Either of two Hungarian mathematicians, Alfr√©d R√©nyi or Paul Erd≈ës, is reputed to have said, “A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.” The quotation brings to mind solitary toil, but with equal justification you could also say, “Coffee is a device for turning conversations into theorems.”

Artur Ekert, who directs the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore, evidently believes in coffee’s catalyzing effect. When the center was established three years ago, Ekert insisted that it include a space, the Quantum Café, where staff could meet and exchange ideas over free coffee or tea.

Ekert’s enthusiasm for social interaction was shared by Fred Hoyle. In the mid 1960s, when he directed the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University, Hoyle commissioned a new building. The design sounds boringly simple: little more than a long, one-story box with outward-facing offices on either side of a central corridor. But it was conceived to foster conversation and collaboration. The corridor was deliberately broad; in the center of the building was a large open area for having coffee; and lest the staff fail to meet for coffee, an institute-wide coffee break took place at 11am each weekday.

As a graduate student at the institute, I must have enjoyed a thousand or so coffee breaks. I can’t remember any theorems or ideas those casual conversations produced, so, as evidence of their effectiveness, I’ll have to invoke a substitute (and one that might not have involved coffee; I can’t be sure):

In 1950, while working at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the physicist Enrico Fermi had a casual conversation while walking to lunch with colleagues Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller and Herbert York. The men discussed a recent spate of UFO reports and an Alan Dunn cartoon facetiously blaming the disappearance of municipal trashcans on marauding aliens.

The conversation, quoted here from Wikipedia, prompted Fermi to estimate over lunch the likelihood that Earth had been visited by aliens, given the size of our galaxy, the number and age of its stars, and other physical constraints. After concluding that aliens must have dropped by many times, he asked his lunch partners, “Where are they?” Fermi’s question became the basis of a field of inquiry known as the Fermi paradox.

I can’t claim to have founded a field, but I can say that the idea for this blog entry came to me yesterday while drinking an espresso in the Quantum Café.

Charles Day

Earlier this month at a housewarming party in Long Beach, California, I met Mike Rivas, the vice president of admissions at Laguna College of Art and Design (LCAD) in nearby Laguna Beach. As a location for an art school, Laguna Beach makes sense. The town has an unusually high number of shops that sell paintings, sculptures, and other art. But at the risk—which I willingly take—of being thought a snob, I have to say the art on sale in Laguna Beach is vulgar, unicorns-in-the-surf dross.

Thus prejudiced, I was worried that Mike’s students learn how to increase the supply of pictures of fluffy kittens and dayglow Hawaiian sunsets. I was utterly wrong. Mike explained that LCAD is famous for its programs in animation and game art. The college has strong ties to the movie and computer gaming industries. Its graduates are in high demand.

I was reminded of LCAD last week when I read an account of a surprisingly frank discussion that China’s Premier Wen Jiabao participated in in New York City. Wen was in town for a United Nations’ conference on eliminating world poverty, but the remark of his that lodged in my brain was about iPads.

Wen complained that even though Chinese factories make the popular tablet computer, they earn only $6 per unit. Apple nabs the lion’s share, because it sells the device and because it designed it. Other, presumably non-Chinese companies earn money when iPad owners buy attractively designed apps from Apple’s iTunes store.

This week I’m in Singapore visiting labs and facilities funded by the country’s Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR is the slick abbreviation). Like China, Singapore has a thriving high-tech manufacturing base. Half the world’s disk drives are made here. Through A*STAR and its sister agencies, the island’s government establishes effective and profitable links between academic research and industry.

Singapore’s government and its advisers have already learned Wen’s iPad lesson. To ensure future prosperity, it’s not enough to make expensive high-tech gadgets that sell by the million. You have to design them too. In two years’ time, Singapore University of Technology and Design will admit its first students.

Funding and promoting ties between academia and industry is worthwhile—provided you choose the right industries.

Charles Day

In establishing his prizes, Alfred Nobel wanted to reward science that brought, in the words of his will, “the greatest benefit to mankind.” In justifying the billions spent on research, scientists argue that they are also benefiting people—either directly by developing, say, new vaccines or indirectly by advancing our knowledge of the universe and its contents.

Given those high goals, what are we to make of the science practiced by Algordanza AG? The company, which is based in Domat/Ems, Switzerland, produces “qualitative high-grade certified diamonds out of the ashes of your beloved deceased in memory to their unique and wonderful life.”

The conversion process entails heating the chemically purified ash to 2500 °C and subjecting it to a pressure of 6 gigapascals. Depending on how much boron the deceased had ingested, the resulting gem may be clear and colorless or clear and blue.

I learned about Algordanza from a story in today’s issue of the Straits Times, Singapore’s venerable English-language newspaper. (I’m visiting Singapore this week to tour facilities funded by the country’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research, A*STAR.) Reporter Ang Yiying centered her story on Madam Chin Siat Ngo, who paid Algordanza’s partner in Singapore SG$9399 (about US$7250) to make a diamond from the ashes of her late sister Mee Ngo. The two sisters had lived together for 62 years until February, when Mee Ngo succumbed to a fatal stroke.

Madam Chin had the 0.41-carat blue diamond set in the center of a cross-shaped pendant. She’s evidently pleased and proud of her memorial jewel. In her case, science brought her the benefit not of a cure or knowledge, but of comfort.

I don’t know whether Nobel had comfort or happiness in mind when he wrote his will. He might have, if he’d read John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In words that would be echoed 86 years later by Thomas Jefferson, Locke asserted: “The highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness.”

Charles Day