Terry Wogan's "The Little Book of Common Sense"

 

What we call common sense in English is not very common at all. If common sense could be learned by reading books, then those who have read many books and passed many exams wouldn’t be so lacking in it. Many years ago, I used to work at an educational institution. One of my colleagues would sit in the teachers’ common room—right in front of everyone—pluck his nose hairs and then blow them away into the air. The “common sense” of the common room!! Had he not read enough books?

Carl Sagan: the great hero of space

 

By presenting science in language easily understandable to ordinary people, Carl Sagan played a leading role in making science popular — he was one of the brightest among such scientists. Time magazine described him as America’s most successful science communicator. Among world-renowned scientists, only a handful have, alongside complex and rigorous scientific research, also written about science in simple language for the public. Carl Sagan was one of those few — in addition to publishing

Tsung-Dao (T.D.) Lee

 

The Nobel Prize in Physics 1957 was awarded jointly to Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao (T.D.) Lee "for their penetrating investigation of the so-called parity laws which has led to important discoveries regarding the elementary particles."

Simon van der Meer

 

The Nobel Prize in Physics 1984 was awarded jointly to Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer "for their decisive contributions to the large project, which led to the discovery of the field particles W and Z, communicators of weak interaction."

Simon van der Meer 

Born: 24 November 1925, the Hague, the Netherlands

Enigmatic quantum theory

 

“‘There is actually no such thing as a quantum world. The quantum state exists only inside my head, something I use to do calculations. Quantum states at most describe certain information — they do not correspond very well to the real world.’”

Hearing these words, one might think a frustrated university student—annoyed by the incomprehensibility of quantum mechanics—is venting irritation. But to our astonishment, these