Wisdom of Korea

• 1954-58. I was an undergraduate student at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, known these days as Carnegie Mellon University. I worked hard there and got excellent grades.

  Click here for my undergraduate years in Pittsburgh.

  Princeton (1961). Preparing a paper for publication in the Physical Review.

• On March 12, 1958, I got a letter from Princeton University telling me that I ranked very high among the 15 boys admitted to the graduate program there. Princeton at time was a single-gender school.

  Going to Princeton? I was going to meet Einstein! Einstein died there three years earlier in 1955. I am not the only person who felt in this way. All ambitious American boys wanted to go to Princeton because of Einstein's big name. Why boys, not girls? Princeton was a single-gender college until 1969.

  Only after many years of struggle, I found out the way in which I could talk to Einstein.
  Click here to see how I talked to Einstein

• Click here for my Princeton years.

  Physics faculty photo of 1963 at the University of Maryland. I am the youngest person in this photo.

• In 1962, I became an assistant professor of physics at the University of Maryland. I then became promoted to an associate and to a full professor. In 2007, I became an emeritus professor after retiring from my teaching and other university duties. I still have my office in the physics building and publish my papers and books with my university address.

• To sum up, I grew up in Korea but went through my college years and professional life in the United States. The traditional culture of Korea is quite different from that of the United States. Does this means that I had to give up my Korean way of life and Korean way of thinking in order to adjust myself to the American ways ?

  The answer to this question is No. I had to rely on the wisdom of Korea in order to assert myself in the world.

• I would be less than fully honest if I say there were no prejudices against Koreans, especially during my Princeton years (1958-62). My American friends used to say
  1. Koreans cannot run their own country. The best solution is to give the country back Japan. Americans did not and still do not know the history of that area before the Pearl Harbor Day of December 7, 1941. At that time, Korea was under Japanese occupation.

  2. The people with non-white skins do not have enough brains to make nuclear bombs. It is safe to say that this kind of thinking led to the present trouble with North Korean nuclear bombs.

  3. I was good in mathematics, and I used to brag about what I learned during my high-school years in Korea. They asked me whether my high-school lessons were given in English. When I said I learned all high school lessons in my own language, my American friends could not understand how anyone can do mathematics with a language other than the Euro-American languages.

  John F. Kennedy during the 1960 campaign.

  Katherine Stephens went to Korea as a Peace Corps volunteer, and then served as the U.S. Ambassador to Korea. She is now the president of the Korean Economic Institute in Washington.

• During the election year of 1960, John F. Kennedy introduced the idea of Peace Corps. This caused an excitement among young American students. Teaching things to the people in underdeveloped countries!

  They were all set to go to Mexico to teach them how to lay bricks for buildings. They were also willing to go to oil-rich Arabian countries to teach them how to run their banks.

  1. I was almost stoned to death when I said it is a great idea because Americans learn things from the world. How can Americans learn anything from others? This was the attitude of Princeton students when I was there.

  2. Kathleen Stephens spent two years in Korea as a Peace Corps volunteer, and later served as the U.S. Ambassador to Korea (2008-2010). She is now the president of the Korean Economic Institute in Washington. Indeed, she is a valuable asset in the foreign affairs of the United States. Needless to say, she is a product of JFK's idea of Peace Corps.

     In 2010, I met her at a meeting in Washington, and we talked about Kennedy's ideas on the Peace Corps.

  3. When I told her the above-mentioned experience with my friends while at Princeton, she told me Kennedy's first speech contained the idea of Americans learning things from the world. After all, JFK was a future-looking person.

Here comes what I really wanted to say.

I had to strengthen my own Korean root to compete with others in the United State.

Thus, what are the cultural assets I inherited from Korea? I would like to itemize those assets.

• In spite of these confusions, I still maintain what I am. I was born and raised in Korea. I still carry my Korean passport when I travel to other countries. This Korean passport is stronger than the U.S. passport these days. For instance, I can go to Russia without visa to that country.

• I still read a daily newspaper from Korea and watch Korean TV programs. There are four Korean TV channels available in my area. I enjoy social gatherings among Koreans in the Washington area. There are also many Americans who served in Korea as soldiers or diplomats.

