Ivar Giaever Is the Smartest Person He Knows

A worthwhile read : "I Am the Smartest Man I Know" by the Norwegian Nobel Laureate in Physics - Ivar Giaever. His accomplishment - an experiment he did for fun that confirmed the BCS theory of superconductivity - when he was all of 30 years old!

Some useful historical tidbits and good advice too.

Don't work in groups when you're learning - you'll end up copying the work of the smartest person. 

After Josephson's first encounter with Bardeen and Bardeen discounted all of BJ's theories, Brian : "Is this the Bardeen of the BCS theory?" [yes] "He's not that smart after all." At another conference, Bardeen, giving the keynote, said : "It's lovely outside. I hope everyone will join us for a round of golf." (not [sic])

The Norwegian settlement of Iceland :

If you ran into trouble with the law in Norway at that time, the penalty was to be declared “fredlos” (no peace) which meant that anybody could kill you with no penalty. For these people it was better to take their chances and settle in Iceland. (So Norwegians can pick up Icelandic relatively easily)

English Vs German engineering : 

After a week, the army discovered that I had been educated as a mechanical engineer and assigned me to the kitchen brigade where people with small physical handicaps had been put. I, however, had to do technical work. My first job was to install telephone exchangers in small vans. They had some German ones which were wonderfully designed. Everything was straight and orderly. Then they had some English ones which had crooked, bent metal bars, etc., but they worked better than the beautiful German ones. 

General Electric's A, B and C Courses : 

On the B course, you would work alongside a senior person for 4-6 months and then switch to work with a new senior colleague. When I came to the office, they showed me a list of people and told me who was who and who would be difficult to work for. Being brash, I picked the most difficult person, Dr. Hillel Poritsky, a famous Hungarian mathematician. I picked him because I reasoned that if he was difficult to work for, I would learn more, which I did. 

The Most Knowledgeable Person I Have Ever Met

I was particularly surprised that Charlie knew more about Norwegian culture than I will ever acquire; Ibsen's plays, Munch's paintings or Grieg's music., he knew it all. I have never been very culturally oriented, but after all, I had spent my first 25 years in Norway! 

English Scientists Compared to Americans

Cambridge of course is a very famous university, but I found it rather poor when it came to equipment. (remember reading in one book, Americans visited Cambridge and were unimpressed by the equipment and Rutherford said : "Yes. So you have to think"). I had wanted to continue to do some tunneling experiments, but decided against it. The reason was that the equipment I had access to at GE was much better than at Cambridge so I just helped various people in the laboratory. This was the time when people at Cambridge "tunneled" through normal metal between two superconductors. I never believed those experiments, but I was in the minority. I rapidly discovered that at scientific discussions in Cambridge, people did not seem to care about what was correct or not; the point was to win the argument, and I am good at that. There is really a fundamental difference between scientists in USA and England. When an American comes into your office he normally starts with something like this : "I have worked my ass off on this problem and have not gotten very far, but I have made some progress that last few months that I would like to talk to you about." When an English guy comes in he says something like this : "When I walked in this morning I had an idea that I would like to discuss with you.": Then he would start to write on the blackboard and you would know he had been working on the problem for weeks. I think the difference boils down to the fact that Americans take great pride in working hard while the English are more concerned with appearing very smart!

Classic Quotes :

Actually, we never went hang gliding again because we learned that our teacher had a glider accident and died; so even though we felt hang gliding was easy to learn; it is also very dangerous.

In India, in general, there is a lot of garbage everywhere, yet somehow, the residents don't notice it. 

Typos :

Please do not wrwite [sic] and tell me.. ... Brian Pippard

Wer? Das ist Narayan Karra - was a student at RPI when Ivar and his buddy started Applied Biophysics. Looking at the career trajectory, it looks like AllianceBernstein had a layoff in 2009 during the financial crisis and Nars was able to fill a resume hole by going back to the Giaever lab at AP. The book says he was really good for AP and he trained a replacement before he left (while still a student). Now why Ivar can't spell his name right (or was it the typist who had to read IG's handwriting?) I don't k.