Janez Strnad - Life and Work

Life and Work

Strnad was born in Ljubljana, Kingdom of Yugoslavia (now Slovenia).

He taught for many years from 1961 at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty for natural science and technology on the Department of physics introductory courses and topics from physics. His surname Strnad in English means a yellowhammer, it also is a type of bird, like a swallow.

He took a degree at the University of Ljubljana in technical physics in 1957, and got his Ph.D. in 1963. His main research work was carried out at the Jožef Stefan Institute. In 1974 he became a full professor. In 1990 he wrote his beautiful and famous book about fundamental particles physics entitled Iz take so snovi kot sanje (We are such stuff as dreams are made of). With his short and long articles he had deepened the knowledge about Stefan's scientific work. His thick booklet in the series of monographs, Zbirka Sigma (the Sigma Collection), entitled Kvantna fizika (Quantum Physics), (DZS, Ljubljana 1974) contains an almost 'perfect' definition and introduction to the understanding of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle for the graduate beginner. He wrote over 1000 works.

Anyone who knows him can describe his piercing nature and precise ways of expression through his own simple words of what Lev Davidovich Landau once meant:

"We can find similar thoughts by the other cosmologists,

which have reputation they are wrong many times, but they never doubt"

Janez Strnad from a review on Mirjam Galičič's translation of

Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time (Obzornik mat, fiz. 39 (1994) 6, pp 191 - 192).

Strnad's works also includes topics of physics which are not exactly related at first glance to it, for instance as in this his article Znanost in politika v vinjetah (Science and politics in vignettes) available on the net.

"Richarda Feynmana je vznejevoljil prijatelj astronom, ki se je hvalil z uporabnostjo svojih

raziskovanj o vesolju. Po njegovem mnenju to ni bilo pošteno. Raziskovalec naj pojasni laikom,

kaj dela, in "če ga v takih okoliščinah nočejo podpirati, je to njihova stvar".

("Richard Feynman was annoyed by an astronomer friend who was boasting about the practicability of his

researches on the Universe. He thought this was not fair. A researcher should explain to the laity

what he is doing and "if they won't support him within such milieu, that is their own concern").