Young Suh Kim - Biography
Childhood (1935-1946)
|
|
The Sorae Church. I went to this church during my childhood years.
Click here for the history of this church.
|
- I was born in 1935 at a Korean village called Sorae, where
Koreans set up their first Presbyterian church in 1884.
Horace Underwood was the first American Presbyterian missionary who
came to Korea in 1885. Upon hearing about this church, he went to Sorae
and noted that this village is near a beautiful scenic beach called
Kumipo. He built his house there. Then, many other Americans
came to Kumipo to build their summer houses.
My grandfather was one of Underwood's trusted Korean friends.
He was a well-to-do landlord, and took care of Underwood's properties
at Sorae and Kumipo while he was busy in the capital city of Seoul.
Underwood set up a Christian college in Seoul which became one of
the leading universities in Korea, called
Yonsei University.
I attended this Sorae church when I was a child, and grew up
in the thoroughly Christian environment.
Click here to expand this photo.
|
Elementary school in Sorae under Japanese occupation. Students and teachers
had to bow toward the Japanese emperor in the morning before the school hours.
|
- Korea was occupied by Japanese military imperialists from 1910 to
1945. I had to attend my elementary school run by Japanese. We had
to speak Japanese while in school, and bow toward East
(Japanese Emperor in Tokyo) every morning before school hours.
Here is a photo of my elementary
school in Sorae with students and teachers.
- Unfortunately, Korea became divided in 1945 after World War II, and
the village of Sorae is now under the control of the North Korean
regime which was installed in 1948 by Joseph Stalin of the Soviet
Union. My family moved to Seoul in 1946 before 1948.
- Do you know how Korea was divided in 1945? Click here.
|
I met Richard Underwood in Urbana, Illinois, USA (2003).
|
- In 2003, I was fortunate enough to meet Richard Underwood, Horace Underwood's
youngest grandson, in Urbana, Illinois, USA. We talked about Sorae and Kumipo.
He was a Korean-speaking member of the American team at the Panmunjon Cease-Fire
talks (1951-53) during the Korean war (1950-53).
He is the author of the
NLL, the dividing like between North and South in the West Sea of Korea. He was
was eager to see his house at Kumipo from the South.
- Click here for my Korean background.
|
|
Teenager (1946-1954)
Click here to expand this photo.
|
My high school had a beautiful campus. It was heavily damaged during
the Korean war (1950-53). The campus was rebuilt after the war.
|
- In May of 1946, my family moved to Seoul to avoid the Stalin-backed communist
rule being set up at the Sorae village just north of the 38th Parallel dividing Korea
into the South and North.
In Seoul, I finished my elementary school and went to six
years of high school education from 1948 to 1954.
- Alas, the Korean War broke out in 1950 and lasted until 1953. The school campus was
damaged and the students had to study at temporary places until the
cease fire was signed in July of 1953.
Click here
for my stories of the Korean war (1950-53).
- These days, it is meaningless to talk about one's high school
background, but everybody thinks his/her school is best in the world.
I have a good reason to say that I attended the best high school in
the world. Click here for my reasoning.
Click here for
comparable high schools in the world.
Another excellent high school in Budapest, Hungary.
-
In this photo of 1954, I am shaking hands with General Maxwell
Taylor who was the commander of the U.S. Forces in Korea. Under him
were more than 300,000 combat-ready American troops.
General Taylor was a scholarly man and was keenly interested in Korea's
educational system. He wanted to visit the best high school in Korea.
He asked his Korean secretary which school to visit. The Korean
secretary told Taylor about the high school he attended. He is also
in this photo (far left).
- Click here for my high-school diary.
|
|
Undergraduate Years (1954-1958)
|
|
Princeton Years (1958-1962)
|
|
Period of Adjustments (1962-1966)
- In July of 1962, I became an assistant professor of physics at
the University of Maryland, near Washington, DC. This is a photo of
the physics faculty taken in the spring of 1963, and I am the youngest
person in this photo. The life was not easy for me in the highly
competitive academic world, where everybody is afraid of his/her
colleague becoming more famous than himself/herself.
- This is a human nature which can be described as
Herod Complex.
