Speaker
Description
Bretislav is fond of the title of this talk, crafted by him. It was a major theme in the superb Festschrift [1] celebrating his 60th birthday. There he presented an intriguing autobiography, with engaging vignettes about colleagues as well as synopses of his research, teaching, and historical scholarship. These are updated in his exemplary website [2], including an extensive array of his “favorite aphorisms related to Science.” During his Harvard era (1987-2003) Bretislav kept molecules and colleagues busy both in my chemistry lab and John Doyle’s physics lab. Here I will mention a few episodes and some later consequences. In 1990, Bretislav enjoyed making molecules behave like pendulums. Previously, to do that with electric fields was deemed not practical for molecules in a gas, tumbling like pinwheels. By now, pendular molecules have had key roles in countless experiments, rendered by means of electric or laser fields. A kindred episode dealt with molecular polarizability, previously disrespected as too puny, yet begat further varieties of pendular states. Some offer prospective qubits for quantum computation, others can serve as catalysts for chemical reactions. On arriving at Harvard, Bretislav took part in a Festschrift [3] for the centennial year of Otto Stern (1888-1969). Since then, Bretislav and colleagues have contributed many papers, books, and symposia enriching History of Science.
[1] Molecular Physics, 111, 1631-1938 (2013).
[2] www.fhi-berlin.mpg.de/mp/friedrich/
[3] Zeitschrift fur Physik D 10, 109-392.
