In this energetic exchange, the original authors and Graeme Ackland express markedly differing views about progress and recent achievements in the study of metallic hydrogen.
Myriam Sarachik passed away on October 7, 2021. Her work on the Kondo effect, the metal-insulator transition, and quantum tunneling in molecular magnets are highlights in her research career. But her lifetime of first-rate work was realized in the face of great adversity. She was a totem of not only scientific excellence, but also of the perseverance of the human spirit.
Biolinguistics essentially stems from Noam Chomsky’s Aspects of the Theory of Syntax and is very much a child of its times, especially through the influence of Eric Lenneberg on Chomsky’s thinking.
Eric Cline’s Digging Up Armageddon tells the story of an archeological team from the University of Chicago that began digging at Megiddo in the mid-1920s. Drawing upon an assemblage of diaries, letters, cablegrams, and other archival sources, Cline provides an authoritative guide to the Chicago project during the interwar years, its internal politics, and its fascinating cast of characters.
Rather than leading to any sort of chemical model, recent research by Eddy Jiménez, Clémentine Gibard, and Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy serves only to underscore that their particular approach is unlikely to yield any clues about how life emerged. It is further evidence, if any were needed, that eminent synthetic chemists—and scientists in general—remain clueless about life’s origins.
Howard Lasnik elaborates on some of Anna Maria Di Sciullo’s points regarding Aspects of the Theory of Syntax—Noam Chomsky’s landmark text in the investigation of human language and cognitive capacity.
Noam Chomsky’s Aspects inspired many scholars to think in new ways about grammatical structures of languages. But was it really a landmark achievement? Two linguists debate its contributions.
Notions of competence and performance, language as a mystery, and the promotion of linguistics into a science—Evelina Leivada discusses controversial points in Anna Maria Di Sciullo’s essay.
As the year draws to a close, the editors are delighted to present our second annual Christmas Chrestomathy, highlighting the essays that best represent our aims, ambitions, attitudes, and even our animadversions. As it turned out, 2021 was a milestone year for the journal with the launch of a new website, the switch to a rolling publication schedule, and the debut of a new section: The Rambler.
Quantum mechanics is nearly one hundred years old; and yet the challenge it presents to the imagination is so great that scientists are still coming to terms with some of its most basic implications. Theoretical insights and recent experimental results in anyon physics are leading physicists to revise and expand their ideas about what quantum-mechanical particles are and how they behave.
In Memoriam: Myriam Sarachik