Among my colleagues, there were several people who got turned down from
Princeton and went to other good graduate schools. Those people were
extremely nasty to me. However, I always got help from appropriate
persons whenever I was in difficult positions. The point is that I
pursued my own research line strange to others.
What is the job of the youngest faculty member? In September of 1962,
Paul A. M Dirac (Nobel 1933) visited the University of Maryland at the
invitation of John S. Toll, the chairman of the Department of Physics. Toll
assigned me to serve as the personal assistant to Dirac. This gave me
the valuable opportunity to learn physics directly from him.
Click here to see what learned from him.
- The most rewarding aspect of my life at the University of Maryland
is that the campus is near the city of Washington, DC.
There are many politicians in the Greater Washington area, but there
are far more scientists in this area. They are providing necessary
wisdom to the government. Here are the photos
from this interesting city.
- Even though I am away from Princeton, I used to think the ultimate
wisdom in physics comes from Princeton. However, in 1965, I realized that
Princeton is not necessarily the holy place in physics.
Click here for my explanation.
This does not mean that I lack respect for Princeton's historical figures
such as Albert Einstein and Eugene Wigner. I do not have to mention
those Princeton people I dislike, because their names do not exist in
the history of physics.
|
|
Years of Struggle (1966-1979): Most Valuable Years!
- I am introduced as a Princeton Ph.D. wherever I go. It was a
painful experience to realize that
I could not trust Princeton,
and I had to build my own research line, while keeping my connection
with Princeton. How was this possible?
- When I was a student there,
Eugene Paul Wigner (Nobel 1963) was totally isolated from the rest of the physics
department, and my professors told me "Wigner is gone."
Yet, I started studying
Wigner's 1939 paper on the inhomogeneous Lorentz group.
During the early years of my life at the University of Maryland, I restarted
studying this paper. It was a frustrating experience because people did not know
how to use this mathematical formalism for understanding physics.
- I noticed also a blank point in history. During the early years of
the 20th Century, Niels Bohr was worrying about the hydrogen atom, while
Einstein was interested in how things look to moving observers. They met
occasionally to discuss physics. If they talked about moving hydrogen atoms,
there are no written record on this issue.
- The question then is whether the Bohr-Einstein issue of the hydrogen can
be interpreted in terms of the scientific language Wigner constructed in 1939.
- We can summarize what I said above with the following figure.
|
Photos of Bohr and Einstein are from the public domain.
|
In 1978, with my younger colleagues, I wrote a paper saying that Wigner's
1939 paper plays an essential role in studying moving quantum bound states,
like the hydrogen atom or the proton in the quark model. I submitted
this paper to the Journal of Mathematical Physic in late 1978, and
it appeared in the Journal in early 1979.
Here is the paper.
- If Bohr and Einstein did not discuss the moving hydrogen atom, it is
understandable. There were and still are no hydrogen atoms fast enough
to show the effect of Einstein's relativity.
- During the latter half of the 20th Century, high-energy accelerators
started producing protons moving with speeds close to that of light.
However, the proton is not a hydrogen atom. In 1964, Murray Gell-Mann
formulated the quark model of hadron where the proton is a quantum bound
state of more fundamental particles called "quarks." In this way,
Gell-Mann was able to explain the mass spectra of other particles
appearing in high-energy physics.
While the proton is a quantum bound state, just like the hydrogen atom,
it can move with speed close to that of light. For this ultra-fast
proton, Feynman observed a number of peculiarities. This observation is
called "Feynman's parton picture." Thus the Bohr-Einstein issue of the
hydrogen atom is translated into the question of Gell-Mann's quark model
and Feynman's parton picture can be explained in terms of Einstein's
relativity.
- Click here for more about
the quark-parton puzzle.
- Click here for the wide-open physics world.
|
|
Dirac Years (1979-1986)
|
My photo with Driac's bust at the Fine Hall Library
of Princeton University.
|
- After publishing
my paper on the Poincaré group
in 1979, I found out I was not the first person to worry about moving
hydrogen atom. I then studied the papers written by early pioneers.
Paul A. M. Dirac (Nobel 1933) devoted much of his professional life to
constructing quantum mechanics in Einstein's relativistic world.
