For more about Arthur Sasse’s 1951 photograph of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue, see →.
See Martin J. Sherwin’s interview with David Bohm for more on Bohm’s treatment by the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthyite wave of anti-communist paranoia →. See also F. David Peat, Infinite Potential: The Life and Times of David Bohm (Basic Books, 1997), 191–93.
David Bohm, Quantum Theory (Prentice Hall, 1951); Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen, “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality be Considered Complete?” Physical Review 47 no. 10 (May 1935). The latter article is where the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox finds its first expression.
In 1925, the German physicist Werner Heisenberg formulated a theory of quantum mechanics based on the mathematics of matrices in a paper titled “Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen” (On the quantum-theoretical reinterpretation of kinematical and mechanical relationships), published in Zeitschrift für Physik, September 1925. Heisenberg’s mathematical insight into the operation of what were called “non-commutative operators” laid the bases for what would come to be popularly known as the uncertainty principle—formally expressed in his subsequent paper “Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik” (The actual content of quantum theoretical kinematics and mechanics), Zeitschrift für Physik, March 1927.
The phenomenon of “time dilation” elaborated in the special theory of relativity was first featured in Einstein’s paper “Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper” (On the electrodynamics of moving bodies), Annalen der Physik, September 1905.
See Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time (Penguin, 2024) for a detailed discussion of the twin paradox. For an instance where this may in fact have happened, see →.
Take the temporal expectation that a Kathakali performer has to deal with when playing the role of the comic antihero Kumbhakarna (from the Sanskrit narrative of the Ramayana). Crucially, he has to portray a warrior addicted to sleep—sleeping most of the year and enraged when awoken. The Kathakali Kumbhakarna has to compress a portrayal of a year of sleep into a few minutes and then dilate the moment of enraged awakening into an extended portion of time. The comic effect and drama are achieved through the contrast between the compression of the time of sleep and the dilation of the time of awakening. For an analysis of time and movement in the classical dance form of Kathakali, see Eugenio Barba and Simonne Sanzenbach, “The Kathakali Theatre,” Tulane Drama Review 11, no. 4 (Summer 1967).
The compulsion to “move fast and break things” (an internal motto used at Facebook until 2014) is an impatience with human lifespans that drives research into longevity, the extension of youthfulness, and approximations of immortality, as pursued by a number of tech barons in the valley. See Kevin Walker and Helga Schmid, “The Shape of ‘Computime’: How Silicon Valley Time is Becoming Everyone’s Time,” Leonardo, January 2025.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5.
“In Hindustani (North Indian Classical) Music traditions, riyaaz, or the everyday cultivation of one’s musicality is ultimately not only a repertoire of exercises to keep the voice or fingers or one’s ability to play an instrument in good shape. Riyaaz is as much about the cultivation of a set of attitudes and sensibilities as it is about the honing of a skill. It is an attempt to explore the boundaries of what one can do on a regular basis, and of pushing these boundaries, again on a regular basis, so that the foundations of one’s practice undergo a daily renewal, so that one keeps becoming an adept. Riyaaz is a practitioner’s meditation on his or her practice.” Raqs Media Collective, “How to Be an Artist by Night,” in Art School: Propositions for the Twentieth Century, ed. Steven Henry Madoff (MIT Press, 2009) →.
Bibha Chowdhuri is finally getting the recognition she deserves. Shohini Ghose, Her Space, Her Time (Jaico Books, 2024) profiles Chowdhuri as well as several other female physicists from Brazil, Mexico, China, Europe, and the United States whose contributions were overlooked during their working lives. Other publications on Chowdhuri include Rajinder Singh and Suprakash C. Roy, A Jewel Unearthed: Bibha Chowdhuri, The Story of an Indian Woman Scientist (Shaker Verlag, 2018) and “Bibha Chowdhuri Special Commemorative Issue,” Physics News: Bulletin of the Indian Physics Association 51, no. 1–2 (January–June 2021).
For more on Marietta Blau, see Ghose, Her Space, Her Time.
Hideki Yukawa was the first to posit the theoretical existence of mesons, winning the Nobel Prize in physics in 1949. See his paper “On the Interaction of Elementary Particles,” Proceedings of the Physics and Mathematics Society of Japan, no. 17 (1935). See also →.
Chowdhuri’s first photographic experiments with cosmic rays were published as “Transactions of the Bose Research Institute,” Calcutta 13, no. 61 (1939). The Bibha Chowdhuri and D. N. Bose papers in Nature, in their order of appearance, are: “Photographic Plates as Detectors of Mesotron Showers,” Nature, no. 145 (June 1940); “Origin and Nature of Heavy Ionization Particles Detected on Photographic Plates Exposed to Cosmic Rays,” Nature, no. 147 (February 1941); “A Photographic Method for Estimating the Mass of the Mesotron,” Nature, no. 148 (August 1941); “A Photographic Method for Estimating the Mass of the Mesotron,” Nature, no. 149 (March 1942).
The experimental confirmation of the phenomenon of “time dilation” by observing mesons was featured in David H. Frisch and James H. Smith, “Measurement of the Relativistic Time Dilation Using μ-Mesons,” American Journal of Physics 13, no. 5 (May 1963).
Chowdhuri’s photographic studies of cosmic rays are reportedly archived at the Bose Institute in Kolkata.
For a description of time devices and clockwork-related artwork by Raqs Media Collective, see →.
Cecil Frank Powell’s experiments with mesons were published in an article written with members of his research team in particle physics at Bristol University. See Cecil Frank Powell, Cesar Lattes, Hugh Muirhead, and Giuseppe Occhialini, “Processes Involving Charged Mesons,” Nature, no. 159 (1947).
Cecil Powell’s The Study of Elementary Particles by the Photographic Method (Pergamon Press, 1959) acknowledges Bibha Chowdhuri and D. N. Bose’s work: “In 1941, Bose and Chaudhuri (sic) had pointed it out that it is possible, in principle, to distinguish between the tracks of protons and mesons in an emulsion … They concluded that many of the charged particles arrested in their plates were lighter than protons … The physical basis of their method was correct and their work represents the first approach to the scattering method of determining momenta of charged particles by observation of their tracks in emulsion.”
For more on Khona/Lilavati and Khonar Bachan (Khona’s sayings) see Purabi Basu, Kingbodotir Khana O Khana’r Bachan (Khana of legend and her sayings) (Anyaprakash, 2015); Tahmina Ahmed and Mohammad Moniruzzaman Akhand, “Khona: A Silent Voice of Female Leadership in Patriarchal Hegemony,” Research Journal of English 8, no. 4 (2023); and Bani Basu’s fictional treatment of the Khana-Varahmihir relationship in the novel Khana-Mihirer Dhipi (The mound of Khana and Mihir) (Ananda Publishers, 2014).
“Jayant Narlikar: Steady State” is an episode in Growing Up, a documentary series by Raqs Media Collective broadcast on Doordarshan 3 in 1995–96.
For an accessible translation of the mystical poetry of the Medieval Marathi poet Tukaram, see Says Tuka: The Selected Poetry of Tukaram, ed. and trans. Dilip Chitre (Penguin, 1991).
Uma Chakravarty in conversation with Raqs Media Collective sometime in the late 1990s.
See →.