooky fascination of black holes, the possibility of wormholes providing access to multiple universes. He convinced Diana that the universe is full of stuff that would make any thinking person’s head “feel funny.” One of the delights of reading Sidney’s papers and letters is that they embody his spirit of adventure and sense of wonder.
The collection of letters in our possession, we are certain, does not reflect the entirety of Sidney’s correspondence. Many letters, notes, and postcards, written by hand or typed, must have escaped his records. We invite readers of Physics Today to share copies or scans of any correspondence they have, from or to Sidney. Materials can be sent to Aaron Sidney Wright, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University Science Center 371, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, or by email to [email protected].