He wrote beautiful sentences, and his papers are like poems, but there
are no figures in his papers. I then translated Dirac's poems into
cartoons and illustrations. With those figures, it is easy to integrate
Dirac's papers into one. The net effect is then the Bohr-Einstein
issue of how the hydrogen atom appears to moving observers, or how the
hydrogen atom appears when it moves fast.
- In this figure, the hyperbola
is for Einstein's relativity and the circle is quantum mechanics of the proton
or the hydrogen atom (localized probability distribution according to quantum mechanics).
It has a probability distribution along the spacial axis (according to Bohr,
Schroedinger, and Heisenberg). It also has a distribution along the time axis
according to Dirac.
When the system moves, the hyperbola remains the same according to
Einstein. On the other hand, the circle becomes squeezed to ellipse,
while maintaining the contact point with the hyperbola.
- Then where does this result stand in history? Historically
our unified understanding of scattering and bound states has
been very brief. Comets (scattering) and planets (bound states)
were quite different until Isaac Newton produced his equation of
motion. In atomic and nuclear physics, they were separate issues
until Schroedinger and Heisenberg produced their formulas.
In Einstein's world, they are again separate issues. For scattering
problems, quantum field theory is a satisfactory scheme for dealing
with scattering problems. For the bound-state, we have to deal with
the problem using the mathematical procedure given here.
Click here to expand this figure.
|
Dirac and Feynman in Poland (1962). Dirac was a poet and Feynman was a
cartoonist. It is fun to translate Dirac's poems into cartoons.
|
The question then is whether the scattering and bound states in
Einstein's relativistic world can be derived from the same set of
equations. The answer is YES. This set is called the inhomogeneous
Lorentz group or the Poincaré group. With my younger colleagues,
I published many articles and books on this subject. My
latest book is entitled "Physics of the Lorentz group: Beyond
High-energy Physics and Optics," published in 2021 by the British
Institute of Physics.
- The mathematics of the circle becoming squeezed into an ellipse
is simple enough.
The question is whether this effect can be
observed in the real world. Indeed, Gell-Mann's quark model
and Feynman's parton picture are routinely observed in high-energy
laboratories. They can be described in terms of this simple
mathematics. Click here for my the
parton file.
- I met Dirac in 1962. I was like
Nicodemus meeting Jesus. Who was Nicodemus? Go to the Gospel of John
in the New Testament.
- After going through Dirac's papers, I was able to see my own talent.
I am effective in integrating the works of earlier creative scientists, as
illustrated in this figure.
It was late, but not too late.
- Click here to see how I connected
these lakes.
|
|
|
Wigner Years (1986-90)
|
Mr. and Mrs. Toll, Wigner, and myself (1986).
Dr. John S. Toll was the Chancellor of the University of Maryland System.
This photo was produced at his residence.
|
- Throughout my research life, I was guided by the paper on the
inhomogeneous Lorentz group published in 1939 by Eugene Wigner (Nobel 1963).
He was a professor at Princeton University when I was a student there.
I used to go to him whenever I had questions other professors could not
explain.
- His 1939 paper deals with the internal space-time symmetries of
particles in Einstein's world. A massive particle can be brought
to the frame where it is at rest. In this frame, the particle
exhibits its internal angular momentum called "spin," and its
spin axis can have three different directions. For massless particles,
like photons, the spin can have one direction parallel to its momentum.
This massless particle has an un-observable gauge degrees of freedom.
Wigner's 1939 did not produce a unified picture of these two different
physical phenomena.
- In 1986, with my younger colleagues, I published a paper containing the following
table. This table tells that Wigner's little group unifies the internal space-time
symmetries for both massive and massless particles, as Einstein's
unifies the energy-momentum relation.
Contents of Einstein's E = mc2
|
Particle |
Massive/Slow |
between |
Massless/Fast |
|
Einstein |
Energy Momentum |
E = p2/2m |
E = (m2 + p2)1/2 |
E = cp |
|
|
This table is from
one of my papers published in 1986.
In 1986, I approached Professor Wigner to tell this story to him. He became
very happy and asked me to publish new papers with him. We produced seven papers.
- After publishing my papers with Wigner, I became politically (unfortunate word)
strong enough to publish the following table in
Physical Review Letters.
This table contains my earlier work on the Bohr-Einstein issue
of the Gell-Mann-Feynman issue.
