In 1975, an influential physics paper was co-authored...
Dec 24, 2016 14:28:27 GMT -5
robeiae and Don like this
Post by Optimus on Dec 24, 2016 14:28:27 GMT -5
...by a cat.
I think it was actually published in August of that year, so this is a bit past the anniversary, but I just saw this article today and thought it was funny.
Apparently, they asked the cat to join the faculty afterwards.
www.atlasobscura.com/articles/in-1975-a-cat-coauthored-a-physics-paper
I think it was actually published in August of that year, so this is a bit past the anniversary, but I just saw this article today and thought it was funny.
He was all set to send it to Physical Review Letters, which today describes itself as “the world’s premier physics letter journal.” However, before he dispatched it, Hetherington gave the paper to a colleague to get 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. As his colleague pointed out, Physical Review Letters generally only published papers using plural pronouns and adjectives like “we” and “our” if the paper had multiple authors.
...(snip)...
Hetherington wrote that after giving the issue “an evening’s thought,” he decided the paper was so good that it required rapid publishing. 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 wouldn’t 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 Chester’s father.
...(snip)...
Hetherington wrote that after giving the issue “an evening’s thought,” he decided the paper was so good that it required rapid publishing. 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 wouldn’t 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 Chester’s father.
www.atlasobscura.com/articles/in-1975-a-cat-coauthored-a-physics-paper
