Physics Today is not the only publication I contribute to. I also write a column for Computing in Science & Engineering, a bimonthly magazine published jointly by the American Institute of Physics and the IEEE Computer Society. Called the Last Word, the column appears on the magazine’s final page, where it provides, like an after-dinner mint, a light, mind-tingling ending to the hearty editorial fare in the rest of the magazine. At least, that’s my goal.
Although I wrote computer code in my former life as an astronomer, I was never truly a computational scientist. In fact, I found programming frustrating because the language I used, Fortran, was so fussy. Writers and editors can choose among several synonyms. “Huge” might seem apt at first, but further reflection could favor “vast,” “immense,” “enormous,” or “colossal.” Programmers, however, must hew to a limited vocabulary and a rigid syntax.
My Last Word columns are perforce not about computational science. Rather, they explore the ways in which computers and information technology influence and crop up in everyday life and popular culture. Since 2006, when I took over the column from its founder, Francis Sullivan of the Institute for Defense Analyses, I’ve covered such topics as computer-generated poetry, the future of online advertising, infotainment systems in cars, and the manifestation of computers in James Bond movies.
Sometimes I’m asked how I find subjects to write about. The answer has two parts. The first is to always be on the lookout for ideas; the second is to be curious. That said, there are rich seams of inspiration that I habitually revisit. One of them is the Physics and Society section of the arXiv eprint repository.
When I last looked in the section, I found a paper intriguingly titled “Influence of selfish and polite behaviours on a pedestrian evacuation through a narrow exit: A quantitative characterisation.”1 In the paper’s introduction, authors Alexandre Nicolas, Sebastián Bouzat, and Marcelo Kuperman explain that previous research had looked at whether a crowd of polite people evacuates faster through a single exit than a crowd of pushy people does. Nicolas and his coauthors examined crowds that contained an adjustable mix of the polite and the pushy.
They used two empirical approaches. First, they observed 80 human volunteers as they tried to exit through an adjustable opening. Some of the volunteers were told to behave politely (stepping aside, avoiding touching). Others were told to be pushy (rushing ahead, not avoiding touching). Having derived a simple expression for evacuation speed, the authors tested it using their second method: simulating people with magnetic disks whose repulsion could be preset.
The paper begins by describing a scene in the French novel Froth on the Daydream (1947) by Boris Vian (1920–59). I had never heard of Vian, so I looked him up on Wikipedia. There, I found his occupations listed impressively as “writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor, and engineer.” Froth on the Daydream is a literary novel with a surreal plot. Among its cast of characters is a thinly disguised Jean-Paul Sartre, who, in real life, had an affair with Vian’s wife. The book did not sell well—unlike his bizarre parody of a crime novel, I Spit on Your Graves (1946), which was among the most popular of the year. Vian wrote it in 15 days.
Nicolas, Bouzat, and Kuperman are affiliated with the Centro Atómico in Bariloche, Argentina. As with Vian, I had never heard of the city, so I again turned to Wikipedia. Bariloche, I discovered, is a city of 113 000 people situated by a large lake in the foothills of the Andes. Its modern development sprang from the establishment of a small shop by German immigrant Carlos Wiederhold. More German-speaking immigrants joined him. Today, much of the city’s architecture looks Austrian, German, or Swiss.
As you might have guessed by now, my digressions into French literature and Argentine geography are here to make a point: that following one’s curiosity can be rewarding or at least stimulating. Now I know about an interesting author and a surprising city.
Scientists are also rewarded by following their curiosity. Nuclear chemist Sherwood Rowland embarked on a study of atmospheric chlorofluorocarbons, a field distant from his own, following a chance conversation on an Austrian train.2 He and his postdoc Mario Molina were awarded a share of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on the ozone hole.
