Matchmaking between Condensed Matter and Quantum Foundations, and Other Stories: My Six Decades in Physics

Abstract

I present some rather selective reminiscences of my long career in physics, from my doctoral work to the present. I do not spend time on topics such as the nuclear magnetic resonance behavior of He, as I have reviewed the history extensively elsewhere, but rather concentrate, first, on my long-running project to make condensed matter physics relevant to questions in the foundations of quantum mechanics, and second, on various rather "quirky" problems such as an attempt to amplify the effects of the parity violation due to the weak interaction to a macroscopic level, and an unconventional proposal for the mechanism of the first-order phase transition between the A and B phases of superfluid liquid He.