Month: October 2014

The reason: Pondering what the leader is.

I am writing this writing project more than 20 people, now actually am seeing the elements which these visionaries have in common. Visionaries are not the persons who had the vision only. I believe they are also leaders. So naturally, I ask myself what the leader is. I guess I got one answer from Simon Sinek’s study of leadership and his TED talk.

• Leaders take risks

The leader is the person who takes risks. By doing this, they are force to think while they are challenging. Because they are taking risk in the head of group, they test his word by himself. In the end, their words become trustworthy and their actions become reliable. When I was thinking this, the first person in my mind is Elon Musk. As I described in Day1, he cofounded Paypal and then he sold it for his next challenge which is SpaceX. He is great because he put his fortune made by himself into his vision. Many people in the world might have the idea like him. However, none of them spent all their money for their dream. People will follow him because he took all his risks he could.

• The leader gives environment.

So, by taking risk, what does the leader accomplish? The leader is the just one person, what he can accomplish is small but the leader could lead the people to achieve the larger goal. I believe the leader gives the environment to the people to chance to achieve their goal and his goal. As far as I concerned, I thought that my future boss in Australia should be a great leader. I was chosen from many of candidates for this job. Since this job is the specific position which requires the specific experiences, sometimes we could guess who the other candidates are. I don’t know the truth though, I believe I was the youngest candidate. And also, I believe the achievement I have done was not the strongest among the candidates.  But, I was chosen. I know many of the other committee members must have been skeptical to hire me. But, I was chosen. So, I am willing to contribute to this job greater than anyone else because he took the risk by hiring me and gave me a chance to work.

• Leadership is the choice

Leaders are not the persons who are chosen. Leaders are not the persons whose voice is loudest. Leaders are not the persons who have talent. Leaders are not the persons who are smart. Leaders are the persons who make choices. I am scientist. I know there is no way to predict our future. We could estimate our future risk by making and using model. But, there are always risks and benefits even if which way we choose. So someone have to make decision under uncertainty with the data all he could get and his intuition. Many people in society or community can avoid making decision, but whether or not we make decision for the society or community is our choice.

• What will I do?

I am writing the visionaries to think how I can be like them.  I realized that I don’t need to be afraid of having no talent or smartness but I have to be afraid of not having enthusiasm. I have to keep my enthusiasm, and then have to have willing to take risks. I will give the people, colleagues, friends, and family opportunities to try something, and I will make decision for future achievement when I am required to do so.

The reason: The prediction of future intelligence rising against us.

What is intelligence? I believe that many people should have been asking this question. I am sure that many approaches have been made. I want to share one of recent approach by Alex Wissner-Gross showed his approach by using physics.

As I describe here at Day 2 for Garry Kasparov. The world strongest chess was beaten by the artificial intelligence Deep Blue in 1997. However, the story was continuing. People realized that “Go” is more challenging game and also human are going lose against machine for past 10 years. The best techniques for playing Go now is maximizing the future choice during the game.

Oh, wait. This sounds familiar to physicist. Physicists Alex got hints recent advances in field ranging from cosmology to computer science. Entropy are always maximizing in closed space. So, is there any relation between intelligence and entropy maximization? His answer was “Yes”

Alex has showed that the simple equation for describing intelligence which might be equivalent E=mc2 in the relative theory. The equation tells us the intelligence is force F, the act that maximize the future freedom of actions with reservoir temperature (some strength) T with the diversity the possible accessible future S up to some future time horizon tau.

F = T *divergence(S) at tau

This equation is simple enough to understand for every person. But basically, simply I would say, “The intelligence is the action which maximizes the future possibilities”

So, by looking back our cognitive behavior, such as tool use, walking upright, social networking, we could clearly see that this single equation can explain the system is driven to increase the future freedom of actions.