Further Contents of Einstein's
E = mc2
|
Massive/Slow |
between |
Massless/Fast |
|
Energy Momentum |
E = p2/2m |
Einstein's
E=(m2 + p2)1/2 |
E = cp |
|
|
|
Click here for further contents of this table.
|
- Let us translate this table into the plain language:
Throughout my academic career, the most important asset has been
my graduate and post-graduate education in Princeton (1958-62). I met
there Professor Eugene Wigner while I was a student. After coming to
Maryland, I continued the research line set up by Wigner. In 1986, I
approached him again after doing enough work to tell him what he really
wanted to hear. In this way, I published seven papers with Wigner.
Thus, it is possible to construct Princeton's Einstein genealogy as
shown in this photo.
- Click here for my Wigner file.
- Click here for his little groups
spelled out in his 1939 paper.
- The most rewarding aspect of my association with Wigner is that I am known
as
- Wigner's youngest student at Princeton,
- carrying this Einstein Genealogy.
|
|
Optical Sciences (1990-2012)
|
|
|
This book was published by the IOP (British Institute of Physics).
|
|
Squeeze in phase space, and squeeze in space and time.
|
|
|
Singing Einstein these days
-
This video about me from the Marquis Who's Who mentions Einstein 14 times.
- Further contents of Einstein's E = mc2.
Click here for the story.
- Einstein's special relativity derivable from two oscillators. Crazy?
I am publishing papers on this subject.
Click here for my publication list.
- It is said that Einstein was more than a physicist. Then, was he
a politician? No. Was he a philosopher? YES. Then, where is his
coordinate among philosophers. While he was a
high-school student, Einstein studied the books written by Immanuel
Kant. According to Kant, one thing could appear differently depending
on the observer's environment. This is why Einstein worried about
how things look to moving observers.
- On the other hand, most of his scientific achievements are Hegelian.
He synthesized the energy-momentum relation for massive and massless
particles. He also synthesized the wave and particle natures of
the matter in his photo-electric effects. Unlike Kant who wanted
to reduce things to one, Einstein reduced many to two, and then
synthesized them into one. Indeed, this is how the physical laws
have been developed.
Does this mean that both quantum mechanics and special relativity
with E = mc2 are derivable from one basket of
equations? Go to my publication
list for my latest papers on this subject.
- Click here for Einstein
as philosopher. I am not able to see how philosophers can do their
philosophies without understanding physics.
- Click here for Einstein's Bern:
the birth place of E = mc2.
- Einstein is a giant in history. If I talk about him, publishing
companies pay attention to my webpages. Let us see what they say about me.
- Marquis Who's Who
- Wall Street Journal
- Fortune Magazine
-
Research Features.
Click here for the magazine article.
- Millennium Magazine
- American Way.
- Hemisphere Magazine.
- What do they say about me?
- Video
from the Marquis Who's Who.
- Video
from the IAOTP (International Association of Top Professionals).
- Click here for awards and reconditions.
|
- Here is the
cover page of a magazine by the International Association
of Top Professionals. What do they say about me?
-
Let us listen. This video says:
One hundred years ago, Niels Bohr was worrying about the electron orbit of the
hydrogen atom, leading to quantum mechanics. Albert Einstein was interested
in how things look to moving observers. Then the question is how the hydrogen
atom appears to moving observers. Bohr and Einstein met occasionally, but they
never discussed this problem. This video says I am the one who settled this
issue. Go back to the image given above.
- Toward the end, this video says I had a strong high-school background
before coming to the United States from Korea in 1954. How strong? Let us
look at this frame:
|
|
Personal History
- In Korea, the school year starts in March, while it begins in September
in the United States. Thus, I spent one freshman semester at the Engineering
College of Seoul National University, right after my
high school graduation until I started my freshman year at the
Carnegie Institute of Technology (in Pittsburgh. USA) in September of 1954.
Korea's high schools were and still are single-gender places, according to
the rules of Confucius. I went to an all-male high school, and I did not
learn how to talk to girls.
At that time, Koreans did not trust female engineers. There were not
many girls going to engineering colleges. In 1954, my freshman class
consisted of 360 students, but there were only 15 girls. Among those
girls, one of them appeared attractive to me.
- The following photos show the engineering college and the girl who
attracted my attention.
