This story was on the press when Fritz Zwicky died of a heart attack on February 8 at the age of 75. We print it now because we think he would have liked it. We regret that he had no chance to reply to it because, as always, his reply would have been colorful and resounding. A tribute to Dr. Zwicky will appear in our next issue.
DEAR EDITOR:
Last summer (August 6) Time ran a story
on Helga Sue Gromowitz, an imaginary high school student dreamed up by kids to
confuse the faculty and administration.
I thoroughly expected to see a follow‑up in their "Letters to
the Editor" from somebody at Caltech, because I well remember the
composite Caltech student of legend, created by a group of the faculty to confound
another faculty member who swore no one could get an A in his course. It's been a long time since I have read
of one of Caltech's pranks and this one would be fun to see again.
(Ms.) LEE JONES
Johnston College
University of Redlands
Memo to Kay Walker
From Ed Hutchings
As I recall, this was a joke played
on Fritz Zwicky (now professor of astrophysics, emeritus) sometime in the
'30s. See what you can dig up. You
might start by asking some faculty members who were here then
and are here now Ð Bill Smythe, John Pierce, Tommy Lauritsen,
Willy Fowler.
The facts seem to be classically
simple.
The joke was played in the '30s on
Fritz Zwicky, who taught an extremely difficult course in analytical mechanics
at that time. An ingenious group
of plotters submitted an admit card for a fictitious student, had him enrolled
in the class, turned in exams for him, and earned an "A" at the end
of the term.
Simple. But why was it done?
Why Zwicky? Who did it? When? How could the deception last a whole term? How did "they" get an
"A"? Here are a few
answers:
1. Dr. Smythe, who was already teaching
here then, says the pranksters were grad students and they probably included
Tommy Lauritsen and Willy Fowler.
He gave me the outline of the story IÕve given you Ð plus a few details
such as that the fictitious student went in Zwicky's class book because Zwicky
never learned his students' names.
When exams came along, two or three of the grads worked on different
sections of the test and turned in Ð in one handwriting Ð almost perfect
papers, and got "A's" on all of them.
2. Dr. Lauritsen was not one of the
perpetrators; it was before his time.
But he had a name for me: Hjalmar Sciate. Lauritsen always thought that the plotters were professors,
probably led by Smythe himself.
3. Willy Fowler, who got a "B"
from Zwicky, has thought all these years that the faculty was responsible for
the fictitious student, whose name Fowler spells as Hjalmar Sciatti.
4. John Pierce's version of the student's
name is Hjalmar Sciete, and he wasn't in on the hoax. He suggested that Carl F, J. Overhage, MIT professor of
engineering, might have been one of the students who took the tests.
I am writing to Dr. Overhage.
Carl Overhage says his recollections
of the Hjalmar Sciete caper are rather dim and that John Pierce gave him too
much credit Ð he had a hard enough time taking Zwicky's exams on his own.
He also says, "I have a
persistent hunch that the roots of this joke go back to some
undergraduates. If you really want
to leave no stone unturned, write to L. Sprague de Camp and John B.
Hatcher."
I'm doing so.
L. Sprague de Camp says he wasn't in
on the Hjalmar Scieite hoax, but thinks Jack Hatcher was one of the
perpetrators, or at least knew some of them.
I'm waiting to hear from Dr.
Hatcher,
Aha!
Please peruse the following:
DEAR MRS. (not Ms.?) WALKER:
Are you really serious, and willing
to work on this? You are probably
in for a difficult time, since there are the most extraordinary versions Ð
memories dim, people elaborate, things get quoted wrong, and I even remember
once hearing of someone I never heard of who was taking credit for the whole
affair. But if you do your
homework, you can probably make an important contribution toward getting the
record straight.
Let me put down what I remember, and
point you to some source data and people who can confirm a few things; I'll try
to be meticulous and indicate my own haziness as best I can.
First of all, you've got the name
all wrong Ð and that was the basic, original point of the whole thing that
started it all!!! The name is
HELMAR SCIEITE
and don't you dare let any
misspelling by a single iota, quark, or whatever get perpetuated.
The time was ca. '29‑31. You can confirm the exact time by old
records, as follows: You dig into old transcripts, and find out when Carl Thiele
took Zwicky's Advanced Analytical Mechanics Ð it happened then.
