车到山前必有路

AGU 会议过去了一个多月了. 现补上游记. 这次会议行程安排很忙碌, 礼拜三是最忙碌的一天,由于要站在poster前, 错过了很多很好的Talk. 碰到了很多9707ers, USTCers, CIDER的朋友, 当然还有很多大牛. 吃饭基本上是在Chinatown吃的, 同学们在一起搓饭搓了好几次. 待续. 先干活去了. 接着写.......................................... 周一晚上, 9707ers去岭南小馆腐败, 酒足饭饱之余还照了相. 小倪家的闺女很可爱, 很乖. 周三晚上, 好像还去湖南人家腐败了一次. 周四早上, 几大帅哥靓女陪远道而来专门来看我们的YW一起去了渔人码头. 那天, 风很大, 也很冷, 坐上Cable Car穿梭在窄窄的道路, 爬过一个山坡, 来到了太平洋边上. 真是别有一番风味. 在码头逗留了一段时间, 也去看了这里最有名的一群海豹. 他们懒洋洋地躺着晒太阳, 丝毫不理我们这些人类Fans. 投了几个币用望远镜看海对面的景色 好像还合了不少影. 路过几个海边的礼品店, 还有卖多色海盐的地方, 据说, 这个多色海盐还有浪漫故事.回来还是做cable car, 路过Chinatown去吃了早茶. 很好吃. 周四晚上, 大家继续去Chinatown的湖南人家腐败. 嗯, 老了很多细节记不住了, 倒是几次吃饭还记忆犹新. 我是想写得抒情一点, 写实一点, 不流水账一点, 可是, 家奴文字的能力已经变得生疏了. 看来以后要多多更新博客. 好了, 给大家拜个年!

每年的九月总是最忙的，deadline还是deadline。不知道今年在旧金山能够看到很多同学。。。。

时间过得真快呀，又是一年的AGU。我的博客也可能只有AGU的时候才能长几颗草。
今年定旅馆时，由于操作失误，定到了SF机场那里，离会场很远很远，看来得坐地铁打发时间了。Priceline还不让改，失策失策。

周四晚，9707留守北美的xdjm小酌一杯如何？

抓紧时间准备Presentation了......又是一个寒冷的长夜

东风破 苏轼 

 

一盏离愁 孤单窗前自鬓头 

奄奄门后 人未走 

月圆寂寞 旧地重游 

夜半清醒泪 烛火空留 

一壶漂泊浪迹天涯难入喉 

君去后 酒暖思谁瘦 

水向东流 三春如梦向谁偷 

花开却错 谁家琵琶东风破 

岁月流离 不解时候 

仍记总角幼 

琴幽幽 人幽幽 

琵琶一曲东风破 

枫染红尘谁看透 

篱笆古道曾走 

荒烟漫草年头 

分飞后

Born: February 20, 1844 in Vienna, Austria
Died: October 5, 1906 in Duino, Austria (now Italy)

Ludwig Boltzmann's father was a taxation official. Boltzmann was awarded a doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1866 for a thesis on the kinetic theory of gases supervised by Josef Stefan. After obtaining his doctorate, he became an assistant to his teacher Josef Stefan. 

Boltzmann taught at Graz, moved to Heidelberg and then to Berlin. In these places he studied under Bunsen, Kirchhoff and Helmholtz. 

In 1869 Boltzmann was appointed to a chair of theoretical physics at Graz. He held this post for four years then, in 1873, he accepted the chair of mathematics at Vienna. He did not stay very long in any place and after three years he was back in Graz, this time in the chair of experimental physics. 

Boltzmann, at least half jokingly, used to say that the reason he moved around so much was that he was born during the dying hours of a Mardi Gras ball. It was only half joking since he did feel that his nature made him subject to rapid swings between happiness and sadness. His personality certainly had a major impact on the direction that his career took and personal relationships, where he was always very soft-hearted, played a big part. He suffered from an alternation of depressed moods with elevated, expansive or irritable moods. Indeed his physical appearance, being short and stout with curly hair, seemed to fit his personality. His fiancée called him her "sweet fat darling". 

After another three years, in 1894, Boltzmann moved back to Vienna, this time to the chair of theoretical physics which became vacant on the death of his teacher Josef Stefan. However, the following year Ernst Mach was appointed to the chair of history and philosophy of science at Vienna. Boltzmann had many scientific opponents but, to Boltzmann, Mach was more than a scientific opponent as the two were on bad personal terms. 

In 1900, because of his dislike of working with Mach, Boltzmann moved to Leipzig but here he became a colleague of his strongest scientific opponent Wilhelm Ostwald. Despite their scientific differences Boltzmann and Ostwald were on good personal terms. Despite this, depressed by scientific arguments with Ostwald which are described below Boltzmann unsuccessfully attempted suicide during his time in Leipzig. 

