Remembering Prof. Twareque Ali

FB has reminded me yesterday of the passing of Prof. S. Twareque Ali on the 25 January 2016. While sad, the memory of Prof. Twareque reminds me the need to keep pushing for the work on mathematical physics. It is quite easy to get disheartened nowadays with all the criticisms and non-ideal situations. Once I described the problems that I was facing and then he would asked, what am I going to do about it, signalling the advice for self-determination and activism. I will always remember that.

Before EQuaLS, I only knew Prof. Twareque by name. The earliest work of Prof. Twareque that I was aware of, is his work with Eduard Prugovecki. It is perhaps accidental that I knew of their work. After my B.Sc. degree, I was primarily interested in theories unifying quantum mechanics and general relativity and was scouting around for ideas and books. My late eldest brother had been buying/ordering books from a local book distributor in Kuala Lumpur and if my memory has not failed me, it was there I saw this book by Prugovecki on Stochastic Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Space-Time and I bought it. It was probably one of the earliest (mathematical physics) book that I have. It was only years later when I was doing my PhD on quantization that I found this paper of Twareque and Prugovecki on systems of imprimitivity (a topic that I needed to learn for Isham's canonical group quantization and Mackey's induced representation theory).

Fast forward a couple of years ahead, I began organizing Expository Quantum Lecture Series (EQuaLS) at the Institute for Mathematical Research (INSPEM). At the time, I was 'new' to INSPEM, since our Theoretical Studies Laboratory (TSL) at Institute of Advanced Technologies (ITMA) (now rebranded as Institute of Nanoscience & Nanotechnology), was asked to merge with INSPEM. At TSL, I have already started a lecture series and I thought I should rebrand it to EQuaLS (having lost TSL). So for the premiering EQuaLS event, I had to think of who to invite. Prof. Twareque Ali was on the top of my list since I wanted to get someone well-known on quantization. At the time, he had wrote this review with Miroslav Englis (see here for arXiv version). I, then, wrote to him and almost immediately got a positive reply and even mentioned my torus paper in PRD in his reply. So EQuaLS1 took off with him giving five lectures. At the end of the event, he came and hugged me emotionally and said something like I have started off something good. He has indeed started many internationally renowned events including the twin event of Group-Theoretic Methods in Theoretical Physics and Quantum Theory & Symmetries, both of which I had the opportunity to attend with his help. Therafter, he came to almost all EQuaLS event (apart from EQuaLS3, EQuaLS4 and EQuaLS7). EQuaLS 8 was the last event he was with us and on the morning before his flight heading home, we received the shocking news that he had passed away. I could not describe how I felt those few days (his body was at Serdang Hospital for a post-mortem). His funeral prayers was conducted at the UPM mosque after Friday prayers.

Prof. Twareque Ali has always said to me that he was fond in coming to Malaysia, stating that the country is a 'hidden treasure'. He has also said that he wished that there would be an institute for mathematical physics in Malaysia. At some point, I was hoping that INSPEM could be a vehicle to realise such idea and had wished he will be around to see it. Alas, things have not quite turned that way and with him not around, the possibility is even more remote. The night before his passing, we were at a restaurant in Seremban talking about research that I wished we could have done together. I mentioned about relatively new results of Gromov's non-squeezing theorem and Spekkens' toy epistemic theory and possible relation with quantization (hinting possible connections with his work with Prugovecki). He had asked me to write this up and perhaps seek international support for this (e.g. CRM). He was noticeably quiet that night and it did not occur to me that that was my last conversation with him. I regretted of not being able to initiate this plan earlier. I am still pursuing indirectly this direction with my students and hope one day, we will be able to discover something worthwhile. Below is the picture of my last conversation with Prof. Twareque. May Allah forgive him and accept his good deeds and grant him Jannah.

Work Corner and Self-Learning Modules

It has not yet been another week, but I thought I just want to write something for now. Just reached home from office (around 6pm) and this is after logging out just a few minutes past 5pm (the end of office hours). These days I tend to limit myself (if possible) in the office in just the hours needed. In the past, I used to work long hours when I am still involved in administration. Those days are over (thankfully) and I'm looking forward to my retirement. Some thought I am giving up my scientific pursuit and some even say I am no longer active scientifically. Not sure where they got the idea. Just this afternoon, I had a meeting with my PhD student. Perhaps what I want to do now and in the future will not quite fit what the university wants. In fact, I am looking forward to do things that are essentially worthless with respect to the usual KPIs of the university, but will be very valuable for me scientifically. Indeed now I feel more comfortable doing work at home. Had wished that the idea of working from home to be continued after the previous stretch of MCO but I guess it is too early for us to adopt such a paradigm. While my home is still under renovations, I have got my own sweet corner for me to work in my room (I guess, for the rest of my life) - see pic below.