- I met this girl again in 1963 in Washington. By that time, she needed a
husband, and I needed a wife. We got married. We had our son in 1965,
and he went to Princeton as a freshman in 1983. He got married in 2003.
We now have two grandchildren.
- This is our family photo of 1966.
- In 1969, we bought a new house, and
we still live there. This house is about six km from the campus of
the University of Maryland. I could go to my office during the evening
hours.
- Our neighbors are nice people. They
help us whenever we need helps. We once invited them to a Korean restaurant
in the Washington area.
- There is a treed area near the house, and we see sometimes un-invited
guests like this in our backyard.
- Click here for more
house photos.
- We now have two grandchildren. Their parents (our son and his wife)
are doing well. In 2020, they bought a Steinway piano for our grandchildren.
We are proud of all four of them.
- Click here for webpages for my wife and family.
- We travelled around the world and met many interesting people.
Click here for photos from the world.
|
|
Life after 2007
- In 2007, I became a professor emeritus at the Univ. of Maryland.
This could mean a retirement from professional life.
To me, however, it was a beginning of a new life. This means that I
have no teaching and other scheduled duties. Thus, I became a
full-time researcher, and I now publish books and articles with
complete freedom. In addition, I could travel to interesting places
in the world.
- I am free to say whatever I want to say. You may be interested in
the books and articles I published in recent years.
Click here for my publications.
- Since there are no scheduled duties, I have been free to travel around
the world and take photos.
Click here
for the photos I took from many different countries.
- I am now free to talk about Albert Einstein. Talking about Einstein
and other big names used to upset my colleagues and departmental
administrators in the past.
I am now free to talk about Einstein as a philosopher. Then, where is his
coordinate among the well-known philosophers?
Click here.
- I realized that the most important aspect of my research has been and
still is to find out about myself, not necessarily about Einstein and others.
- Work Habit. Connect the existing
lakes to build a big canal. Paul A. M. Dirac wrote many papers in order
to make quantum mechanics consistent with relativity. But he never
attempted to combine them to make one big paper. It was a profitable
business for me to combine them into one paper. How could I do what
Dirac could not do? Dirac wrote beautiful sentences, and his papers
are poems. I translated his papers into cartoons (figures). Then
it is easy to combine them into
one picture
- Where do I stand in Physics? After
many years of struggle (before 2000), I found out where I stand in physics.
- I then became more
ambitious. I could integrate physics.
- During the 20th Century, scientists developed quantum mechanics
(via Bohr and Heisenberg) and relativity (via Einstein). The question is
whether these two theories can be derived from one basket of equations.
I am writing papers and books on this unthinkable problem.
Click here for my recent articles
books.
- As a cultured man, I pretend to know about art and music. I can now say
that physics is an art of Harmony and Integration
(Tao and Hegel). Let us see harmony and integration in art and music.
Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC. USA.
|
|
post card from the Beethoven Museum in Bonn, Germany.
|
- Harmony in Architecture and Harmony in Physics.
Let us look at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC (USA). It is harmony and
synthesis of Greek columns and Roman dome. This building was John F. Kennedy's favorite
art piece.
- Harmony in Music and Harmony in Physics.
You are invited to my Beethoven page, Go to his
String Quartet No. 4. You will appreciate how important "harmony" is in music.
- Feynman's One Physics.
Feynman is my hero in physics. Like him, I believe in one physics.
Richard Feynman was a great American physicist. He received his PhD
degree from Princeton in 1942. I maintain a webpage dedicated to him.
Click here.
Feynman is also a very interesting individual.
- Click here for the music places I have been to.
Click here for the songs and music I like to hear.
- Click here for the art museums I visited.
-
Why am I so crazy about webpages?
Click here.
- Passion for communication. I had
a shortwave radio when I was a high-school student (1951-1954) in Korea.
While listening
to the world, I became eager to talk to the world. The internet technology is
God's best gift to me.
- How do I take photos?
- One crazy webpage.
- Another crazy webpage.
People seem to like crazy webpages.
|
|
Bio-Menu
|
- Korea's Recent History. I was born and raised in Korea.
Thus, my personality and talents were developed in Korea. Thus, it is of interest
to see Korea's recent history. Korea is a small country surrounded by by big powers,
and the country has a very interesting recent history.
