Parque Provincial Aconcagua - Mendoza, ArgentinaOur Passports

Argentine Visa

Really difficult

But We are here

MPA – ICC family group of Chinese Students

Yanchuan Cai Qi Guo Liang Gao Cheng Li Jie Wang (UPenn ) (NAOC) (NAOC) (SHAO) (Durham)

Happy birthday! Carlos, Simon D. M. (CDM)

Happy the 30th/35th birthday in Astronomy!

Not sure if you still remember the titles of your first papers?

1975/1980 ~ 2010 ∆t=30/35 years ∆z ~1.e-9 , you are very very young !!

1975 1980

Apologize for our absence!

We propose to have next party in the ‘Avatar’ world ?

Avatar

(Jie’s Hometown)

张家界， China

Science comes . . .

Astrology in Astronomy

Andrew, Thanks! : - )

• Astronomy is sometimes mistaken by the public as Astrology

• Now I am taking the mistake a bit further…

• Question: Who are likely to be great physicists/astronomers?

• Astrologers might say:Great Physicists are born to be!

Yes/No? --- Let’s do some researches

• Approach: Statistics on the dates of birth (d.o.b.) of the most

influential physicists (including astronomers) in history

A full list of 38 physicists from the 100 most influential scientists in history

A list of famous 81 astronomers in history

Using wikipedia to find out each of their d.o.b.

Histogram of the months of birth of all the 38 physical scientists, from ‘100 most Most Influential Scientists’

Aug Oct Dec Feb Apr Jun Month of Birth

Carlos Frenk (Oct), Simon White (Sep) George Efstathiou(Sep)

Marc Davis (Jan)

Source of the list of scientists: ‘The Scientific 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Scientists, Past and Present’, by John Galbraith Simmons, Citadel Press (2000)

Great Physicists were more likely to be born in winter time, when the earth is closer to the sun

There is a strong peak in December!

The ‘Gang of four’ fallsclose to the peak, they make the distribution to be smoother

EinsteinLaplace

NewtonKeplerHeisenbergBraheThomsonBornEddington

Bohr LaueFaraday

Fermi Dirac

PlanckHuygens

HerschelCurieHubble

GalileiBoltzmannCopernicus

Bardeen

Hawking

Maxwell Bethe

mean

Nicolaus Copernicus (German: Nikolaus Kopernikus; Italian: Nicolò Copernico; Polish: Mikołaj Kopernik; in his youth, Niclas Koppernigk;[1] 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543)Tycho Brahe (Danish pronunciation: [tˢyɡo ˈbʁɑːɑ]) About this sound listen (help·info) (14 December 1546 – 24 October 1601)Galileo Galilei (Italian pronunciation: [ɡaliˈlɛːo ɡaliˈlɛi]; 15 February 1564[4] – 8 January 1642),Johannes Kepler (German pronunciation: [ˈkɛplɐ]; December 27, 1571 – November 15, 1630)John Babtist Riccioli (April 17th in the year 1598, died in the 1671)Giovanni Domenico Cassini (June 8, 1625 – September 14, 1712) Christiaan Huygens, FRS (English pronunciation: /ˈhaɪɡənz/, [ˈɦœyɣə(n)s] ( listen); 14 April 1629 – 8 July 1695)Sir Isaac Newton PRS (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1727)Edmond Halley FRS (/ˈɛdmənd ˈhæli/;[1][2] 8 November 1656 – 14 January 1742)Charles Messier (26 June 1730 – 12 April 1817) Joseph-Louis Lagrange (25 January 1736 – 10 April 1813)Sir Frederick William Herschel,[1] KH, FRS, German: Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel (15 November 1738 – 25 August 1822) Giuseppe Piazzi (July 16, 1746 – July 22, 1826) Johann Elert Bode (January 19, 1747 – November 23, 1826) Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers (October 11, 1758 – March 2, 1840) Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (22 July 1784 – 17 March 1846) Joseph von Fraunhofer (6 March 1787 – 7 June 1826) Johann Franz Encke (23 September 1791 – 26 August 1865) Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve (Russian: Vasily Yakovlevich Struve) (April 15, 1793 – November 23, 1864 (Julian calendar: November 11))Wilhelm Wolff Beer (4 January 1797 – 27 March 1850) Thomas James Alan Henderson (28 December 1798 – 23 November 1844)William Lassell FRS (18 June 1799 – 5 October 1880) Sir George Biddell Airy PRS KCB (27 July 1801 – 2 January 1892) Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier (French pronunciation: [yʁb ʒ ʒɔzɛf lə vɛʁje]) (11 March 1811 – 23 ɛ̃ ɑ̃September 1877)Johann Gottfried Galle (9 June 1812 – 10 July 1910) Anders Jonas Ångström [ˈanˌdəʂ ˈjuːˌnas ˈɔŋˌstrøm] (13 August 1814, Lögdö, – 21 June 1874)Daniel Kirkwood (September 27, 1814 - June 11, 1895) Sir William Huggins, OM, KCB, FRS (7 February 1824 – 12 May 1910) Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer, FRS (17 May 1836 – 16 August 1920),Henry Draper (March 7, 1837 – November 20, 1882) Edward Charles Pickering (July 19, 1846–February 3, 1919) Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn, (January 19, 1851, Barneveld, Gelderland – June 18, 1922)Edward Emerson Barnard (December 16, 1857 – February 6, 1923)Annie Jump Cannon (December 11, 1863 – April 13, 1941)Maximilian Franz Joseph Cornelius Wolf (June 21, 1863 – October 3, 1932) George Ellery Hale (June 29, 1868 – February 21, 1938) Henrietta Swan Leavitt (July 4, 1868 – December 12, 1921) Willem de Sitter (6 May 1872 – 20 November 1934) Ejnar Hertzsprung (8 October 1873 – 21 October 1967) Karl Schwarzschild (October 9, 1873 – May 11, 1916) Kiyotsugu Hirayama ( 平山 清次 , Hirayama Kiyotsugu?, October 13, 1874 - April 8, 1943)Vesto Melvin Slipher (November 11, 1875 – November 8, 1969) Walter Sydney Adams (December 20, 1876 – May 11, 1956) Henry Norris Russell (October 25, 1877 – February 18, 1957) Bernhard Woldemar Schmidt (March 30, 1879 – December 1, 1935)

Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, OM, FRS (28 December 1882 – 22 November 1944)Harlow Shapley (November 2, 1885 – October 20, 1972) Edwin Powell Hubble (November 20, 1889 – September 28, 1953)Wilhelm Heinrich Walter Baade (March 24, 1893 – June 25, 1960) Monsignor Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître (About this sound lemaitre.ogg (help·info) 17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) Rudolph Minkowski (born Rudolf Leo Bernhard Minkowski) (May 28, 1895 – January 4, 1976) Bernard Ferdinand Lyot (27 February 1897 in Paris – 2 April 1952 in Cairo) Otto Struve (August 12, 1897, Kharkov, Russian Empire – April 6, 1963, Berkeley, USA[1]) Jan Hendrik Oort (Franeker, 28 April 1900 – Leiden, 5 November 1992) Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (May 10, 1900 – December 7, 1979) George Gamow (Russian pronunciation: [ˈɡaməf]; March 4 [O.S. February 20] 1904 – August 19, 1968)Fritz Zwicky (February 14, 1898 – February 8, 1974) Karl Guthe Jansky (October 22, 1905 – February 14, 1950)Gerard Peter Kuiper (play /ˈkaɪpər/; Dutch pronunciation: [ˈkœypər]; born Gerrit Pieter Kuiper, December 7, 1905, Tuitjenhorn (Harenkarspel), Netherlands – December 24, 1973, Bruno Benedetto Rossi (April 13, 1905 – November 21, 1993) Bart Jan Bok (Hoorn, 28 April 1906 – Tucson, 5 August 1983) Clyde William Tombaugh (February 4, 1906 – January 17, 1997) Fred Lawrence Whipple (November 5, 1906–August 30, 2004) Viktor Hambardzumyan (Armenian: , 18 September [O.S. 5 September] Վիկտոր Համբարձումյան1908, Tbilisi – August 12, 1996,Grote Reber (December 22, 1911 – December 20, 2002) Carl Keenan Seyfert (February 11, 1911, Cleveland, Ohio – June 13, 1960, Nashville, Tennessee)John Archibald Wheeler (July 9, 1911 – April 13, 2008) Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker (June 28, 1912 – 28 April 2007)James Alfred Van Allen (September 7, 1914–August 9, 2006) Sir Fred Hoyle FRS (24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001)[1]Robert Henry Dicke (May 6, 1916 – March 4, 1997) Edwin Ernest Salpeter (3 December 1924, Vienna – 26 November 2008,[1][2] Ithaca, New York) Chushiro Hayashi ( 林 忠四郎 , Hayashi Chūshirō?, July 25, 1920 – February 28, 2010)Carl Edward Sagan (English pronunciation: /ˈseɪɡən/) (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996)

Nobel Prize winners:Hannes Olof Gösta Alfvén (born 30 May 1908 in Norrköping, Sweden; died 2 April 1995 in Djursholm, Sweden) Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, FRS (Tamil: சந்திரசேசகரவெங்கடராமன்) (7 November 1888 – 21 November 1970) William Alfred "Willy" Fowler (August 9, 1911 – March 14, 1995) Antony Hewish FRS (born Fowey, Cornwall, 11 May 1924)Arno Allan Penzias (born 26 April 1933)Robert Woodrow Wilson (born January 10, 1936) Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr. (born March 29, 1941) Russell Alan Hulse (born November 28, 1950)

list of 81 Astronomers in history

Histogram of the months of birth of 81 influential astronomers in history

Greatest astronomers were more likely to be born in winter

Not-so-great astronomers were born more randomly through the year

Born in summer is not bad, one might be less likely to be the greatest, but still possible to be not-so-great.

Aug Oct Dec Feb Apr Jun Month of Birth

Source of the list of astronomers in history from D. Mark Manley, Kent State University (http://cnr2.kent.edu/~manley/astronomers.html)

Copernicus, Galilei, Brahe Kepler, Huygens, NewtonHerschel, Eddington,Hubble

9 overlap with previous sample

Excluding overlap sample

Figure credit: Roy Murphy, Data source: 480,040 insurance policy applications made between 1981 through 1994 of a Life Insurance Company(http://www.panix.com/~murphy/bdata.txt)

How about a random sample?

Normal people are born randomly throughthe year

Not-so-great astronomers are like normal people

Year of Birth

Horse

Sheep

Monkey

Chicken

Dog PigMice

Cow

Tiger

Rabbit

DragonSnake

Histogram of the zodiacs of all the 38 physical scientists, from ‘100 most Most Influential Scientists’

Year of Birth

Horse

Sheep

Monkey

Chicken Dog

PigMice

Cow

Tiger

Rabbit

DragonSnake

Histogram of the zodiacs of 81 influential astronomers in history

Conclusions

• When the earth-sun distance is greater, the greatest physicists and astronomers were more likely to be born

• The sample is not large enough from the last 500 years, how long do we need to wait for more data?

• Careful error analysis is needed

Declaration

• This is a preliminary result based on a small sample, done within a short time. It should not bias decisions of parents who want to make child, or directors of physics institutes in hiring new people, based on their date of birth.

Thanks!

Special thanks to Julio and Andrew