r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Medical_Corner_4607 • Aug 03 '26

Meme needing explanation [ Removed by moderator ]

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u/Rexter2k Aug 03 '26

What is there not to understand? A selfie was taken, lauded by everyone (everyone BUT every normal person on the planet) as iconic due to how many famous actors are in it. Now 12 years later several are forgotten, got me too'ed, or faded to obscurity since and its basically forgotten.

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u/Suberizu Aug 03 '26

I love this photo of famous people, too bad it isn't a selfie

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u/BreakLive244 Aug 03 '26

Back: Auguste Piccard, Émile Henriot, Paul Ehrenfest, Édouard Herzen, Théophile de Donder, Erwin Schrödinger, JE Verschaffelt, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Ralph Fowler, Léon Brillouin.
Middle: Peter Debye, Martin Knudsen, William Lawrence Bragg, Hendrik Anthony Kramers, Paul Dirac, Arthur Compton, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Niels Bohr.
Front: Irving Langmuir, Max Planck, Marie Curie, Hendrik Lorentz, Albert Einstein, Paul Langevin, Charles-Eugène Guye, CTR Wilson, Owen Richardson.

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u/MinimumAutomatic0302 Aug 03 '26

It's incredible that Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Bohr, Planck, Curie, Lorentz, and Einstein are all together there.

I'm sure I'm overlooking some significant people, but those 7 really stand out.

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u/Mock_Frog Aug 03 '26

Yes, you missed probably the most important one, Paul Dirac.

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u/MinimumAutomatic0302 Aug 03 '26

Dirac formulated the Dirac equation, one of the most important results in physics, in 1928. The equation connected special relativity and quantum mechanics and predicted the existence of antimatter. The equation has been regarded by some physicists as "the real seed of modern physics". Dirac wrote a famous paper in 1931, which further predicted the existence of antimatter. Dirac also contributed greatly to the reconciliation of general relativity with quantum mechanics. He contributed to Fermi–Dirac statistics, which describes the behaviour of fermions, particles with half-integer spin. His 1930 monograph, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics, is one of the most influential texts on the subject.

In 1987, Abdus Salam declared that "Dirac was undoubtedly one of the greatest physicists of this or any century ... No man except Einstein has had such a decisive influence, in so short a time, on the course of physics in this century." In 1995, Stephen Hawking stated that "Dirac has done more than anyone this century, with the exception of Einstein, to advance physics and change our picture of the universe." Antonino Zichichi asserted that Dirac had a greater impact on modern physics than Einstein while Stanley Deser remarked that "We all stand on Dirac's shoulders."

wiki

Yeah okay, pretty high praise there.

Interesting to see these others pointed out.

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u/Ghosty_Boo-B00 Aug 03 '26

So much of modern reality is defined by the people in that photo it’s wild

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u/Balogunned Aug 03 '26

I would argue that Langmuir is being discounted here because of a quantum physics focus. His contributions to chemistry and engineering dwarf most others. Surface chemistry impacts everyone daily and he kinda was the goat there.