{"id":935,"date":"2013-11-27T20:51:02","date_gmt":"2013-11-27T18:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/?p=935"},"modified":"2014-09-26T05:48:41","modified_gmt":"2014-09-26T03:48:41","slug":"two-new-nobel-drawings-and-uncharted-drawings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/2013\/11\/27\/two-new-nobel-drawings-and-uncharted-drawings\/","title":{"rendered":"Two new Nobel drawings ! (… and uncharted drawings)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab<\/a> for a year now, and I wanted to get drawings from the two Nobel prizes that are still active in the lab : George Smoot<\/a> (N2006) and Saul Perlmutter<\/a> (N2011).<\/p>They both proved very difficult to find, since they are often travelling. But today, the day before Thanksgiving, I was particularly in luck : I spotted these two guys at the cafeteria !<\/p>The time I came back to my office to grab my notebook, Saul Perlmutter was gone, but George Smoot was still here !
\nI asked him to draw me a picture of the Cosmic Microwave Background<\/a>. Here’s the result :<\/p>\n

\"Smoot's<\/a><\/p>\n

Smoot’s drawing<\/p>\n<\/div>

However, Saul Perlmutter had left. But… I knew where his office was. I went there; we talked a little bit.
\nA little earlier on, my friend Josquin told me that I would rather ask him a picture of a Supernova<\/a>, probably easier to draw that the idea of universe expansion<\/a>. Saul told me that this picture wouldn’t be personal, since his mind has been infused by the commonly accepted picture, and proposed to draw me a chart of the accelerating universe :<\/p>\n

\"Perlmutter's<\/a><\/p>\n

Perlmutter’s drawing<\/p>\n<\/div>

There we go ! (You can check my collection of noble drawings here<\/a>)<\/p>Last month, I had the occasion to attend Uncharted<\/a>, advertised<\/a> as the local SXSW<\/a>, thanks to a scholarship<\/a>.<\/p><\/p>This was a great two-day event were ideas merged, with a broad range of high quality speakers (Vivek Wadwha<\/a>, Sean Gourley<\/a>, Carl Bass<\/a>, Markos Moulitsas<\/a>, etc.<\/a> )<\/p>It took me some time to realized that I could ask some of the speakers to get a drawing. I first tried to get to Wadwha, but he was very busy all the time, so I couldn’t get one.
\nHowever, I was able to get a drawing from IO9<\/a>‘s editor Annalee Newitz<\/a>, whose talk was about evolution :<\/p>\n

\"Newitz's<\/a><\/p>\n

Newitz’s drawing<\/p>\n<\/div>

I also managed to get a drawing from Lance Knobel<\/a> (!), the editor of Berkeley Side<\/a> and the organizer of Uncharted. Naturally, I aked him to draw me a chart !<\/p>\n

\"Knobel's<\/a><\/p>\n

Knobel’s drawing<\/p>\n<\/div>

Finally, at the evening party, I met Joshua Bloom<\/a>. Since we were in Berkeley having drinks, that my favorite beer at Jupiter is the Quasar and because he’s a professor of astronomy, he drew me this :<\/p>\n

\"Bloom's<\/a><\/p>\n

Bloom’s drawing<\/p>\n<\/div>

That’s not a lot a drawing, but it’s better than nothing !<\/p>Finally, I had the occasion to assist a conference<\/a> by Cleve Moler<\/a>, the founder of Matlab<\/a> and one of the main contributor of LINPACK<\/a>, a cornerstone in computational linear algebra. I’ve asked him to draw me his favorite matrix :<\/p>\n

\"Moler's<\/a><\/p>\n

Moler’s drawing<\/p>\n<\/div>

He then asked me with matrix it was. I couldn’t tell… then he typed “magic(3)” on his Matlab Command window, and that was the result :<\/p>\n

>> magic(3)<\/p>ans =<\/p>8 1 6
\n3 5 7
\n4 9 2<\/p><\/blockquote>

It is a Magic Square<\/a> of dimension 3 ! He then asked me what were the eigenvalues of this matrix. My brain being a bit rusty, I didn’t realized that the very property of this matrix is that the sum of all rows and colunm give the same number, leading to an obvious solution !<\/p>Now, I’m looking for an occasion to get a drawing from Steven Chu<\/a>, to add to my collection<\/a> !
\nThat should be manageable, since I’m staying at the lab for one more year !<\/p> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab for a year now, and I wanted to get drawings from the two Nobel prizes that are still active in the lab : George Smoot (N2006) and Saul Perlmutter (N2011).They both proved very difficult to find, since they are often travelling. But today, the day before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,26,14,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-science","category-english","category-noble-drawings","category-projects","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=935"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1167,"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions\/1167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}