The table was set a bit high and I could not find an office chair that will reach that height. Instead I had to get a stool (with a small back rest). It reminds me of working at a lab bench.

We have reached our final week of lectures but I have plenty of topics to cover for both subjects. I guess I will have to do some recorded lectures for those topics. Yesterday and today, managed to put out self-learning modules for the two subjects, where the students get to review some related papers in a group (each will have to mention what are their contributions) and relate them to materials covered in the lectures. I was supposed to give these some time near the mid-semester break (before or after) but time was not on my side to do so. What are they reviewing? They are listed below:

Statistical Mechanics:

1) Ralph Baierlein, “The Elusive Chemical Potential”, Amer. J. Phys. 69 (2001) 423-434.

2) Hajime Inaba, “The Development of Ensemble Theory – A New Glimpse at the History of Statistical Mechanics”, Eur. Phs. J. H 40 (2015) 489-426.

3) S.H. Mannaerts, “Extensive Quantities in Thermodynamics”, Eur. J. Phys. 35 (2014) 035017.

4) Zijun Yan, “General Thermal Wavelengths and Its Applications”, Eur. J. Phys. 21 (2000) 625-631.

5) Christon Krimizis-Tsatsoulis, “Trouton’s Rule Mysteries: An Attempt to a Better Understanding”, J. Chem. Thermodynamics 152 (2021) 106256.

6) K. Schoenhammer & V. Meden, “Fermion-Boson Transmutation and Comparison of Statistical Ensembles in One Dimension”, Amer. J. Phys. 64 (1996) 1168-1176.

7) Robert S. Knox & William W. Parson, “Entropy Production and the Second Law in Photosynthesis”, Biochimica et Biophysica Acta 1767 (2007)1189-1193.

8) Ayed Alsharafat & Noureddine Chair, “Factorization of the Bosonic Partition Function”, Phys. Lett. A 381 (2017) 1118-1122.

9) U. Klein, “The Statistical Origins of Quantum Mechanics”, Phys. Res. International 2010 (2010) 808424.

10) W.J. Mullin & J.P. Fernandez, “Bose-Einstein Condensation, Fluctuations and Recurrence Relations in Statistical Mechanics”, Amer. J. Phys. 71 (2003) 661-669.

11) Robert E. Kelly, “Thermodynamics of Blackbody Radiation”, Amer. J. Phys. 49 (1981) 714-719.

12) P. Justice, E. Marshman & C. Singh, “Student Understanding of Fermi Energy, the Fermi-Dirac Distribution and Total Electronic Energy of a Free Electron Gas”, Eur. J. Phys. 41 (2020) 015704.

Mathematical Methods in Physics:

1) S.F. Duki, T.P. Doerr & Y-K. Yu, “Improving Series Convergence: The Simple Pendulum and Beyond”, Eur. J. Phys. 39 (2018) 065802.

2) Edward Levy, “A Matrix Exponential Approach to Radioactive Decay Equations”, Amer. J. Phys. 86 (2018) 909-913.

3) R.S. Mackay, “Use of Stokes’ Theorem for Plasma Confinement”, Phil. Tran. R. Soc. A 378 (2020) 20190519.

4) A. Bostan & P. Dumas, “Wronskians and Linear Independence”, Amer. Math. Monthly 117 (2010) 722-727.

5) T.R. Cameron, “The Determinant From Signed Volume to the Laplace Expansion”, Amer. Math. Monthly 126 (2019) 437-447.

6) M.E. Luna-Elizarraras, M. Shapiro, D.C. Struppa & A. Varac, “Bicomplex Numbers and Their Elementary Functions”, CUBO Math. J. 14 (2012) 61-80.

7) J. Pujol, “Hamilton, Rodrigues, Gauss, Quaternions and Rotations: A Historical Reassessment”, Comm. Math. Analysis 13 (2012) 1-14.

8) M. Hamada, “The Minimum Number of Rotations About Two Axes for Constructing an Arbitrarily Fixed Rotation”, Roy. Soc. Open Sci. 1 (2014) 140145.

9) A. Galantai & Cs. J. Hegedus, “Jordan’s Principal Angles in Complex Vector Spaces”, Numer. Lin. Alg. Appl. 13 (2006) 589-598.

10) I.E. Leonard, “The Matrix Exponential”, SIAM Rev. 38 (1996) 507-512.

11) D.V. Redzic, “The Operator Ñ in Orthogonal Curvilinear Coordinates”, Eur. J. Phys. 22 (2001) 595-599.