In 1901 Mach retired from Vienna due to ill health, and because of this Boltzmann's reason for moving from Vienna had gone. In 1902 he returned to Vienna to his chair of theoretical physics which had not been filled in the intervening period. In addition to his teaching in mathematical physics, Boltzmann was given Mach's philosophy course to teach. His philosophy lectures quickly became famous with the audience soon being too large for the biggest lecture hall available. In fact because of the fame of these lectures Boltzmann was invited to the Palace of Franz Josef. 

Boltzmann's fame is based on his invention of statistical mechanics. This he did independently of Willard Gibbs. Their theories connected the properties and behaviour of atoms and molecules with the large scale properties and behaviour of the substances of which they were the building blocks. 

Boltzmann obtained the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution in 1871, namely the average energy of motion of a molecule is the same for each direction. He was one of the first to recognise the importance of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. 

In 1884 the work of Josef Stefan was developed by Boltzmann who showed how Josef Stefan's empirical T4 law for black body radiation, formulated in 1879, could be derived from the principles of thermodynamics. 

Boltzmann worked on statistical mechanics using probability to describe how the properties of atoms determine the properties of matter. In particular his work relates to the Second Law of Thermodynamics which he derived from the principles of mechanics in the 1890s. 

The equations of Newtonian mechanics are reversible in time and Poincaré proved that if a mechanical system is in a given state it will return infinitely often to a state arbitrarily close to the given one. Zermelo deduced that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is impossible in a mechanical system. Boltzmann asserted that entropy increases almost always, rather than always. However he believed that Poincaré's result, although correct in theory, was in practice impossible to observe since the time before a system returns to near its original state was too long. 

Boltzmann's ideas were not accepted by many scientists. In 1895, at a scientific meeting in Lübeck, Wilhelm Ostwald presented a paper in which he stated:- 

The actual irreversibility of natural phenomena thus proves the existence of processes that cannot be described by mechanical equations, and with this the verdict on scientific materialism is settled. 

Sommerfeld, who was at the meeting, described the resulting battle between Ostwald and Boltzmann. Sommerfeld wrote:- 

 ... Boltzmann was seconded by Felix Klein. The battle between Boltzmann and Ostwald resembled the battle of the bull with the supple fighter. However, this time the bull was victorious ... . The arguments of Boltzmann carried the day. We, the young mathematicians of that time, were all on the side of Boltzmann... . 

Ostwald led the opposition to Boltzmann's ideas which were opposed by many European scientists, they misunderstood them, not fully grasping the statistical nature of his reasoning. However some, including Mach, thought the arguments were too violent, and this certainly appeared to be the case when Boltzmann attempted suicide while a colleague of Ostwald. 

In 1904 Boltzmann visited the World's Fair in St Louis, USA. He lectured on applied mathematics and then went on to visit Berkeley and Stanford. Unfortunately he failed to realise that the new discoveries concerning radiation that he learnt about on this visit were about to prove his theories correct. 

Boltzmann continued to defend his belief in atomic structure and in a 1905 publication Populäre Schriften he tried to explain how the physical world could be described by differential equations which represented the macroscopic view without representing the underlying atomic structure. :- 

May I be excused for saying with banality that the forest hides the trees for those who think that they disengage themselves from atomistics by the consideration of differential equations. 

Attacks on his work continued and he began to feel that his life's work was about to collapse despite his defence of his theories. Depressed and in bad health, Boltzmann committed suicide just before experiment verified his work. 

On holiday with his wife and daughter at the Bay of Duino near Trieste, he hanged himself while his wife and daughter were swimming. However the cause of his suicide may have been wrongly attributed to the lack of acceptance of his ideas. We will never know the real cause which may have been the result of mental illness causing his depression.

Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/%7Ehistory/Mathematicians/Boltzmann.html

References

Biography in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York 1970-1990). 
Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica. (WWW version) 

Books:
J Blackmore (ed.), Ludwig Boltzmann : his later life and philosophy, 1900-1906 (Dordrecht, 1995). 

E Broda, Ludwig Boltzmann: Mensch, Physiker, Philosoph (Berlin, 1955). 

E Broda and L Gray, Ludwig Boltzmann : man, physicist, philosopher (Woodbridge, 1983). 

C Jungnickel and R McCormmach, Intellectual Mastery of Nature, 2 Volumes (Chicago, 1986). 

Articles:
Boltzmann, Ludwig, 1844-1906, Physics today 45 (1992), 44-51. 

D Flamm, Ludwig Boltzmann and his influence on science, Stud. Hist. Philos. Sci. 14 (1983), 255-278. 

