23 September 20

 Today's story about my tie strains the limits of rationality and imagination, but that's "par for the course" when it comes to quantum mechanics. Experimental physicist Clifford Shull (1915-2001) was born on this day. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1994 for his research into neutron scattering and neutron diffraction -- basically, how neutrons interact with atoms and with other subatomic particles, where tracking their motion and energies reveals details about events near the limit for existence of ultimately-tiny things. I think the shimmering pink and purple highlights on this tie -- which you can observe best when you see the tie in person -- capture something about our interests in knowing about "what's going on" at levels of dynamic interaction that escape our everyday static observations. And it's a beautiful tie.