Physicist’s cat coauthors paper

[darrenyeats]

Did Schroedinger credit his cat?

Yes ... and no.

 

[Joe P]

A guy at work gave me a bit more background on this story — When groups wanted the lead author to come to speak about the paper, they thought Hetherington was too famous and would never accept, so they invited Willard instead, unaware that Willard was a cat.

Joe

 

[zarniwoop]

There have been examples of scientific papers which have a long list of contributors where someone has added U.T. Cobley as a joke. The reference is to Uncle Tom Cobley from the song Widecombe Fair, the first verse of which is:

Tom Pearce, Tom Pearce, lend me your grey mare.
All along, down along, out along lea.
For I want for to go to Widecombe Fair,
With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney,
Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all

In case you suspect this is an urban legend, here is one of them: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja00784a054

 

[Pete MB&D]

I asked my cat, Count Otis Von Biffen-Burg the 3rd, it he would like to co-author a paper but he just yawned.

Facehugger Cat by Pete Maddex, on Flickr

Pete

 

[Swamp Thing]

In last years ECM CATalogue...


IMG 0411

I suppose it is better for the cat to be co-authoring the paper than to maybe or maybe not be co-authoring depending on the results of the experiment.

 

[droodzilla]

Katya is working hard on her study of Islam. I think she's trying to reconnect with her Purr-sian heritage.