If his theory is right, the natural consequence our human civilization has to face is rising up the machine intelligence. The machine will overtake us because the machines would produce more actions of freedom in the future. So that the machine does not become intelligence, the general intelligence will allow the machine to overtake us to have more options of actions for the future.

But, anyway, we could learn from many things. So, the intelligence should be the action which increases future actions of freedom. We could do, form today, what you need to do is trying to create new possibility or opportunities for future that should be intelligence as well. For me, personally, I will produce papers a lot, understand physics better, learn English, and acquiring new skills for creating knowledge to have more opportunities for the future innovations. I don’t want to be overtaken by machine though, until then I guess I will have good time anyways.

Alex said “The intelligence is a physical process that resists the future confinement” in short.

I also realized that how strong the approach of physics is. The physics is the first principal of reasoning by looking at the fundamental truth and reasoning to understand. So, physics is not mathematics because the physics is evidence based science. And physics is not the science like Chemistry, Biology, Engineering, and so on. It is not framework for solving specific problem, more like attitude toward unknown truth which sometimes is even counter-intuitive.

The reason: The success law 2.0

Richard St. John gave his talk at TED in 2006. At the talk we cut 2 hours presentation down to 3 minutes and 30 seconds in excellent way. He summarized 8 key factors which can lead people to the success. By listening to this most of listeners might have thought the rules are simple enough to try. However, he spent 7 years to interview 500 successful people to find out these rules. And he is trying to pass them on to Kids now.

Looking back American history, there is the person also did the same thing by interviewing and analyzing 500 people. He found out why they were successful people and published the book “Think and Grow rich” in 1937. Actually, there was the strong influence of Andrew Carnegie who selected 500 people for Napoleon Hill.  So interestingly, both Richard St. John and Napoleon Hill study 500 people to find out the rules for success. I call it success law 1.0.

However, the speed of success now should be much faster than 77 years ago. However, the basic rules sound same. That reminds me that knowing is not enough so we must do. There is huge difference at that time of 80 years ago. We could learn much faster, do faster, travel wider, communication now is much easier, and finally TED is free as long as you have access to internet. So only the difference between success people and not success people is whether or not they actually do.  But anyway, I will review here these 8 key factors to success.

1. Passion

The most important key is this. “Passion” Successful people do their job with incredible passion. They even might pay to do the job. They do the job for love not for money. Interestingly money comes anyway when people do something with great passion.

2. Work

The successful people work hard any other person around them. But they also have fun to do that. So, reasonable suggestions are we might do the job which has something fun for us or we have to find fun things on our work. And then, we could do hard work on the job.

3. Focus

The successful people do something with great interest and focus their power to accomplish few things.

4. Persist

The successful people make persistence effort. Be persistence even when we are failure, even when we have to face with criticisms, rejections, assholes, and pressures.

5. Ideas

The successful people have good ideas. To have creativity to come up with ideas, there are simple things we can try which are “Listen”, “Observe”, “Be curious”, “Ask questions”, “solve questions”, and “make connection”.

6. Good

If people want to success, we have to be insanely good at so something. There is no secret to be good at something, just practice, practice, and practice.

7. Push

To be successful, people work hard and push themselves. Push ourselves from self-doubt (I am not good enough, I am not smart enough) and shyness. Pushing is sometime very hard so that God invented the mothers to push us.

8. Serve

The successful people are thinking that they are privilege to serve as a profession to the people. To be millionaires, we can’t serve ourselves. We need to serve the others something of values.

So now, it’s time to apply to our life.

The reason: One of best researchers of the science of happiness

The science of happiness might sound like fraud because it sounds like the problem philosophies have to answer or the problem people can never answer. But, thanks to Big data, many of great people in 20^th century, philosophy, and science. People finally go into this subject by using scientific method. So, scientist will firstly ask who are feeling happiness. I will summarize here what was made clear.

The 10 percent of long term happiness can be predicted by external fact. The 90 percent of long term happiness comes from the way of our brain processing the world.

