Saturday, July 23, 2005

Of Scientists And Rocket-Powered Pogo Sticks

I just realized that my questions seem to center largely around movies, music and popular culture. I really ought to slip in a question from some other genre from time to time. Here's one then, from science.

He is considered one of the foremost scientific minds of the past century. Born in 1916, he was inspired by Edison and was pleasantly surprised to discover that they were actually distant cousins. He went to MIT in 1936 to pursue graduate studies. While there, he worked with computer pioneer Vannevar Bush on his differential analyzer in his spare time. His master's thesis was published in 1937 and was hailed by Harvard University Professor Howard Gardner as "possibly the most important, and also the most famous, master's thesis of the century." (some inspiration there for me?). He went on to publish groundbreaking results in many fields, and was hailed as the proverbial father of a particular field within the engineering discipline (skipping some details here - would become obvious otherwise). He was also an expert cryptographer and was hired by Bell labs to help develop security systems. His team built an anti-aircraft system that is credited with helping Britain fight the German air invasion during WW II.

He published an early and influential paper discussing a chess-playing algorithm. He also played the then world chess champion, Mikhail Botvinnik and performed creditably, losing in 42 moves.

Despite his monumental academic contributions, he was also a wacky and fun-loving person. He invented a flame-throwing trumpet, rocket-powered Pogo sticks and frisbees, a juggling machine and a wearable computer to predict the result of playing roulette, among other things. He is also remembered at Bell Labs for riding the hallways on a unicycle while juggling three balls when he was thinking about a problem.

Identify.

Interesting fact of the day:

For "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)", Pink Floyd needed a school choir, and approached music teacher Alun Renshaw of Islington Green, around the corner from their recording studio Britannia Row. Renshaw practiced the song with students and then clandestinely brought them. Though the school received a lump sum payment of 1000 GBP, there was no contractual arrangement for royalties. Under 1996 copyright law, they became eligible, and after choir members found each other through the website Friends Reunited, they sued. Music industry professionals estimated that each student would be owed around 500 GBP.

Answer to the previous question:


Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek franchise.

Dr. Jean Piccard was the inspiration for Captain Jean-Luc Picard, while "Revenge is a dish best served cold" is a Klingon proverb. Finally, the title roughly means "boldly going where no man/person has gone before".

Cracked by Arjun (yes, Scotty was finally beamed up himself!).

@ Rare Hand Axe: I don't exactly remember whether/how the question was asked in Nihilanth.
Anyway, sorry about the unintentional repetition (first IITK archive quizzes, now this!).

1 Comments:

Blogger Rare Hand Axe said...

(fghzcrq)
Ru, iba Arhznaa? V ernyyl qba'g xabj.....

6:39 AM  

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