It all began when some of us were
sitting around with the usual undergraduate gripes, and there was talk of
Zwicky. He seemed to take an
intense, almost sadistic pleasure in picking on a hapless student, and regardless
of said student's protestations of lack of preparation, ignorance, etc., get
him up at the blackboard and make him do a tough problem. In today's phrasing Z would let him
turn slowly, slowly, in the wind, aided by caustic comments as to his mental
deficiencies and how easy the problem was.
It was mutually agreed that
something should be done, but in those days we didn't revolt Ð we tried to
match the punishment to the crime.
Zwicky was reputed to have an intense pride in being correct, but it had
been noted that he had difficulty in pronouncing Carl Thiele's name. (He varied from Theel to Tilly, with
versions in between, but typically he just mumbled it.) So we decided to give him something
more to think about, and the name was born Helmar Scieite. We figured heÕd never get that iei combination
right (incidentally do you know how to pronounce it? We did!) The
"Helmar" was derived from Delmar Larsen, who was our resident
linguist, and responsible for the assertion that there has never been an iei in any
language. And the substitution of
Sc for Th, and the t for the 1 would, we thought, render a difficult task for Z
plain impossible.
Who was "we"? Well, I was there; almost certainly
Delmar Larsen; most probably Carl Thiele; and maybe Jackson Gregory. We all lived in Blacker House, and
along the 2nd floor corridor going south from Harvey Eagleson's room, and we
called it Hell's Kitchen. Bill
Shockley was in that corridor, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't at the creation of
Helmar Ð he was usually a little above such antics. Perhaps Glen Miller was there; it could have been a poker
session, and he usually came around for them. My memory says 3‑5 people; there could have been more,
and I just don't remember. The
main point is that it was a group (interdisciplinary!) effort.
Anyway a class registration card was
procured (was theft necessary? I
don't remember how hard it was to get them) and filled out, registering Helmar
Scieite in Zwicky's course, and it was turned in the next semester with all the
rest. So there was Z running
through the cards calling the roll the first day. I was told he fumbled a bit on the Thiele again, but he out‑foxed
us on Helmar Ð he just passed the card by, and after finishing all the rest
stood there with that one card left and simply asked if there was anyone else
present whose name he hadn't called!
He did this a couple of times Ð never even tried to pronounce it.
The final was the finale, and a real
tour de force. With the honor
system (does it still work?) it was standard for the professor to walk in,
write exam questions on the board, and then go away, to return at the appointed
end and collect papers. This time
the idea was simple: Delmar went into the exam room and copied off the
questions, and then doled them out, one to each of some five or so graduate
students who had previously been recruited. And then each did a bang‑up job on his single
question, getting it perfect. And
then Delmar copied them all off in his nice round hand, switching languages
between questions, with interpolated insulting remarks like "This is a
very stupid and trivial question‑why waste examination time on such
tripe?" or "This problem is all worked out in . . . (cited reference)
. . . Can't you think of anything new?" etc., and this was turned in under
Helmar Scieite's name.
Now I never did learn, to my own
satisfaction, whether Zwicky tried to turn in a grade for Helmar. Since he wasn't really on the books,
the registrar's office would have queried such a grade; or did Z go ask them
about such a person earlier?
I tried to immortalize Helmar
Scieite shortly thereafter, by making him the hero of a mystery story I
wrote. The Hell's Kitchen
Murders never got published, but circulated around the campus for some years Ð
Harvey Eagleson had a copy, and I was told he used to read it to later
generations.
I do know that Helmar was still
alive and wrote a long letter to the editor of the California Tech dated 1 May
1969, suggesting a novel and sound approach to teaching some of the things the
student candidates were worrying about in their statements running for office
in the Feb. 6 issue.
Well, maybe all this will help.
Lotsa luck,
J. B. HATCHER
(BS '37, MS '38, PhD '52)
Carl Thiele says it's all true. He took Ph l03c, Analytical Mechanics,
the third quarter of the 1931‑1932 school year, and he reports that
Zwicky gave everyone in the class epsilons except Helmar.
Here is the course description from
the 1931‑1932 catalog:
PH 103 a,b,c. Analytical Mechanics. 12 units (4‑0‑8) first,
second, and third terms.
