Greetings to Frank Yang in Mid-Course (August 12, 1982)

Abstract

It is a really exceptional pleasure to talk on the sixtieth birthday of my best student. Now the first point is that it isn’t his sixtieth birthday. His sixtieth birthday is supposed to be at some uncertain time. I heard clear proof that it is on the twenty-second of September, and I have heard further proof that it is on the first of October. But I wouldn’t amount even to any approximation of a theoretical physicist if I could not find one more difficulty. You see, in the birth of a theoretical physicist the important thing is not the calendar. The important thing is when his thoughts started, and that is very hard to find out. And in the case of Frank, we used to call him that, in the case of Frank Yang I wonder when he started first to think about the difference between right and left, even if not between matter and antimatter. So we can say by definition that this is his sixtieth birthday.