Scienticians

[c9]

In sci-fi, it's common to create a link with the reader's "reality" and the reality of the book, or the "in-book universe", through mentions of how a familiar thing has changed over the time/space involved. The one that comes to mind most often for me is when a character is talking about great scientists in history. They will say something like, "This is amazing! We will join the ranks of Einstein, Hawking, and D'al-Aqqwttl'a!" That last name being, of course, made up to show that there were famous scientists between the reader's time and the book's time.

To be honest, those sentences stick out like such a sore thumb to me, but I get why they're there.

I bring this up because today I encountered one of those sentences in *reality*! The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada -- home of the Blackberry! -- today is announcing the funding of a new position at the institute.

...the first of five endowed chairs Perimeter’s director, Neil Turok, wants to establish. (The others will be named after other historic discoverers, Maxwell, Bohr, Einstein and Dirac.) The stated goal is “to attract five of the most influential theoretical physicists of our time.”

I have no idea who Dirac is. Time to waste the day on Wikipedia!

Read more: Ideas You Can Take From The Bank

Learn about who this Dirac character is here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dirac

Comments

[mightycodking.livejournal.com]

D'al-Aqqwttl'a invented vibram five finger shoes, and the snuggie.