NOBEL THOUGHTS -- Douglas Osheroff
Douglas Osheroff
Douglas
Osheroff is a professor of physics at Stanford University. In 1996 he,
David Lee, and Robert Richardson were awarded the Nobel
Prize in Physics "for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3."
[Editor's note: also see the interview with Professor Osheroff that was
published in AIR 5:1. There
he discussed the question of when to sleep during a lecture.]
What’s your favorite pizza topping, and what’s your least
favorite?
My favorite’s got to be basil pesto sauce and pine nuts.
Least? Oh, it would have to be raw onions and olives.
What and where is the worst pizza you ever had?
The worst pizza was in Chamonix, in France. The most mundane cheese...
it was terrible.
Did the atmosphere of the restaurant match the food?
If you’ve been to Chamonix, these places are all the same. We’d
actually eaten other dishes there before. I guess the French just hate pizza.
So you’ve had difficulties with French pizza in general?
That’s the only time I’ve ever had French pizza. I won’t
try it again.
Would you advise other scientists to extrapolate form one data point
when it comes to pizza?
This is not a scientific thing. It’s an emotional thing.
And what’s the best pizza you’ve ever had?
I suppose the best pizza was on the island of Elba. They have a really
nice physics center there, the food was not cheap. It was very thin, semi-rigid
crust. Really very elegant pizza.
What was on the pizza?
I can’t remember.
The crust was so good it overwhelmed everything else?
No... I usually like pepperoni. But I don’t think they call it pepperoni.
It was one of these things... I don’t know Italian, so I point. It
was probably something that was vaguely pepperoni.
That works, by the way, in almost all countries. Pointing is good. It’s
even better in Japan, where they give you plastic-molded food to look at.
How was Japanese pizza?
I don’t know. Never had it. That’s interesting.... No, never
had it.
Could you estimate how many pieces of pizza you’ve had during your
career?
It fluctuates. We’ll say that I have pizza once every other week...
that’s twice a month.
And it depends on whether it’s lunch or dinner, but it will be either
two or four pieces. So let’s say two times four, is eight, times a
month. Per year it’s going to be eight times twelve. So roughly a hundred
per year. So, oh, gee, it could be three thousand -- or more -- slices of
pizza. Most of it’s sitting right around my waist.
Is pizza good or bad for someone to use as fuel when embarking on a
career in physics?
Well, pizza I regard as a sin. It’s one of these things that tastes
extremely good. You know you’re sinning when you do it, largely because
of all the bad stuff in it.
Is it a good sin?
A good sin is a sin that makes you feel good, I think. If that’s true,
then pizza is a good sin.
© Copyright 2001 Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
This HotAIR feature first appeared in VOLUME
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