Edwin Jaynes
Edwin Thompson Jaynes (5 July (1922)–30 April (1998)) was a physicist, mainly famous for the Jaynes-Cummings model,[1] although this is neither his main work nor the one that went down in history the way he would have wanted. He instead regards his most valuable inputs in the problem of probabilities and how they relate to physics and the rest of science (such as logic). Although he applied his wisdom mainly to thermodynamics, he prefigured similar incursions to save quantum mechanics[2] (see QBism).
The most delightful aspect of Jaynes is that he was an iconoclast, free-thinker and not scared to explore obscure and unpopular routes (he, for instance, argued that one should not quantize the light field and developed his own version, or so-called 'neo-classical' theory of electrodynamics, which is how he came up with the Jaynes-Cumming model in the first place). His comments on his peers, including his mentor Oppenheimer (whom he called 'Oppy') are savoury. He respected very much Einstein. His broad attitude to science makes him one of the top favourite people of Fabrice, as an incarnation of the true, honest, resolute scientist.
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References
- ↑ Comparison of Quantum and Semiclassical Radiation Theory with Application to the Beam Maser. E.T. Jaynes and F.W. Cummings in Proc. IEEE 51:89 (1963).
- ↑ Complexity, Entropy and the Physics of Information. E. T. Jaynes in 🕮Complexity, Entropy and the Physics of Information. Wojciech H. Zurek (Ed.) Westview Press, 1990. (ISBN: 978-0201515060)
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