Abstract
Around 1966 I received some “feelers” from a physicist friend (Wolfgang Eisenmenger) whom I had invited for a summer at Bell Labs, where he invented phonon spectroscopy (in collaboration with A.H. Dayem). Was I interested in a full professorship at the University of Göttingen? I was very happy at Bell Labs and didn’t know how to say “no”. So I said “yes, I am interested.” (I mean, how can you possibly say “no”—it would be impolite.)
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Notes
- 1.
According to the International Herald Tribune, in a report dated 14 February 1932, Hitler was appointed a professor of practical pedagogy at the Technical Academy of Brunswick. But Hitler’s likeness on a postage stamp of the Reichspost was once featured in a talk entitled Berühmte Geometer (Famous Geometers). Others so honored were Gauss and Eötvös, who became the prime minister of Hungary.
- 2.
Homer was convinced that the State Department was infested by communists and later, in 1957, that the beep–beep–beep of Sputnik was nothing but electronic deception—the Russians couldn’t possibly be the first in space. Of course Homer was not alone in these superstitions.
- 3.
Correspondences with Bishnu Atal and J.L. Hall during development of LPC are archived at the University Library Archives of the University of Göttingen.
- 4.
Orel (pronounced arYOL) is the Russian word for eagle. Orel was liberated by the Soviet army on August 5, 1943 (see Chap. 16 of my memoirs).
- 5.
Rome, N.Y.
- 6.
Peter was one of the pioneers of computer music. When I asked him whether he was related to the (in)famous Old Bolshevik Grigory Zinoviev, he said No, he was descended from a rich Russian family whose assets were confiscated after the 1917 revolution and that Grigory, whose birth name was Hirsch Apfelbaum, stole his family’s name.—Grigory, who was on that sealed train through Germany with Lenin, to jump-start the revolution, first sided with Leon Trotsky and later allied himself with Stalin to denounce Trotsky (1924). Grigory himself paid the ultimate price when he became the first Old Bolshevik to be executed (August 1936) in Stalin’s Great Purges. He was exonerated by Gorbachev in 1988. (For an extensive account of the murderous machinations of Stalin & Co. see Sebag Montefiori: Stalin.)
- 7.
In Orange, during a trip to the south of France, the car stalled in the middle of a busy intersection. What had gone wrong? I figured it must be the fuel filter—and the fuel filter it was.
- 8.
Apart from sightseeing in Leningrad and Moscow, we vacationed on the Black Sea (Sochi, Sukhumi) and visited Gagra and Lake Ritsa in the Caucasus (where Stalin maintained a summer home).
- 9.
Here is one of my favorite English headlines from those days (when Britain was ruled by Margret Thatcher): BRITISH LEFT WAFFLES ON FALKLANDS. Hmm, how very considerate!
- 10.
With side trips to Xian—the terra cotta army—and on the Li river with its sugar-cone mountains.
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Schroeder, M.R. (2015). Professor of Physics. In: Xiang, N., Sessler, G. (eds) Acoustics, Information, and Communication. Modern Acoustics and Signal Processing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05660-9_22
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