THE LEGACY OF EDWIN T. JAYNES (1922-1998)
A Memorial Symposium
Department of Physics
Washington University, St. Louis
Friday, October 16, 1998
Crow Hall 201
T
he symposium will recall and celebrate the life of Edwin Thompson Jaynes as a scientific thinker of great stature and as a unique human spirit. The program will include professional colleagues, former students, and friends whose work and whose lives have been profoundly influenced by Jaynes.Jaynes' searching mind has roamed widely through many fields of science, including classical electromagnetic theory, quantum theory, quantum optics, cavity quantum electrodynamics, condensed matter physics, acoustics, the physics of music, statistical mechanics, information theory, probability theory, electrical engineering, and economics. The impact of his pioneering insights in these areas continues to grow as we enter a new century and a new millennium. His book on the foundations of probability theory is already being received as a scientific masterpiece.
In one short day it will be impossible to do justice to all dimensions of Ed Jaynes' vast interests, accomplishments, and associations. However, the symposium will aspire to capture, in a mix of good science and fond remembrances, something of the freshness, intellectual excitement, and iconoclastic delight that we all felt when we were in Ed's good company.
Morning Session 9:00-12:00
Welcome by Clifford Will (Chair, Department of Physics)
Chairs: John Clark & James Miller (Washington University)
9:00 Joseph Eberly (University of Rochester)
Remembering Ed Jaynes and Cavity QED at Stanford
9:30 Douglas Scalapino (University of California-Santa Barbara)
Two-leg CuO Ladders: Metals, Insulators or Superconductors?
10:00 Clayton Bates (Howard University)
Some Remembrances of Ed Jaynes
10:10 Coffee Break
10:30 James G. Miller (Washington University)
Insights from Ed Jaynes: the 1960s through the 1990s
10:40 Joel A. Snow (Iowa State University)
Sustainable Development in China
11:05 Carlos Stroud (University of Rochester)
The Legacy of Neoclassical Theory
11:35 David R. Wolf (NASA/University of Texas)
Jaynes' Maximum Relative Entropy and Maximally Informative Statistical Inference
12:00-2:00 Lunch
Afternoon Session 2:00-5:30
Chairs: Charles Campbell (University of Minnesota) & John Clark
2:00 W. Thomas Grandy (University of Wyoming)
What Do We Mean by the Laws of Physics?
2:25 Thomas Loredo (Cornell University)
Sophisticated Subtlety: The Intuitive Appeal of Bayesian Inference
2:50 Philip Fraundorf (University of Missouri-St. Louis)
Pioneers and Pitfalls of Deep Simplification
3:10 Edward Greenberg (Washington University)
Edwin Jaynes' Contributions to Statistics
3:35 Coffee Break
3:55 Larry Bretthorst (Washington University)
MRI Classification Using Bayesian Probability Theory
4:20 Richard E. Norberg (Washington University)
Recollections of Ed Jaynes
4:35 Open Session
Remarks from the audience & messages from the World at large