• Koreans work hard. Their ancestors were farmers. They had to get up early in the morning and work hard until their evening hours.

• Koreans believe in the education of their children. Until 1970, Korean kids had to study hard to pass the entrance exams to go to a small number of elite high schools. I went to one of those elite high schools. Click here for my high school background.

  Things are different now. They want to send their children to prestigious universities in the United States.

• In April of 1960, there was a student revolution in Korea against the election fraud. My American friends told me directly Korean is not ready for democracy. However, they did not know about the hidden assets of Koreans. Koreans are diligent and are eager to learn new things. I am one of them.

• The net effect of these Korean assets can be seen in the following photos.

  The black-white photo was taken in 1950 before the total destruction of the city during the Korean War (1950-53). Since then, Koreans were able to lift up their country to one of the strongest countries in the world.

• When Koreans construct buildings, they consider how they look with the natural environment.
  1. Korean Architecture. Harmony with nature.
  2. Another Photo in harmony with nature.
  3. This Simple Structure in Pyongyang is an integral component of nature. Korea used to be and still is one country sharing the same cultural heritage.

  Unlike those European cathedrals, Korean houses and buildings do not stand out. It is very difficult to extract artistic values from them. Right? Wrong! The strength of Korean architecture is its harmony with nature. I can of course talk more about its historical origin, but let me stop here.

• How about harmony in physics? Whenever there is a great breakthrough, it is accompanied by a harmonious union of two or more existing disciplines.
  1. Newton was able to combine comets (open orbits) and planets (bound orbits) into one equation of motion.

  2. Maxwell was able to unify electricity and magnetism to formulate electromagnetism, responsible for today's wireless world.

     Einstein's Observation Galilean Lorentzian Newtonian Mechanics Yes No Maxwell's E & M No Yes

  3. Einstein observed this mismatch between mechanics and electromagnetism and fixed the problem to formulate the principle of relativity

  4. Heisenberg came up with his uncertainty priciple in an attempt to achieve a harmony between the particle nature and wave nature of matter.

  These two great theories formulated in the 20th century are relativity and quantum mechanics. They were developed separately. It is a great challenge to see whether they can be combined harmoniously into one theory. Of course, the present form of quantum field theory is a great step toward solving comet (scattering) problems. How about bound systems like the hydrogen atom consisting of one proton and one electron.

Korean song and dance.

BTS: Group of singing Korean boys at the White House (2022).

Food tray for their ancestors on the Korean thanksgiving day (Chuseok), with the full moon in September. Koreans, on both sides, celebrate the same set of traditional holidays with the same set of songs and dances.

• Koreans were farmers, September is the harvest month for them. The full-moon day of September is their thanksgiving day. They developed songs and dances to celebrate the results of their hard works.

  There then came Western influence during the early years of the 20th Century. They developed their music skills with guitars, pianos, and other musical instruments. Koreans then started composing their own heart-moving songs.

• Unfortunately Korea was occupied by Japanese imperialists in 1910, and then by two separate armies after 1945. Consequently two separate governments were set up. The communist government in the North and the democratic system in the South.

  This political division of the country did not divide the song culture for all Koreans.

  1. Koreans in the North love the songs composed in the South.
     Click here for one of those songs.

  2. Koreans in the South love the songs composed in the North.
     Let us hear one of their songs.

  3. Joint performance in Pyongyang of the musicians from both sides. Click here.

  Sooner or later, hopefully sooner, Korea should be united into one country. Nobody says the instrument of unification is another war. The true instruments are Korean hearts and minds. Korean songs constitute the powerful representation of Korean hearts and minds.

• These days, thanks to the development of HD televisions, the sound-only culture of songs became the integrated culture of songs with dances. As we all know, Korea is one of the leading countries in this new form of culture.

  with Ludwig van Beethoven in Bonn (Germany).

• Koreans also love classical music of the West. Beethoven, Bach, and Tchaikovsky are the names familiar to all Koreans. I am one of those Koreans who love classical music. How did I learn? In Korea, I had a short wave radio to listen to the world. In recent years, I travel around the world and visit music halls and talk with musicians.

  You are invited to the photos of music halls I visited in many different countries. Click here.

