Posted on 09/05/2016 6:29:55 PM PDT by MtnClimber
When one reads a physics paper in an esteemed journal, one does not generally wonder if it was written by a cat. But such was the case for an article in the 1970s credited to co-author F.D.C. Willardthe Cat Who Published.
Jack H. Hetherington was a professor of physics at Michigan State University in 1975, when he finished what would become an influential and often-cited physics paper. The academic writing, entitled, Two-, Three-, and Four-Atom Exchange Effects in bcc 3He, was an in-depth exploration of atomic behavior at different temperatures. It would have flown over the heads of most lay people, not to mention cats.
He was all set to send it to Physical Review Letters, which today describes itself as the worlds premier physics letter journal. However, before he dispatched it, Hetherington gave the paper to a colleague to get one one last set of eyes on the piece. This is when he ran into a strange problem. Hetherington had used the royal "we" throughout the paper.......
Unwilling to go back and replace the plural voice in the document, he did the next best thing and just added a second author: his Siamese cat, Chester. Of course just listing Chester as a co-author probably wouldnt fly, so he invented the name F.D.C. Willard. The F.D.C. stood for Felix Domesticus, Chester." Willard had been the name of Chesters father.
(Excerpt) Read more at atlasobscura.com ...
Funny article including photo of reprints signed with the signature of the author and paw print of the coauthor.
Probably better than most post grad students today!........
Obviously the cat was from the future. It probably built a time machine.
“Funny article including photo of reprints signed with the signature of the author and paw print of the coauthor.”
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I got a giggle from the photo of a kitten by a microscope with the caption underneath reading: “THIS IS A DRAMATIZATION.”.
a cat who’s revealing the secrets of the universe???? This is wonderful!
cats, as the superior life form on Rock Three, know all the answers. they just don’t usually tell us inferior types anything we want to know, is all......
this is Great News!
Catses are sneakses.
The Year of The Cat.
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