Robert Merton, Jr., and Myron Scholes were founding partners in the large speculative trading firm called Long-Term Capital Management, or LTCM, which I mentioned in Chapter 4. It was a collection of people with top-notch résumés, from the highest ranks of academia. They were considered...
In those days, in Mesopotamia, the region was thriving. At the end of the fourth millennium BC, the small villages we visited earlier had transformed into flourishing towns. Some of them now already had several tens of thousands of inhabitants. Technology was advancing at a...
Ξέρουμε ότι η εξίσωση του Αϊνστάιν είναι τρομακτικά σημαντική, και ότι έχει κάποια σχέση με την ατομική βόμβα. Αλλά τι σημαίνει πραγματικά για εμάς, τους απλούς ανθρώπους, στην καθημερινή μας ζωή; I know that Einstein’s equation E=mc2 is terribly important, and that it has something to do...
Information is what our world runs on: the blood and the fuel, the vital principle. It pervades the sciences from top to bottom, transforming every branch of knowledge. Information theory began as a bridge from mathematics to electrical engineering and from there to computing. What...
The touch of a human hand, the sound of a human voice, and the smells in the home are the experiences by which a baby begins learning what the new world is all about. How a parent touches and sounds to the child form the...
All these exciting discoveries of exoplanets, along with the novel ideas brought about by a fresh new generation of visionaries, are rekindling the public’s interest in space travel. Originally, what drove the space program was the Cold War and superpower rivalry. The public did not...
Take a straw poll today among scientists asking them what they think is the most successful, far-reaching and important theory in the whole of science and the answer will likely depend on whether you are asking someone working in the physical or the life sciences....
Another fundamental trait of human nature is its incredible capacity for adaptation. Polar bears and brown bears form two distinct species. Humans, by contrast, undertook long migrations both north and south; they did not mutate, but instead adapted. Inuits and Pygmies belong to the same...
In the third century BC, the famous Greek mathematician Archimedes issued a challenge to the Alexandrian mathematicians, headed by Eratosthenes. Written in the form of an epigram, Archimedes's challenge begins thus: "Compute, o friend, the number of oxen of the Sun, giving thy mind thereto, if...
Well, no, there is nothing about us that can escape the norms of nature. If something in us could infringe the laws of nature we would have discovered it by now. There is nothing in us in violation of the natural behaviour of things. The...