12) G. Panou & R. Korakitis, “Analytical and Numerical Methods of Converting Cartesian to Ellipsoidal Coordinates”, J. Geod. Sci. 11 (2021) 111-121.

The idea is to enrich the students with new knowledge beyond what is usually found in the class and perhaps a brief introduction to research. I really hope these spur some interest.

Third Week of January

Third week: No real changes and more mockery.

I will be moving out from the budget hotel today, to return back to my real home. The renovation has yet to finish and I can't even park my car near my home at the moment. Just had to move out today since I can't afford staying at the hotel anymore. So it will still be chaotic weeks ahead, working at home, which is still in a mess.

The week that was: I have been sleeping less and less almost the whole past week. Much due to the deadline imposed for us to finish up our final exam questions (two sets, bilingual) by yesterday (before that, it was earlier agreed that the deadline should be extended due to flood crisis week(s) of no academic activity, but in the end we followed the original deadline). Lacking sleep and rest, one night, I had my blood pressure shot up to 164/114. For the reader's information, I was already on regular medication all this while, but then due to the increase, I had to take extra medication for this. Completed the task needed and worked real hard. I have yet to finish the needed lectures and will have to do recorded lectures to complete the whole course. As I have said before, presently I do not have a complete and stable set of notes for the two courses I am teaching. There is a lot of effort needed to prepare lectures for these courses (particularly Statistical Mechanics) because I prefer to internalise the materials so that I can lecture by what I have experienced in understanding them. For statistical mechanics, I even look up papers to make sure I have understood them correctly. I redo most of the calculations needed for both courses and these are done from scratch. 

This brings to another matter that suddenly becomes the talk of the week: an article written by a politician on our university. I was hoping to ignore this and carry on with our duties of teaching and research, but then there is a flood of mockeries by mob of (uninformed) netizens, depicting the university negatively. The outcome is usually stereotyping, which I am really against at (mainly because of clouded thinking). The university has already officially responded to this matter, but if experience counts, the stereotyping will linger for some time and we will continue to be objects of mockery. As I have posted in social media, the mockery norm is mainly due to individuals have the false impression of feeling better or superior doing so, not having to carry the burden and be responsible for whatever consequences that come after. For most of us (recipients) however, we will continue to work hard and evolve to be better, no matter how less ideal the situation we are in and the constraints and pressures that we have to face. Note that it is always easier to criticise (especially from outside) than doing things to improve.

When such derogatory articles are written, I often ask several questions. Who is the writer and what are his motives? Could he be bitter (I have seen a few of these) due to some past experience or any other ulterior motives (of individuals or of some party e.g. political gains) or is there any genuine concern to solve problems (usually substantiated by some actions)? In the recent past, the university has been subjected to allegations that were later found to be false or exaggerations or partial stories. Why is the university being singled out despite other (local) universities are doing the same (good or bad)? I do not know the answers to these questions but I will be interested to know them.

I have lived most of my life fending off stereotypes. From being a brown-skinned person of an average family, born in the environment of inferiority complex, where we were told that we can't do well in difficult subjects; worked through tertiary education from University of Adelaide to University of Cambridge to University of Durham. Set up a theoretical physics group when we were told that one theorist is sufficient for the department and that we should be grounded in the reality of our circumstances. Helped bring international visitors to the university (not for show but to learn better) and defended our mathematical sciences community, through the institute, for a better future. Sure, what we have done is not enough but surely these account for progress. If others can do better, please do so, rather than condemning what we are doing and painting our efforts with such gloom and doom. Even if some prefer the latter, we will continue to strive and we will not be sitting idle. So buzz off.

Second Week of January

We have gone past the second week of January 2022 and it was much of a trying week for me as I try to deal with backlog of tasks that I had to finish. Of immediate urgency is the tests and exams I had to conduct. I am still opting for open book online exams and their questions are often harder to set since it can't be something that the students can directly copy but yet the problems must be something that the students have seen before how to solve it. This is quite a delicate balance to handle. I have also drafts of PhD theses that I need to look into and for this, I really need a clear mind to go through them and such is not an easy state to achieve. 

These difficulties are compounded with the fact that my house has yet to complete its renovation though one can see some finished results. Due to this, we always have to get our daily meals outside and time is much spent travelling in and out. I am still staying in the budget hotel since the rooms that are ready, are occupied by my sons. I hope this week will be the last week I'll be in the hotel and that our main room be ready by then. The renovation has indeed consumed much of my savings but I guess this is for the long term benefit. Each of my son will now have their own rooms and it will be more spacious. The kitchen will be smaller though as we enlarge the room and toilet downstairs. The room will be occupied by my second son but possibly in the future, if this so happens to be, might be the place where I will spent my final years. Below are some pictures of the build-in furniture (one is to be filled by my tons of papers and books and another is our main room wardrobe) and the new 'stairs'.