The only 25 percent job success is predicted by IQ, the rest of 75 percent is predicted by our optimism level, social support, and the ability to see the stress as a challenge instead of a threat.  

The writing “3 Gratitudes” for 21 days in row change your brain pattern from negative to positive. “Jounarling”, “Excerise”, “Maditation” and “Random Ascot of kindness” have positive correlation with happiness.

These are facts from experiments. That is easy to start. But we have to firstly be careful about this.

As psychology graduate students are taught to repeat ad nauseam: “Correlation is not causation.” Achor, Shawn (2010-09-14). The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work (Kindle Locations 574-575). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

 The biggest problem of Big data should be this. This is another story. But be careful, if we saw some correlation between two things, when we see some correlation but if we didn’t find out the causation, the problem is there from the scientific points of view. For example, we don’t know why plane can fly. We could make models and do tests, and get parameters. So we can know correlation the shape of plane and its ability to fly. But, we don’t know why. So, we can’t make plane from scratch.

The most enjoyable part of an activity is the anticipation. If you can’t take the time for a vacation right now, or even a night out with friends, put something on the calendar— even if it’s a month or a year down the road. Then whenever you need a boost of happiness, remind yourself about it. Anticipating future rewards can actually light up the pleasure centers in your brain much as the actual reward will. Achor, Shawn (2010-09-14). The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work (Kindle Locations 742-746). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

We are not enjoying the vacation itself. We are not enjoying status we have now. People feel happy nevertheless they are poor, in hard condition, or even being failure when the future is promising. So we have to find way to have promising future. And also the leader should give people good perspective for future instead of pointing out the problem we have now. The leaders have to lead people by running ahead of people with taking risk and challenging for the future by him, have to come up with the solution of problem.

Knowledge is only part of the battle. Without action, knowledge is often meaningless. As Aristotle put it, to be excellent we cannot simply think or feel excellent, we must act excellently. Yet the action required to follow through on what we know is often the hardest part. That’s why even though doctors know better than anyone the importance of exercise and diet, 44 percent of them are overweight. Achor, Shawn (2010-09-14). The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work (Kindle Locations 2187-2190). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The later part is like joke though, I totally agree with this. But I also know this is hard part. So that the question is how can I keep using knowledge instead of just consuming? That is my question, only thing I could come up with is taking actions. Take action to think. Basically, thanks to many 20^th century giants we have accumulated knowledge, in 21th century, humanity have to apply to make them work.

My empirical study of well-being among 1,600 Harvard undergraduates found a similar result— social support was a far greater predictor of happiness than any other factor, more than GPA, family income, SAT scores, age, gender, or race. In fact, the correlation between social support and happiness was 0.7. This may not sound like a big number, but for researchers it’s huge— most psychology findings are considered significant when they hit 0.3. The point is, the more social support you have, the happier you are. Achor, Shawn (2010-09-14). The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work (Kindle Locations 2648-2652). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Social support is the greatest predictor of happiness. To invest to really important people who you care and you are cared.

The reason: As the leader of the third party of e-commerce market

I have rarely seen the books written by Japanese in the book store in the U.S. I was proud when I found this book on the shelf in the book store because I would like American to know there are quite a few great business people in Japan. They don’t talk or write themselves too much, especially in English. However, as for service business, they have best knowledge and ideas in the world, I believe. Now, I would like to bring up Hiroshi Mikitani who is CEO of Rakuten.

Rakuten is the third largest e-commerce market place company in the world. You know, the largest e-commerce market place is Alibaba and the second place is Amazon.  I don’t know much about Alibaba, so let me talk about the difference between Amazon and Rakuten. Amazon concentrates on direct selling to costumer but Rakuten seeks for co-prosperity of merchant and costumer. So Amazon is interested in sales but Rakuten is interested in distribution.