- Division of Korea. Like to know how Korea was
divided?
Korea has been one country for more
than 4,000 years. The division was made in 1945 when two different armies (the United
States and the Soviet Union) came to two different regions of Korea (south and north
of the 38th parallel). My family was in the North, but moved to Seoul (capital city
of the South) in 1946 to avoid the communist rule being set up there.
- My Korean Background. I came to the United States in
1954. America is highly competitive society, quite different from
the Korean environment. Thus, I have to give up the Korean way of thinking to
adapt myself to the American way.
No! I needed my Korean Wisdom to get ahead in
America. In short, Americans believe in money, but Koreans believe in Jokbo (genealogy).
I have to believe in both.
- On the money side, I had to do enough savings and investments for the college
tuitions for my two grandchildren. I like to be richer, but this seems to be
my limit.
- On the genealogy side, I am more ambitious. Albert Einstein was not my
biological grandfather, but I wanted to his scientific grandson by filling
in a empty spot in his scientific world.
- Wisdom of Korea for daily life. Since I came to the United States
when I was 19 years old. I had to change my way of life to adapt myself to
the American way. Yes, however, I had to go back to my own Korean wisdom
whenever I had to make serious decisions.
- My High School Education in Korea. Koreans believe
in education of their children. The Korean War (1950-53) lasted during my
high-school years (1948-54). I talk about my high school years during the war.
I talk about my high-school background in the competitive academic world.
- Undergraduate Years in Pittsburgh. I was a student at
the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, now known as
Carnegie Mellon
University. I worked hard there and excellent grades. On March 12, 1958,
during my senior year, I received a letter from Princeton University telling me
I ranked very high among the 15 students admitted to their graduate program in physics.
It was the happiest day in my life.
Going to Princeton! I was ready to meet Einstein, even if he died there three
years earlier, in 1955. Everybody who went to Princeton thought in this way.
Einstein's name was this strong, and his name is still strong.
|
While preparing a paper for publication in 1961
at Princeton.
|
- Princeton Years. I went there in 1958, and received my PhD
degree in 1961, and stayed there for one additional year as a pot-doctoral fellow.
My Princeton background serves as the most valuable asset in professional world and
in my social life. I am always introduced a Princeton PhD.
On the other hand, the life there was highly competitive. I would be less than
fully honest if I say I was never treated negatively for my national origin by
my American friends. Korea during my time there (1958-62) was regarded as
an underdeveloped country receiving American economic aids.
|
Physics faculty photo of 1963, at the end of
the my first academic year as the faculty member. I am the youngest person
in this photo.
|
- University of Maryland. I came to the University of Maryland
as an assistant professor of physics. I became promoted to associate and full professor.
In 2007, I retired from my teaching and other university duties. I am now an emeritus
professor and still maintain my office on the university campus, and I publish my books
and articles with the university address.
- Crisis as Opportunity.
The life in the academic world is
highly competitive. I sometimes had to fight against authorities and establishments.
I could make substantial progresses only by overcoming those difficulties.
- Korean Wisdom for research life.
- I travelled around. I collected photos of interesting
places in the world.
- I lived for 60 years in Maryland near the city
of Washington, DC. This city is of coure the capital city of the United States.
|
On his grave stone in London, Karl Marx says
"Philosophers have interpreted this world in various ways. The point
however is to change it."
|
- Physics and Philosophy. I am a PhD which means a wise-man
in philosophy. There were many philosophers in history who shaped up our way of life and
our way of thinking. Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel were among the philosophers who shaped
up the way we think these days. Einstein studied thoroughly the philosophy of Kant when he
was a high-school student. I review my research efforts according to the framework of
Kant and Hegel.
- I love music. Einstein was a music lover. So were
many other physicists. I do not know why they had to love music to to physics.
In any case, I am a physicist and I like music.
- Art Museums in the World. In physics, the language of
pictures and cartoons play important roles. It is of great interest to me to see how
traditional artists described the world as they see.
- Life-time achievements I review what
I have achieved and what I still need.
|
According to these two plaques, I did enough work for Niels Bohr and for
Albert Einstein. However, they do not seem to know that my main contribution
is to build a bridge between them. It is because there are no written records
to indicate that Bohr and Einstein talked about the area between them.
|
|
|