Abstract
I describe aspects of my life in physics: the name I publish under, great physicists I have known, how I got into quantum foundations, what role I’ve played in it. My form is autobiographical, but my personal experience may illustrate what it was like being a physicist over the past sixty years. I offer some offbeat ways of thinking about some orthodox physics.
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N. David Mermin and Herbert Wagner, “Absence of Ferromagnetism or Antiferromagnetism in One- or Two-Dimensional Isotropic Heisenberg Models,” Physical Review Letters 17, no. 22 (1966), 1133–36; inspired by Pierre C. Hohenberg, “Existence of Long-Range Order in One and Two Dimensions,” Physical Review 158, no. 2 (1967), 383–86.
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N. David Mermin is Horace White Professor of Physics Emeritus at Cornell University.
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Mermin, N.D. Autobiographical Notes of a Physicist. Phys. Perspect. 26, 3–17 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-024-00310-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-024-00310-z
