I had one in my hands ...
Yesterday I was a tour guide for a bunch of high school math teachers at work, and an awesome thing happened right at the beginning. The teachers had just arrived (I think from the airport) and Leon Lederman (nobel prize winning physicist, 1988) was supposed to be there to talk to them. But he couldn't make it, I think because of medical reasons, so one of the event organizers was left with the unenviable position of giving an introductory speech in a Nobel Laureate's place.
So the lady stands up in front of the teachers and starts telling a story about the math education her father got when he was growing up. Apparently after second grade, he worked through three years of math books during the summer and entered third grade in the sixth graders' class. The sixth grade math teacher saw how gifted he was, and allowed him to work through problems on his own in the back of the room, so that by the end of the year he was doing high school mathematics (going into his fourth grade). After her father went on to make great advances in physics, he wrote a letter back to this math teacher thanking him for getting him excited about math and starting him down the road to success.
It turns out that "while Dr. Lederman has one Nobel Prize, I actually have two in my pockets right now". Apparently, her father was a guy named John Bardeen, who won two Nobel Prizes, one for the transistor in 1956, and another for coming up with the theory of superconductivity in 1972. The lady pulled the Nobel Prize medals out of her pockets and passed them around the group. I actually held one in my hands for about ten seconds (wish I knew which one). It was an amazing thing.
So the lady stands up in front of the teachers and starts telling a story about the math education her father got when he was growing up. Apparently after second grade, he worked through three years of math books during the summer and entered third grade in the sixth graders' class. The sixth grade math teacher saw how gifted he was, and allowed him to work through problems on his own in the back of the room, so that by the end of the year he was doing high school mathematics (going into his fourth grade). After her father went on to make great advances in physics, he wrote a letter back to this math teacher thanking him for getting him excited about math and starting him down the road to success.
It turns out that "while Dr. Lederman has one Nobel Prize, I actually have two in my pockets right now". Apparently, her father was a guy named John Bardeen, who won two Nobel Prizes, one for the transistor in 1956, and another for coming up with the theory of superconductivity in 1972. The lady pulled the Nobel Prize medals out of her pockets and passed them around the group. I actually held one in my hands for about ten seconds (wish I knew which one). It was an amazing thing.