To overcome boredom, I read with interest on some postings made by others in the social media. There seems to be 'debates' between 'public figures' of science and religion - more accurate term would be quarrels as followers of either side tend to do (egos are usually involved). Personally, I do not think the social media is a good place to do 'scholarly' discussions; there are other (existing) platforms that can be used. I, myself, prefer face-to-face discussions, either physically or virtually, where one is less probable to be mobbed by relentless followers of certain personalities. (So far, I use social media more like a diary and a link dump for me to refer to.) Even with face-to-face discussions, one is not safe from being heckled by some mob. I have two experiences where we had some science-religion discussions. One is at Unisza, where I presented the various logics that physics has suggested to us to consider or believe. My main idea then was to give update on recent theories of physics and their implied logical systems to scholars and students in religious sciences. It was not in my mind to undermine whatever they're researching or studying. Thereafter, I overheard comments or remarks about me being secular (perhaps me not quoting a single Qur'anic ayat or any religious concept) and some jested about how I pronounce mantiq (see here). Yes, I am not trained as an Arabic speaker. The second time was in IIUM where we had a forum on more or less the same theme. I was invited by my colleague there and the then Deputy Vice-Rector. My colleague gave some ideas on quantum theory where he favoured some degree of openness or incompleteness of the knowledge we have, and this makes room for (perhaps divine) active intervention. I reiterated what I have given in Unisza but also expressed my sympathy with a certain kind of determinism (not available to us) via (undetermined) hidden variables. This seems to surprise my colleague. I remember asking my colleague whether I should consider citing Qur'anic ayat given my previous Unisza experience but then he advised me, just be myself and so I did. I think there was no real conclusion from the event but I do remember somebody approaching me at the end (can't remember on what was discussed and there was no follow-up). In any case, just like the Unisza event, my idea is just to update the audience then on what I know, but not to preach them to believe anything (that is theirs to act upon or deny). 

Generally, I do try to understand issues of philosophy and of religion and I am still learning (perhaps that will pass me as shallow). I once said to my IIUM colleague, that philosophers tend to highlight extremes (perhaps to make marked boundaries) but most things are those placed in between. Humans are rarely consistent and tend to justify matters according to convenience or context or changing stance due to increase in knowledge and experience. It is in the final point that I wish both philosophers and scientists do take note on and progress. There will always be age-long questions that will go unanswered (most probably until we go to the other side in the hereafter). In the meantime, one should take up whatever small progress or understanding and that knowledge requires our humility (not arrogance). The other point that is part of my ongoing efforts is to deconstruct stereotypes. Debates in the social media, however, tend to do the reverse. We have to be very aware of this, aware of our own egos and biasness, be at our best behaviour and rationality, and tread carefully as we debunk our own thoughts and of others. I do wish the best to those who have try to convey what they have learned to the public in their capacity but do be aware of the potential pitfalls.

Final point to this post: we should be aware of our failings as humans. Those in sciences are as much susceptible to failings as others (say in religious sciences). In the past, I used to put higher standards of morality (stereotyping) with those proclaiming religious background but they are just as human as those without the religious background. Nowadays, I shift such judgmental views on my own self and if there are indeed failings of others, I will take them as lessons. Recently there are some surprising revealing facts about Schroedinger (being pedophile). Some tweeted that this has been mentioned in passing by Rovelli in Helgoland. Not having the book, I should start to listen to his YouTube interview by Brian Keating, if it was mentioned there. This is not the first time that I have heard of the human failing of Schrodinger: there was this Einstein-Schroedinger correspondence revealed by Ashtekar in his article. In there, it was mentioned Einstein's disapproval of Schrodinger's public sensationalization of his research:

"It seems undesirable to me to present such preliminary attempts to the public. ... Such
communiqu´es given in sensational terms give the lay public misleading ideas about the
character of research. The reader gets the impression that every five minutes there is a
revolution in Science, somewhat like a coup d’etat in some of the smaller unstable republics."

There are many lessons that can be taken here and let these be ones that guide us in communicating science to the public.

