Richard M. Friedberg


Richard M. Friedberg, is a theoretical physicist who has contributed to a wide variety of problems in mathematics and physics. These include mathematical logic, number theory, solid state physics, general relativity, particle physics, quantum optics, genome research, and the foundations of quantum physics.

Works of Richard Friedberg

Friedberg's most well-known work dates back to the mid-1950s. As an undergraduate at Harvard, he published several papers over a period of 2–3 years. The first paper introduced the priority method, a common technique in computability theory, in order to prove the existence of recursively enumerable sets with incomparable degrees of unsolvability.
In 1968, Friedberg proved independently what became known as Bell’s inequality, not knowing that J. S. Bell had proved it a few years earlier. He showed it to the physicist and historian Max Jammer, who somehow managed to insert it into his book “The Conceptual Development of Quantum Mechanics”, although the latter bears the publication date 1966. This caused Friedberg some embarrassment later when classmates at Harvard, knowing of the result only through Jammer’s book, supposed that Friedberg was the first discoverer.
More recently, Friedberg worked on the foundations of quantum mechanics in collaboration with the late Pierre Hohenberg.
Friedberg is also known for his love of music and poetry. He wrote poems in several letters
to cognitive scientist and writer Douglas Hofstadter in 1989. The last letter contains two sonnets ”The Electromagnetic Spectrum” and "Fermions and Bosons". These letters also include critiques and analyses of topics in Metamagical Themas, a collection of articles that Hofstadter wrote for Scientific American during the early 1980s.
Friedberg wrote an informal book on number theory titled "An Adventurer's Guide to Number Theory". In the book, he states, "The difference between the theory of numbers and arithmetic is like the difference between poetry and grammar."

Early life

Friedberg was born in Manhattan on Oct 8, 1935. His father, Charles K. Friedberg, was a renowned cardiologist whose book “Diseases of the Heart”, published by W.B. Saunders, was translated into many languages and became the undisputed ”bible” for its thorough explication of physiologic mechanisms combined with its straightforward clinical advice to physicians, drawn from the author’s own practice. His mother, Gertrude Tonkonogy, wrote a play, “Three-Cornered Moon”, whose success on Broadway in 1933 was felt to have “rescued” a season in which the theatrical world was uncertain whether any play would draw audiences in the depth of the Great Depression.

Selected Published Works