Being truly independent is nowadays extremely difficult, if not impossible as I hinted in my introduction. I have scientist colleagues who try to be independent, and I know the problems they face. Tony Smith was one example.
 |
| Tony Smith |
He received a summa cum laude A.B. degree in mathematics from Princeton University in 1963. He enrolled in graduate studies at Georgia Tech, and worked there under the guidance of a somewhat eccentric and original theoretical physicist, David Finkelstein, but failed his exams:
He was working full time as a lawyer and pursuing his original research in theoretical physics and mathematics at the same time. Probably that would go unnoticed, but Tony dared to create an original and popular website, where he was presenting his ideas. That was too much! He was blacklisted from the physics archive - “arxiv.org” - and he was regularly attacked by the “guardians of science” whenever an opportunity arises. To quote from one discussion blog in the past:
The anonymous comment left yesterday on the guest post by Tony Smith annoyed me quite a bit. The visitor, instead of discussing the topic presented in the post, decided to produce a personal attack on Tony, guilty of having a web site of his own, containing personal theories and ideas. At the heart of the comment was a question directed to me: why do you give credit to this person, who is evidently a crackpot?”
On January 23, 20202 Peter Woit commented as follows:
"I was sorry to hear of the death a few months ago of Tony Smith, who had been a frequent commenter on this blog and others. Unfortunately my interactions with him mainly involved trying to discourage him from hijacking the discussion in some other (often unusual) direction. Geoffrey Dixon did get to know him well, and has written a wonderful long blog entry about Tony, which I highly recommend (Dixon’s newish blog also has other things you might find interesting)."
You can find the full list of Tony's publications on vixra.org here.
As an example of his extraordinary wide interests and knowledge, let me point out here to just two of his papers:
1. Overture to Beethoven’s Grosse Fugue (Opus 133) is an
...
...
" As the distinguished mathematician Arnold opined [1]: “Mathematics is a part of physics. Physics is an experimental science, a part of natural science. Mathematics is the part of physics where experiments are cheap. In the middle of the twentieth century it was attempted to divide physics and mathematics. The consequences turned out to be catastrophic. Whole generations of mathematicians grew up without knowing half of their science and, of course in total ignorance of other sciences.”Physics was traditionally a required minor for math students until it was dropped after World War II. Consequently, ninety percent of math professors today have studied no physics at all! They remain ignorant of advances in mathematics outside their narrow specialties."
