The "Fundamental Fysiks Group" was a ragtag assortment of PhDs whose "playful provocations led to lasting contributions," Kaiser tells Big Think. So how did this group come to be, and what can we learn from them?
These physicists saw their promising career paths disrupted when Congress and military analysts dramatically scaled back physics funding during the Vietnam War. In 1971, the Placement Service of the American Institute of Physics registered 1,053 applicants for just 53 jobs. The market could no longer absorb all of these "exquisitely well-trained" physicists who had gone to school during the glory days of science in the U.S. They were the Sputnik generation, Kaiser reminds us, who "grew up with a gleam in their eye." And then their fortunes changed dramatically. And therein lies the essential lesson of Kaiser's book.
According to Kaiser, the members of the Fundamental Fysiks Group displayed extraordinary passion, curiosity and playfulness "even during very difficult circumstances." Forced to the margins, these physicists constructed their own jury-rigged "parellel universe" of millionaire patrons "with a hankering for quantum weirdness" and other "enthusiastic eccentric individuals." They had "all kinds of conversations with all kinds of people" and were "open to questions that were asked by interested amateurs," Kaiser says. In other words, they were entrepreneurs who found new ways to secure funding, and experimented with "new ways to do physics."
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