Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

melling·

He turns 100 next year.

Imagine if Einstein, Hawking, Feynman, etc all lived to be 100.

View on HN

Science advances one funeral at a time. ( Max Planck )

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/111818-science-advances-one...

Does not apply here. Goodenough is not holding back advances under the pretense of "can't be done". In fact, since maybe the time of the Manhattan Project, I'm hard pressed to think of a prominent scientist or physicist who has.

I was responding to a comment, not to the article.

The article is a counter example to the comment.

We don’t need for it to be true, we simply need to be open to learning and accepting new ideas at any age.

Believing Max Planck’s Principle to be a certainty is an example of his principle in action.

> The article is a counter example to the comment

Too early to tell really.

> Believing Max Planck’s Principle to be a certainty is an example of his principle in action.

I haven't said that.

It happens more in medicine.

There are plenty of theoretical physicists who live to old age. As far as I can see, they all become increasingly irrelevant as they age. Scientific obscurity is all but guaranteed at around 80 years old, despite some people publishing until well after that age.

It is quite a sad future that awaits.

The rest of us call it "retirement".

It reminds me this SMBC comics https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-03-21

I quite enjoy listening to Susskind, for example:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Susskind

People can remain inspirational and contribute well into old age

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson

Reply on news.ycombinator.com