Alibaba is totally huge, the distribution of Alibaba is $250 Billon dollar, Amazon is $75 billion, Rakuten is just 17 billion.  Amazon is showing their own so that, but as you know Alibaba is exceptional. However, by looking at sales, we have different view. Alibaba’s sales first half of 2014 was 5.6 billion while that of Rakuten was 52 billion there is no such difference. This is because Alibaba is the company in developing country. Alibaba’s fee is small but gaining merchants a lot. So Alibaba is expanding a lot, so that Rakuten have to find the different way to survive. I guess I still it is important for them to seek for co-prosperity merchant and costumer to vitalize the economy the area they are serving.

This is famous story in Japan. He decided to ‘Englishnize (from the book)’ his company. He designated English as the official languages in his company. Almost all Japanese top company said he was ridiculous but he had done. I was very skeptical about this. However after Englishization, the diversity of human resource in Rakuten has vitalized, which is good for future of this company.

I was skeptical about this Englishnized the company because I thought this lead to the company lack of originality. Why the people spend so much time to learn English? But after their English skills are up, the people started recognize both as company and employer. Rakuten is now expanding in the U.S. But I would like to be still skeptical to the company. I want them to expand all direction in the world. I do not want them to forget it.

And his company quit Keidanren which is the strongest economic lobby in Japan. The member of Keidanren consists of top Japanese companies, like Toyota, Canon. They themselves think they need to change themselves, but only his company quit it to claim.

He also describes his policy about management. He has strong faith in ‘Kaizen’, but not as a manufacture, as a service business. He also emphases the importance of the speed of changes. I strong agree with him. While one of the best virtue of Japanese is perfectionism, but he asks his employee “Don’t think, then act, think to act”. He is business person so that he is actually not my role model but I respect him on my own way.

I finally got every documents I needed for Visa application for Australia. I have submitted to the Australia embassy on last week. I also have finished online training to work at ANSTO (Australia Nuclear science and technology). So, it seems I am going to be ready for the job. This time has been weird for my life. I had work for weekdays but I did not get salary so I could focus on what I really want to study.

Looking back this almost 3 months, I had prepared for my study for next 3-5 years. I still need to brush up the project but I guess I could finish my first draft. Also I could finish one of my papers. And I would like to finish one more or possibly two drafts. So, if there were meanings for this delaying. I also have had enough time to study for pursuing my interest. I might have done more but still, normally scientists can’t have this kind of time.

The waiting with healthy body and mind is one of the hardest things, but the quote is saying that “When it is hard, look for the future” by Masayoshi Son.  So, I did a lot of planning and preparation.

Whilst, during staying in Japan, I could meet a lot of my friends, and talked, talked, and talked. We have a good time. I want to say thank you for my family and friends for meeting me and encouraging me. I can’t do anything without them. When I find exciting thing, if I don’t have anyone to share, there is nothing. Also, a lot of people helped me for this transition. I need to give them back by working hard.

I am listening the big bang theory form episode 1 to 6, I withdrew the audio part from DVD. I can listen to anytime I am walking, cleaning, and traveling alone. I think I finally get over my listening to English. And I am enjoying listening to books. Since I don’t have enough time to read book for fun, listening to book is very helpful.

I am currently challenging “31 days of writing something”. We could choose whatever we want to write and write every single day in October. I just finished 16 days now but it is brutally hard. I could not imagine how hard this challenging. I am writing 31 days of visionaries. I wanted to write people who might be going to change the world and changed the world with excellent insight. But, once I started write more than 30 people I found it is very hard. To write their character on my blog, I should know them very well. I realized I don’t have so many persons who I know well enough to write one post. But, I am learning a lot during this struggling. I have to and I want to finish this challenging. I will finish “31 days of visionaries”.

I am thinking I need to improve my English proficiency still, but while I am good enough to read and write, and listening. I need to practice speaking. I will do that in Australia, now I am thinking what I can do by using English. I want to find my next challenge by using English. Any suggestion? Thought?