• Einstein was a muisic lover, so are most of my colleagues in physics. I can not explain why one has to love music in order to do physics research, but it is interesting to note all good physicists are music lovers.

Koreans know how to believe in Jesus.

• Unlike China, Japan and other countries in Asia, Koreans know how to believe in Jesus. I am not a religions person, but my Christian background is much stronger than my American colleagues who think I am a Buddhist. You can see my unusual Christian background from this webpages.

  The third building of the Presbyterian church in Sorae (now in North Korea) built in 1934. I attended this church until 1946 when my family moved to Seoul to avoid the communist rule being set up there. Click here for the history of this church.

  1. Click here for the church I attended during my childhood years.

  2. Story of Nicodemus. I met Paul A. M. Dirac (Nobel 1933). I was like Nicodemus who met Jesus (Story in the Gospel of John). Who was Nicodemus? Click here.

  3. Garden of Eden. I have the same number of ribs on both sides of my chest. Thus, God pulled out two ribs from me. How can I prove it?

  4. Moses talked to God. I talked to Einstein. How?

  5. Herod complex. Psychology among academicians.

• The Korean way of thinking was heavily influenced by the philosophies developed in China, namely Taoism and Confucianism. Taoism for science, and Conformism for ethics. During the 12th Century, the Chinese scholar named Zhu Xi synthesized these two philosophies. This new philosophy is known as neo-Confucianism.

  Koreans adopted this neo-Confucianism for the national ideology during the 15th Century, and the Taoist influence is reflected in the Korean national flag. This Taoism can play a role in Western philosophies. Kant and Hegel are among the most influential Western philosophers.

• In Korea, you have to pretend to know about Kant and Hegel if you like to be treated as an educated person, even if you do not know anything about them. The environment is quite different in USA. Kant and Hegel are strange names on American university campuses.

  The science of physics is to derive one formula or a basket of formula which will tell what happens in the world. The following diagram tells how Taoism can play its role in combining Kant and Hegel.

• The point is that Einstein's brain worked exactly in this way.
  Click here for a detailed story.

• Beyond Einstein? We can ask now whether both the theory of relativity and the present form of quantum mechanics can be derived from one basket of equation. This means whether Einstein's E = mc² can be erived from Heisenberg's brackets for the uncertainty relations. Crazy enough? I like to be recognized and rememebered as the person who proved this is possible. Click here for my story.

Wisdom of Korea in my Reseach Life

• Koreans are ethnically Mongolians, who speak the Ural-Altaic language, and their grammar is quite different from that of Chinese. On the other hand, Koreans are different from Mongolians because they adopted the culture of China extensively from 600 AD.

  In this document of 1486, the King of Korea tells his people to use 28 new letters to express their opinions.

  Ancient Chinese used picture to genarate their letters. Six hundred years years ago, under the leadership of King Sejong the Great, Korean scholars used symbols for consonants and vowels to generate sounds. The order was 1, 2, 3 (left-right-bottom) for consonant-vowel-consonant as shown in this figure, because Korean sentences were written vertically at that time.

  However, the Chinese writings were not consistent with the language of Koreans. Thus, they developed their own letters based on their sounds during the 15th Century. The Koreans scholars realized that the sound can be generated by 10 vowels and 18 consonants. The combination of (consonant + vowel + consonant) can generate all possible sounds humans can produce. For this reason, Koreans are mighty proud of their own letters.

  Yet, until recent years, Korean boys and girls had to study books containing the words (like School, Democracy, Trade, Science, etc) written in Chinese letters. These days, they read the books with English words written in English alphabets. I am an old Korean, and I had to study those Chinese characters during my high-school years (1948-54).

• Koreans found Chinese characters very interesting. One character corresponds to one thing in the world. Sun, Moon, Horse, Mountain, River, Snow, Snake, Country, etc. All of them have their own characters. Thus, we do not know how many Chinese characters are in Chinese books.

  In the past, the basic education for Korean children started with 1,000 Chinese characters. I think I can recognize about 5,000 characters.

• The point is that each character starts from the picture of a visible object. Sun and Moon are both visible. The letter consisting of both Sun and Moon leads to the abstract concept of bright, as illustrated here.

  This kind of process is known as the Hegelian Synthesis in the Western world.

