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Death noticeJulius Wess Submitted by Physics Today Editorial Staff Published on 13 August 2007
Current comments and reminiscences on Julius Wess:Julius Wess, 72, Theoretical Physicist, Is Dead
I got to know the Wess family in Karlsruhe in the period from autumn 1972 to summer 1974, when I was a research assistant to Prof Henning Genz, who also sadly died last year, at the theoretical nuclear physics department, which was downstairs from Julius' theoretical physics department. I was deeply saddened to hear of Julius' death from a Christmas letter from a common friend. My reminiscence concerns Julius' Austrian roots. I once went back to Karlsruhe to give a talk - it must have been in 1976 - and stayed at the Wess' house. After my talk, which was reasonably well received by the rest of the audience, making me feel I must have been quite clear, I was surprised that Julius came up to me and declared that he had been lost on several occasions. When I asked why, it was because my talk had been about lattices and I had been repeatedly using the words "site" and "side", often several times in the same sentence. Julius explained to me that he came from a part of Austria in which they make no difference between voiced and unvoiced versions of some consonant pairs. As a result, he simply could not hear any difference between "site" and "side". David Cornwell
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