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Hollywood Physics (and the Society for Arts, Literature, and Science)

By bcohen on July 17, 2006.

This is but a link to an interesting summary article about the topic of scientists (physicists) in film. It's by Sidney Perkowitz, who teaches at Emory, and who I've seen speak at the meetings of and know has long been involved with the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA) -- which I call Salsa, but not sure if anyone else does, and which was long called just the Society for Literature and Science (SLS) until a name change a few years ago.

Salsa has a highly respected journal, too, Configurations, which is often fairly theoretically inclined and generally tip top. In fact, while I'm here, let me give a link to their next annual meeting, which is this November in New York: "EVOLUTION: BIOLOGICAL, CULTURAL, AND COSMIC," since it seems to be on the mark for many of the folks here at Scienceblogs. (Lynn Margulis is the keynote speaker.)

In any case, back to the link at hand: the lead to the link says:

From the 1902 production Voyage to the Moon to the recent What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?, physics has appeared in numerous feature films. Sidney Perkowitz examines the accuracy of physics in the movies and asks how realistically physicists are portrayed on screen

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Oh, the conference is Nov 9-12.

Funny, I have next to me an old article: "Script Doctors" by M.Z.Ribalow, The Sciences, Nov/Dec 1998, p.26-31., about the portrayal of scientists in movies.

(thanks for the correction coturnix -- wheover comes to the link next will be none the wiser for my error. and the ruse goes on: i've never made an error.)