Roy Glauber: Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile

I use these photos to say light is important in our lives and literature. It is equally important in photography. Roy Glauber is on my list of Renaissance men in science. The following is from his Banquet Speech during his Nobel Prize in Physics in 2005. (He was then 80 years old and still went on to teach his physics class at Harvard the morning when the news was announced.)

 
“These dark days in Stockholm emphasize the importance of light in our lives. It is equally important in our literature. The word, "light", has vastly many meanings. Shakespeare, in Love's Labours Lost, has one of his cleverer characters make fun of that by speaking the line, ‘Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile ...’ Loosely translated, that means: Intellect, seeking understanding, easily fools reason. - Or perhaps it's the other way around.”

Upon hearing the news of his Nobel award in October 2005, I wrote an article, in which I said, “Let there be light: and there was light.” I am pleased to note, about 2 months later, on December 8, 2005, when he gave the Nobel Lecture, he also began with something like this: Our good Lord said, “Let it be quantum electrodynamics.” . . . that was the modern translation of the Hebrew. We quote the same Scripture, but he said it in a more poetic, aesthetic, subtle, and dynamic way, no doubt.

Some years ago I wrote an article of “From Dirac to Feynman: a torch is passed”. Unfortunately I do not know enough quantum electrodynamics to write “From Feynman to Glauber: a torch is passed again”. It does not escape my notice that Glauber’s doctoral advisor (at Harvard) was Julian Schwinger, who shared the Nobel Prizes in Physics with Richard Feynman.