• Let us go back to physics. The issue is then how to combine two different theories (relativity and quantum) into one theory with the higher degree of abstraction.
  1. Richard Phillips Feynman believed in "one physics." He started constructing quantum field theory in order to combine quantum mechanics with Einstein's relativity.
     • Click here for details.

     • Another webpage about Feynman.

  2. This quantum field theory provides a satisfactory explanation of scattering processes where all particles are free in the remote past and remote future.

  3. It is important to note that Feynman provides the tool of quantum field theory using pictures, known as Feynman diagrams, where all particles are free in the remote past and in the remote future. We call these pictures "Feynman diagrams."

  In order to construct quantum mechanics in Einstein's space and time, we note that, for scattering problems, quantum field theory with Feynman diagrams provides a satisfactory tool for us. We still have to construct quantum mechanics for bound states (Step 1). We then have to find a mathematical framework that encompasses both scattering and bound states (Step 2).

• However, this field theory does not provide explanations for bound states. Let us consider a hydrogen atom, consisting of one electron circling around one proton. These particles are never free. Thus, it is not possible to draw Feynman diagrams for the hydrogen atom with its discrete energy levels.

  For planets (bound-state), we have to take into account boundary conditions in a Lorentz-covariant manner, and the problem becomes quite different from those for scattering processes.

  The word "Lorentz-covariant" means valid in the world of Einstein's special relativity which produces E = mc².

• For this bound system, Paul A. M. Dirac published the important papers in 1927, 1945, and 1949.
  1. In 1927, Dirac noted the importance of the time-energy uncertainty relation. He pointed out there that there are no quantum excitations along the time direction. Dirac called it the "c-number time-energy uncertainty relation.

  2. In 1945, Dirac considered four-dimensional harmonic oscillator wave functions applicable to the four-dimensional Mikowskian space and time.

  3. In 1949, he noted the Lorentz boost as a squeeze transformation, where a square becomes a rectangle with the same area in the two-dimensional coordinate of the time and direction of motion.

  4. I spent time with Dirac in 1962. Click here for my story.

  Yes, they are excellent observations. It is indeed enjoyable to read Dirac's papers. They are like poems with beautiful mathematical formulas. On the other hand, have you seen pictures or figures in Dirac's papers?

• We are now interested in integrating all those ideas. We can go back to the Korean Wisdom (derived from Chinese characters). First, translate Dirac's ideas into pictures, integrate those pictures into one, and translate the resulting picture into mathematical formulas.

  If we translate Dirac's papers, we end up with the upper two figures given here:
  

  Click here for a detailed explanation of this figure.

• The question is how I was able to do this while Dirac could not do and nobody else could do before me. Here is my answer.

  It is well known that Chinese characters were derived from pictures of visible objects such as Sun and Moon. How about invisible abstract ideas? Combine the letters for those visible objects to produce the concept of Bight.

  We can use the same wisdom for combining two theories. Translate the basic mathematical formulas into pictures. Then combine those pictures into one, and translate this one picture into a new set of formulas. Bohr and Einstein were the two scientific giants of the 20th Century, and they met occasionally to discuss physics. However, did they talk about how the hydrogen atom appears to moving observers?

• Let us go back to the table given above. We have settled the issue of quantum bound states in Einstein's Lorentz-covariant world, namely Step 1 in the table.

• How about Step 2?
  The mathematical formulas for quantum field theory and quantum bound states are quite different. However, they belong to the same group of mathematics called "representations of the inhomogeneous Lorentz group" formulated by Eugene Wigner in his paper of 1939.

  With my younger colleagues, I wrote many papers and three books on this subject. Among them, the following two papers directly address this issue.

  1. Representation of the Poncare Group for Relativistic Extended Hadrons(1979)

  2. Quantum Mechanics of Moving Bound States (2022)

  This completes Step 2 specified in this table.

• OK. The theory is beautiful, but does it have anything to do with the real world. Click here for the experimental aspect of this theory.

• Next. We can ask whether quantum mechanics and Einstein's Lorentz covariance can be derived from the same basket of equations.

  In other words, is it possible to derive Einstein's E = mc ² from Heisenberg's uncertainty brackets?

  Crazy? NOT SO.