Hey, check out the “professor” over here. “Oh, the beer at this party isn’t very cold,” he says. Well, now, aren’t we just a regular expert in low-temperature phenomena this evening? Who are you, the Nobel Prize– winning physicist who discovered the superfluid phase of the Helium-3 isotope?
Did you hear that, everybody? Please don’t serve Nobel Prize–winning physicist Douglas Osheroff over here any lukewarm alcoholic beverages or he might go crying into his antiferromagnetic resonance data conducted for Bell Laboratories in 1979!
Seriously, you guys, get a load of this Douglas Osheroff we got on our hands. Hey, Dougie Boy, sorry if the beer at this party is too warm for you, but you see, not everybody here was raised by parents of Eastern European descent in the small logging town of Aberdeen, WA, dreaming from a young age of one day researching the low-temperature properties of amorphous solids. So how about you come down off your lofty perch on the Scientists and Engineers for America board of advisers and enjoy your drink like the rest of us simpletons, eh?
Am I right, people? I mean, Christ, is this Ted’s 31st birthday party, or a gala ceremony for the 1981 Oliver E. Buckley Prize for outstanding theoretical or experimental contributions to condensed-matter physics?
C’mon, relax, I’m just giving you a hard time, man. We’re just hanging out, mixing it up a little. Here, let’s change the subject: So tell me, did you bring your Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University with you, or did you leave it in your car? Boom! I kid. Really, though, on a serious note, I think you should probably leave the party soon. This neighborhood is not safe after dark for guys who discovered the log(T) temperature dependence to the electrical resistivity in disordered 2D conductors. Boom! Again! Osheroff!
Man, this is just too easy.
Oh, c’mon. What’s the matter, Mr. Corecepient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics? Am I bothering you? Well, shucks, Dr. O. Maybe you should go home to Palo Alto and tell your wife of 39 years, Phyllis Liu-Osheroff, who steadfastly supported you through your many years of intensive research despite her own busy career as a biochemist, all about it. I’m sure she would be happy to console you.
Uh-oh, he’s walking away now! Hey, clear out of the way, everybody! Clear out of the way! Can’t you see that esteemed scientist Douglas Osheroff is trying to conduct one of his prize-winning experiments! Let the genius through! And for God’s sake, will somebody please fetch the precious Dr. Osheroff another beer? Oh, and don’t forget to ensure that the doctor’s beer has reached the optimal stage of nucleation before serving it to him or else he may get very upset and say mean things about us in his introduction to kinetic theory of matter course at Stanford University!
Come back, Dr. Osheroff! Where are you going? Hear ye, hear ye! Gather round, one and all! There walks the amazing, honest-to-God master of adiabatic nuclear demagnetization, my dear friend Douglas D. Osheroff! May no man, woman, or child cast aspersion on his unique contributions to the field of low-temperature, solid-state physics!
Fare thee well, Douglas Osheroff! Adieu! Adieu!