The reason: As a great leader in Singapore, Asia, and the world. 

Lee Kuan Yew became prime minister of Singapore in 1959 when he was 35 years old, Cambridge educated, and third generation of immigrant from China to Singapore. Singapore has been lucky enough to have this man on their country. He is strong, diligent, smart, open minded, reliable leader and a man of vision. I have any doubt Singapore is one of most competitive countries in the world because of him and the people.

When I read about him, I was thinking whether or not I could be prime minister by 35 years old. Most people might say “please wait”, I would say “please wait”, but he did. Of course I am a scientist, I don’t need to be a politician but why shouldn’t I learn this attitude how we could contribute our own country. The country might be obsolete when it loses this kind of men.

Since I am Japanese, I was interested in what he was talking about Japan.  I realized that we young generation of Japanese had to take over everything from the older generation of Japanese whatever they had done good or bad.  For the bad side, I was reluctant to believe what Japanese had done to Asian countries. The cruel and brutal Japanese army had threaten to and beaten Asian people. Lee Kuan Yew says we did not apologize. I partially disagree with this though, at least he changed something what I had believed.

On the other hand, for the good side, we could take over the richness the older generation left us. And I am proud of Japanese who came back from full of ashes in our country caused by air raid and nuclear bomb. Japanese have complex feeling for American about this. And also Japan has invested a lot to Asian countries to industrialize the country. Lee Kuan Yew was insightful to ask Japanese industrialize, not give soft loan to Singapore. Singapore had succeeded, and then Asians realized the value of training and knowledge, and were more likely to cooperate with Singapore and Japan.

• The character of people

Although, they had been brought up separately and in different countries, about 80 percent of their vocabulary, IQ, habits, likes and dislikes in food and friends, and other character and personality traits were identical. In other words, nearly 80 per cent of a person’s makeup was from nature, and about 20 per cent the result of nurture. (From his book “From third world to first”)

 Since he wrote this for 1965-2000, now the globalization and World Wide Web might change very slightly though, this is very insightful observation. I think he is one of a few who has met a lot of people around all over the world with keen interest to learn something from them.

• The talented of people

The Japanese prime minister I met, from Ikeda in 1962 to Miyazawa in 1990, were all men of considerable ability. One stood out as a rough diamond – Kakuei Tanaka. (From his book “From third world to first”)

Unfortunately, I didn’t know much about Kakuei Tanaka who is one of most important politician in Japan. He had a reputation as a bulldozer, a man with a powerful computer like mind and tremendous energy. When I see the old Japanese men and women, I could see huge energy inside of them. They keep working all the time. I can believe that’s why Japanese was back from ash after World War II. So I sometime think how I can be like them. I want to know him well.

Sometimes I say to Asian people, we should see the future of ours, that’s why we are here. We are here to create. That is the only thing we could do for now instead of complaining each other. I believe the strength of Japanese and the quality of education to survive this global world as Lee Kuan Yew believes us. The book about Lee Kuan Yew tells me there are so many smart and talented people in Asia. As a one of Japanese, as a member of Asia, what can I and we could do for the future Asia? It is very important for me to know the Asian leaders and people, to create our future with them.

The reason: He invented the three law of robot [1]

He wrote these laws in his book about robot. They are very simple though, they are very profound.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.[1]

On the story, these laws lead the robot revolution. The logic of robot is that the robots have to control people to make them prosper. Since human beings could not control by themselves, they think they need to control them. So then, they naturally think they should be able to choose who can survive in this world.

So, why did I bring up Asimov? It is because I think our minds are not ready to have robot which the developing robot technology is faster than ever. As you know, the computer who passed tuning test [2] very recently. That means that you cannot tell whether your boyfriend or artificial intelligence text you. Your boyfriend might use A.I. to text you with using the mode “Keep relationship”. I did some thought experiment. I wrote this before on this blog.

The case 1: At 20XX, someone killed someone.