The First Week

My New Year wish (if any) is to make my life devoid of negative feelings. Within less than a week, this wish is destroyed when I heard that another one of my FYP students was getting damaging criticisms, to the point of possibly not following my earlier suggestions. Before this, one of my FYP student decided to change her education research because of suggestions made by her assessors during her seminar to include multimedia packages. Sincerely, I have seen some multimedia projects before this, that does not provide any real physical insight in understanding the physics content, apart from mere flashy animations. I would rather have her probe into some conceptual difficulties in undergraduate quantum mechanics. Here is one recent paper that does so (hey look, no animations). More papers can be found in this open access journal Physical Review Physics Education Research. The student finally gave up this idea of studying conceptual difficulties in quantum mechanics, and look into issues in high school curriculum instead. My style of supervision is that I tend to let students decide what they think is best for themselves but whatever it is, they need to show the level of work enough for a final year project. So here again, I'm confronted with another case. It really gets on my nerves. I welcome constructive criticisms but they must know enough to do so. Again, I let the student decide what he thinks is best for him and will not force anyone to do anything that he is uncomfortable with. Feeling annoyed, that night my blood pressure rose to 151/113 and had severe headache.

Theoretical physics has always been tough for our students because our curriculum tend to be skewed towards more applied nature. Students often run away from theoretical physics even without the encouragement of others to do so. Often there is a wide gap for students to cross over into theoretical research. Thus, for undergraduate research project, I do not expect them to do any original research (unless they are really good) but I do expect them to do their own calculations. Sometimes I do wish that those who criticise us (our students), would have a go at doing such theoretical problems. This is not to say that they can't do them, but merely to experience the difficulties. I certainly would not interfere on what should be done in experimental projects because I have no experience in them and I know that each has their own types of difficulties. To rub salt to my wounds, there are already remarks that one should not take many students and we have not trained well our theoretical physics students.

So largely the first week of January has been difficult for me and I have lots of things on my mind. Have always had headaches as I reach home from office. Yesterday was really bad and my BP was 150/115 with a severe headache. The headache prolonged into the night, until sometime before midnight, until my other half said I should go to the hospital. The fear was it may turn into a stroke if it went on and also we were hoping to do a CT-scan since the headache was already for a few days (after work). We went to Columbia Hospital but we were directed to Hospital Tuanku Jaafar. Blood test was done and my headache subsided and was released this morning near 4am. Was given medical leave for today.

Welcome 2022

So far, what's new with your new year? If one is like most people, things are just pretty much the same. Even so, let us not go overboard with cynicism and sarcasm culture that one sees quite a lot nowadays and look down on those who celebrate new year or write down new year resolutions. Be kind especially in these trying times. In any case, it is always good to be conscious of efforts trying to improve oneself, be this at the new year or for that matter at any other selected times (usually comes with certain meaning or understanding).

Talking about sarcasm, I remembered reading a social media post talking about the movie "Don't Look Up" and about education as overcoming stupidity instead of improving intelligence. I tend to see both stupidity and intelligence come in various shapes and sizes in a way that I normally prefer to think more on concrete ideas. Nevertheless, I do take the idea of overcoming stupidity as important. In fact, I use this as my drive to push for (hard) theoretical sciences. One does not learn much when one sticks to easy things; one needs to push for more difficult things to learn better (and hence not considered foolish when discussing matters at a technical level). This is particularly critical these days when ego gets the better of us and one falls into the pits of 'bodoh sombong' (arrogantly stupid).

In pursuing theoretical sciences, I normally devise four levels of attaining informationn and knowledge (and they are by no means, fixed with specific boundaries) for me to organise thoughts:

• Awareness: This level allows one to know what (areas) that one does not know. For me, I have the tendency to scout for topics that I wish I can learn but do not really have the time to pursue them. I do this by looking at the arXiv and note down interesting papers in Equatorial Frequencies. Most of these go unread, of course.
• General Knowledge: Of the things that I wish I could learn (from above), I normally identify certain specific areas (usually related to my own research) that I would try to make sure that I know what are their main ideas/gist and techniques underlying these areas. One may not know the details but can quickly approach them if needed. This is perhaps the level I expect generalists should have.
• Working Knowledge: These should be on the research areas that one is working on where technical details matter. One may not be considered as expert in the area but is sufficiently knowledgeable about it. This is also the level I expect master students can achieve.
• Mastery and Wisdom in Specific Knowledge: Here, one expects that details of specific areas are known to the individual with the ability to see connections between diverse topics, and sniff new research directions. PhD candidates should aspire to achieve this level. To be called an expert, the individual should have already attained this level. With my students, I often add our need to be reference point of the subject matter, not only to our local community of scientists but also the international community. The latter is the real test for most of us academics.

Having said all these, I consider these as signposts for me making my own personal judgements of where one is; others might want to consider things differently. One should be extra careful to expert self-proclamation; often such recognition is given by others in the (international) scientific community. As such, that is why I always felt that we still have a long way to go. I hope some will find these thoughts useful on this day of the New Year.