Prerequisites: Ph 5 a,b,c; Ma 9 a,b,c; or 10 a,b,c; reading knowledge of
French.
A study of the fundamental
principles of theoretical mechanics; force and the laws of motion; statics of
systems of particles; the principle of virtual work, potential energy, stable
and unstable equilibrium; motion of particles, systems of particles and rigid
bodies; generalized coordinates, Hamilton's principle and the principle of
least action; elementary hydrodynamics and elasticity.
Texts: PainlevŽ Cours de
MŽcanique, Vols. I and II.
Instructor: Zwicky.
Do you suppose Zwicky really used a
French textbook?
I can confirm that Jack Hatcher's
letter is as accurate as it is charming.
I have only one revision to make,
respecting the alleged statement by me that the vowel sequence iei is unknown
in any language. I do not remember making such a statement, and indeed numerous
exceptions would have come readily to mind such as the German adverb beieinander, the
Portuguese substantive fieira, and the Greek substantive dieidos with its
English derivative "dieidism," not to mention, of course, more
recondite examples. The particular
sequence of letters was designed to introduce maximum ambiguity into the
pronunciation of the name.
It's really been fun to watch this
story unfold, but for now I guess we've done all we can.
EDITOR:
In the Caltech President's Report for 1972‑73,
Robert B. Leighton described some research highlights in physics and astronomy
at Caltech. In his story of man's
attempt to probe the depths of matter, Dr. Leighton mentioned "the notion
that matter, in all its infinite variety as we perceive it, is composed of but
a small number of irreducible parts which combine in different ways."
He traced these fundamental building
blocks from the Air, Earth, Fire, and Water of the ancient Greeks to the 92
chemical elements of the chemists' periodic table. He continued, mentioning the proton and electron thought to
be the basic constituents by the early nuclear physicists, and the whole
succession of particles still called "elementary" later on. He mentioned that today these particles
themselves constitute families called baryons, mesons, leptons, and
photons. Dr. Leighton continued to
mention the recent work in which families of baryons and mesons are described
in terms of "quarks."
In reading his report further we
find that some scientists have abstracted a model to account for the fact that
"quarks" are never observed.
In this model the "quarks" are stuck together by neutral
particles called "gluons."
Using the notion of "color," both the "quarks" and
"gluons" are "color non-singlets and are therefore unobservable
as separate particles."
Further reading reveals terms such as "hadron," "parton
models," and "bootstrap pictures."
After some reflection on this
fascinating description of man's attempt to probe the depths of matter, it now
seems to me that this elusive irreducible component of all nature should be
aptly called the "puton."
NEIL R. SHEELEY JR. '60
A copy of the November/December
issue of your review, which contains an article by James and Ingelore Bonner,
headed "Notes on a Trip to the Soviet Union," has been passed to me.
In this interesting article,
reference was made to the fact that, during the Bonners' visit to Moscow, they
were informed that a Xerox copier in one office was not working because the
Xerox engineer had not called. The
inference drawn from this is obvious, and your readers could get a very wrong
impression of the way in which we look after our equipment in the Soviet Union. May I now give you the facts of the
situation.
By Soviet law, Xerox Ð through Rank
Xerox in England Ð have to sell their Xerox copiers outright in the Soviet
Union. Under this arrangement, the
Soviet authorities are then entirely responsible for the maintenance of the
equipment. Nevertheless, Rank
Xerox have gone to considerable trouble and expense in training local Russian
engineers to maintain this equipment.
The Soviet servicing organisation is still in its infancy and is
battling with difficult odds. This
is the first time the Soviet Union has had an organisation of this type. It has been very difficult for them to
recruit the right staff, and, again under Soviet law, these engineers have to
be trained in Moscow Ð not with quite the same facilities we could give them in
a Xerox training school.
I would be most distressed if I
thought that your readers gathered from the implication in the article that we
were neglecting our equipment in any country. This is far from being the case. We have two resident Rank Xerox engineers in Moscow, whose
permanent job is the training and organisation of local service engineers Ð but
we do have many thousands of machines in the Soviet Union, and their task is a
difficult one.
I have, however, immediately
despatched the information contained in this article to our Moscow office, and
have asked them to look into the matter of this particular machine. So some good has come out of this, in
that the matter has been brought to our attention and action taken.
G. S. PLANNER