🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Dec.11.15.24.48.1992.2096@ruhets.rutgers.edu>, bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner) writes:
> 
> Mermin is about the _only_ person who ever writes creatively in Physics
> Today.  I am sure there are more who could, but the standards of the
> community are such that they do not.  That is the issue.  Attempts to
> start a war with the English department are just a distraction.
> 
 Yes, Mermin is an outstanding prose stylist, in his technical papers (e.g. the
 famous one where he proves the instability of two-dimensional crystals,
 ~1965 I think). 
 Three others of equal literary merit:

 Michael V. Berry (the 1983 paper on "his" phase is a masterpiece.)

 H. C. Longuet-Higgins, who anticipated Berry's phase by about 25 years.

 Philip Pechukas.

 Pechukas, a theoretical chemist at Columbia, is the only author who has
 ever made me laugh out loud while reading a technical paper. (The sentence
 said, "the entire calculation can be made less juvenile by adopting an
 obscure notation.")

 Robert