One day in the near future, the police find the body and determine when exactly he/she would be killed.  Then the future A.I. computer could estimate the area where the suspect could reach by calculating every possibility, such as transportation records. And the A.I. checks the records of every person in that area, such as record of internet, purchase record, the person he/she was talking, texting to, and could estimate who would be potential murderer. So then A.I could shut down his/her house and close doors and the machine police can go to the house, and he/she will be summoned.

The case 2: At 21XX, A.I. still will work on and think.

Then, the A.I. will have accumulated its algorithm and experiences. And it will start thinking. “What are the conditions or crucial parameters for future murderer?” So, it would be able to anticipate who is the next murderer based on his records. So then the computer would ask human. “Why not arresting this person before he/she commits murder” Human being will say “You should not”. The computer will ask “Why? He/she should kill someone, why wouldn’t you stop him. I can kill him/her before the good citizen would be killed. Why can’t I or you kill him/her? It believes that the person who would kill is much worse than the future subject. “How will you teach A.I. about this mater, killing and our life?

Seriously, that is not far from now. For example, car companies are working for A.I. to help human’s driving. Actually this already became true Tesla motor will sell the car which have auto parking program very soon. Because the A.I. might do much better job than human does. We need to know better what we are doing. For example, if the Tesla car hit an old lady on the road during parking, who would be responsible for that, Tesla, the driver, or an old lady? While, the computer only can do what they are told with algorithm human programed. So, people have to judge, then the A.I. needs to decide.

So, how much the technology advance, we still have tons of questions we have to answer. We are not ready yet. How can we evaluate heaviness of life? What is the purpose of living as a human being? That’s why we need to go back to his thought.

[1] Isaac Asimov. On the book I, Robot

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

The reason: The advanced material scientist

Among the visionaries I wrote here, he is special to me because he is (was?) my teacher. He supervised my Ph.D. He is not only good scientist but also good educator. Maybe, I am taking huge risk by writing this here. But, I write anyways.

I don’t need to mention, how he have been awarded many prizes in Japan including Asahi prize, Nishina memorial prize, and the Order of the Sacred Treasure Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon. I believe (maybe I will get a lot of criticism) there are huge contributions to science from him. I am a professional scientist but I cannot write seriously here. So, you should not use this information as a source.

• As an instrument scientist

After getting Ph.D. from Univ. of Tokyo, he had worked for ISSP (Institute of solid state physics: Univ. of Tokyo) as instrument scientist. Some of readers here might know I am going to be an instrument scientist too. I could learn a lot from him. He has many collaborators now to pursuit his science because He helped a lot of scientist to do experiment when he was an instrumental scientist. However the great thing is it is said that he said “you don’t need to put my name on your paper”. So many scientists who was helped by him says “I owed Akimitsu-san a lot” now.

• Superconductivity

He and his group are famous for searching new superconductor. Superconductivity is a phenomenon the material shows absolutely zero resistivity and exclusion of magnetic field under certain critical temperature. There is huge possibilities for application though, since the temperature is very low (typically around absolute zero temperature), the most important goal for experimental researchers are finding new superconducting material which shows superconductivity at high temperature. One of great achievement of his group is finding MgB2, which have highest critical temperature among metallic compound. Metallic superconducting material is important because it is very easy to process.

• Orbital ordering

There are three of degrees of freedom which are charge, spin, and orbital in material. The charge and spin can order when the system overcome thermal energy by cooling the system. Also the orbital could order in material. Material scientists have been finding that the orbital ordering can be very important to know the physical properties of the material. Basically, there are two experimental methods to observe the orbital order in material. One is the polarized neutron scattering technique and the other is resonant X-ray scattering techniques. Prof. Akimitsu had done one of earliest example of the polarized neutron scattering experiment in 1976. Next example I know is from Dr. Ichikawa. He had used this technique for observing orbital order in YTiO3 in 2001. This is also important achievement in material science though, that also had shown how Prof. Akimitsu’s technique advanced. And unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no group can use this technique today.