看了看，已经差不多一年的时间没有更新了，时间过得真快啊。
好久没有上来讲讲，也不知道讲啥。

快中秋了，说句大家中秋节快乐！

最近记性不好， 在忘记这些美好回忆之前，还是要记下这些点点滴滴把。

我的poster 在星期三， 因此前两天都在听报告。

第一天，来到了旅馆， 很久没有那种在大学宿舍里的感觉，我与Zhangzhu, Huff 竟然要同居一室，虽然很累，但是还是卧谈了很久。这里需要插播一下一件失而复得的故事。 到Thai stick 吃过饭之后，回到宿舍，翻看钱包竟然发现我的ICard 不见了，就是UIUC的University ID。想想可能是刚才结账的时候丢的。于是拉上穿着拖鞋的Zhangzhu 又去了Thai Stick. 结果是令人失望的，那里没有我的ICard. 悻然地往回走， 那个时候已经差不多10点了，大街上行人不多，但是有几个黑人站在路口徘徊， 人生地不熟的，还是有些害怕。寻思着用钱包的场景， 倒数第二次用的时候是付shuttle的钱。 回到旅馆门口，下意识地往刚才下车的地方看看，现在已经park了一辆车。 突然发现一个闪闪发光的东西，心里一阵激动， 这就是。。。。，真的是也。 那种感觉真的是好的！这就是失而复得的故事。 结论：什么东西失去才会去珍惜， 失而复得，会更加珍惜。

星期一，听完上午的报告之后，在大厅里面碰到了Junhua和Xiaoyan, 故友重逢， 真的很开心。感觉大家都变pp 或者 帅了。Zhangzhu 被夸变瘦了， 而我变胖了。大家初步约好了聚会时间。下午，碰到了Risheng和他爱人， 很幸福的一对。赫赫

星期二，久违的 fufu来了，一点都没变，还是那么瘦。他也要加入我们的"宿舍"。

星期三，我的poster， 在poster前面守了一个上午，来来去去不少人看了poster也听了我的presentation. 下午还是照例去听报告，了解一下同行们在最什么还是有好处的。晚上我们一行人去湖南人家吃饭，也合了个影。大家聊了很多，数了数在美国的同学也有十几个人了。希望来年有个更大的聚会。

星期四， 照样听报告，看poster。Junhua作了AGU的第一个报告，做的很好。俺虽然听不懂，但还是去捧场了，照了一些照片，可惜很模糊。之后，看她跟人讨论问题， 就去吃饭了。

星期五， 下午与Zhangzhu 与 Fufu 去愚人码头等附近地区玩了一下，没到金门大桥， 最后到了一个沙滩旁边坐下，任凭海风吹。喜欢这种感觉。静静的， 只听到海浪拍打海岸， 海鸥轻快地划出弧线。那里可以看到金门大桥，很壮观。我们谈风月谈理想。

星期六， 打道回府. Champaign雪下得很大，然后一行人去Chinatown Buffet 腐败。

先占个位置, 以免又偷懒不更新博客, 明天考试过后再来罗嗦几句.
----开始罗嗦了!
话说公元二零零五年的AGU Fall meeting, 江湖上早有传闻(传闻来源于 flyingbird的博客: http://flyingbird99.yculblog.com/ )九七级合肥南七科大有大约6位豪杰将在旧金山相会, 与武林同行交换和切磋研究心得.

十二月四日, BB所在的Champaign-Urbana白雪皑皑. 一番腾云驾雾之后, 到了一个叫Dallas的地方, 在这里竟然与同窗张柱偶遇. 张柱消瘦了许多, 或许是最近练功太累了. 同窗异地重逢甚是欢喜. 飞机又载着我们一行几人前往目的地--旧金山. 为了迎接即将到来的会议而且我们几个人刚好坐在一排, 我们切磋牌技热身. 时间过得飞快, 几副牌的功夫, 飞机已经到了目的地. 此时已经是傍晚时分.

刚到目的地, 发现许多貌似同仁的人群, 他们背着修炼正果-poster, 也如我们一样, 匆匆赶往 Hotel. 此时旧金山的天空中已经浸染了大会前紧张的气氛. 匆匆入住Hotel之后, 已是饥肠辘辘. 与Huff, 张柱一起到hotel附近的Thai Stick旅馆吃饭. 旅馆的一位服务生很是漂亮, 我与Huff已无心欣赏(原因不详), 但张柱的确很感兴趣, 可惜有缘相逢, 无缘相识. 当我们在周五再次去的时候, 那位服务生已不在,Zhu感觉饭菜也索然无味了.

(该吃饭了, 下回再分解)