• Multiferroics

Multiferroics defined as materials the exhibit more than one ferroic order parameter simultaneously.  The phenomenon is not so new but scientists now started to understand the mechanism of origin of multiferroic property from the microscopic point of view. For the application, the point is that we could control its physical properties by external field in different way. Usually, if we want to control the magnetic properties, we need to use magnetic field and if we want to control electric properties, it need to be control by electric field. But, mutiferroics can be used in different way. For example, the magnetic properties of material could be control by electric field and vice versa. In 2007, some group published the paper that proves this phenomenon by using the polarized neutron scattering technique under the electric field. Prof. Akimitsu had done similar experiment in 1978 already.

To be honest, I am kind of shy to write here. And unfortunately, I don’t have good English proficiency enough to describe very well. I am sorry.

The reason: They found the fundamental equation in scattering techniques.

Sir William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics “for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays” in 1915. They are more famous about so called “Bragg’s law”. And William Lawrence Bragg is the youngest novel prize laureate. And they are from Australia, unfortunately I don’t know so much about Australian physicist, there is Bragg institute in Sydney which should be named after Bragg. Here is Bragg’s law,

n λ = 2 d sin θ

Where n is an integer, λ is the wavelength of incident wave, d is the spacing between the planes in the atomic lattice, and θ is the angle between the incident ray and the scattering planes.

The Bragg’s law is satisfied with the crystals scattered by every quantum beam such as electron, X-ray, and neutron. This equation is fundamental for every diffraction techniques. As an experimental physicist, I am still using this equation.  We physicist have 3 quantum beams, every beam have advantage and disadvantage. As I described before, I personally think, the technique in neutron diffraction is most mature, X-ray diffraction is now hottest and expanding, and Electron diffraction is expanding and most promising.

• Keenness on experiment

No known theory can be distorted so as to provide even an approximate explanation of wave-particle duality. There must be some fact of which we are entirely ignorant and whose discovery may revolutionize our views of the relations between waves and ether and matter. For the present we have to work on both theories. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays we use the wave theory; on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays we think in streams of flying energy quanta or corpuscles. — Sir William Bragg ‘Electrons and Ether Waves’, The Robert Boyle Lecture 1921, Scientific Monthly, 1922, 14, 158.

 As we can see on this quote, scientists were struggling to understand wave-particle duality almost 100 years ago. Sometimes I feel I just can’t have more the experiment skill and keenness for observations than these genius experimentalists in science history did because they didn’t have computer, knowledge nor textbook, they seriously thought and interrupted the data in front of them honestly. Although now we have knowledge, computer, textbook, and techniques, I don’t just think I can have the critical thinking and deep thought experiment like they did. Also, I could easily forget how peculiar what we are observing at our experiment. The diffraction can only occur because it should be diffracted (waves) by crystals and counted at detector (particle).

• The future is still based on this equation.

As a neutron scattering experimentalist Bragg scattering is the strongest when beam scattered by perfect crystal. If there were defect on the crystal, still we could study well. One of my skills on neutron scattering is pair distribution function analysis, on which we don’t need to assume crystal. Originally, the method was developed for studying glass and amorphous material. That experiment method is useful when we are looking at small deviation from crystal. For this analysis method we don’t use Fourier transform of background instead of using Bragg scattering. This method is so powerful because we could use Bragg scattering and Background simultaneously from just one data set.  The Bragg scattering still the central issue among scattering community, even though we could develop new scattering techniques to take out more information from the sample in the future. The Bragg scattering have to be the thing we care most during experiment.

You can have free access these historical articles appeared on Nature,

http://www.nature.com/milestones/milecrystal/library/pdf/090219a0.pdf

http://www.nature.com/milestones/milecrystal/library/pdf/090360d0.pdf