Comments on: In Memory of Andrew Chamblin http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/04/17/in-memory-of-andrew-chamblin/ Random samplings from a universe of ideas Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:08:12 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Angi http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/04/17/in-memory-of-andrew-chamblin/#comment-184166 Angi Thu, 25 Jan 2007 16:48:37 +0000 http://cosmicvariance.com/?p=764#comment-184166 Dear Clifford, I am the Gifts Manager at Cambridge in America, and I've had many gifts to the fund cross my desk. I am always touched and moved to see the outpouring of support for this remarkable man. Thank you for your blogs about him, which have given me a sense of who he was. Is it possible to miss someone you've never met? If so, that's the case here. Dear Clifford,
I am the Gifts Manager at Cambridge in America, and I’ve had many gifts to the fund cross my desk. I am always touched and moved to see the outpouring of support for this remarkable man. Thank you for your blogs about him, which have given me a sense of who he was. Is it possible to miss someone you’ve never met? If so, that’s the case here.

]]> By: Kristin Epley http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/04/17/in-memory-of-andrew-chamblin/#comment-143783 Kristin Epley Tue, 28 Nov 2006 01:51:39 +0000 http://cosmicvariance.com/?p=764#comment-143783 I grew up down the street from Andy. He was considerably older than me, but he graduated from high school the same year as my brother, and I remember being very impressed by his valedictory speech at graduation. When I went to high school after Andy left, the teachers still talked about him. I didn't know about Andy's academic success until my brother ended up doing graduate work at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge at the same time Andy was finishing his Ph.D. I only learned of Andy's passing this weekend when my brother and sister-in-law told me about their upcoming high school reunion, and told me how much they would miss seeing him. After reading your sincere and poignant memories, I can only express my condolences at losing a great friend and estimable colleague. I grew up down the street from Andy. He was considerably older than me, but he
graduated from high school the same year as my brother, and I remember being very impressed by his valedictory speech at graduation.
When I went to high school after Andy left, the teachers still talked about him.
I didn’t know about Andy’s academic success until my brother ended up doing graduate work at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge at the same time Andy was finishing his Ph.D. I only learned of Andy’s passing this weekend when my brother and sister-in-law told me about their upcoming high school reunion, and told me how much they would miss seeing him.

After reading your sincere and poignant memories, I can only express my condolences at losing a great friend and estimable colleague.

]]> By: Memories, Physics, and Celebration - Asymptotia http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/04/17/in-memory-of-andrew-chamblin/#comment-131949 Memories, Physics, and Celebration - Asymptotia Fri, 03 Nov 2006 19:38:36 +0000 http://cosmicvariance.com/?p=764#comment-131949 [...] I spoke about our work together in 1998/1999, in collaboration with Roberto Emparan and Rob Myers. The title was “A is for Action, A is for Andrew”, and the talk was similar to the one I gave at the memorial conference in Louisville. I’ve described a bit of it in an earlier post. I spoke for example about the fun we had collaborating on our first paper together, with Emparan and Myers, on the NUTs and Bolts of AdS. We’d got excited about the fact that the AdS/CFT correspondence had suddenly given meaning to all sorts of computations that people had been perfecting (particulalry the Gibbons-Hawking calculus (as I like to call it) for the thermodynamics of spacetimes) using a whole raft of examples involving gravitational instantons, etc, in a number of contexts. AdS/CFT provided a way of making sense of those objects in a unitary quantum field theory context, and we were excited to work out several examples. Notably, nobody seem to have done the work for Taub-NUT and Taub-Bolt spacetimes, and so that was our first step, and we presented that vey shortly, after a flurry of excited emails while all four authors were scattered around the planet (I was in my New York Summer hideout of that period, for example). We discovered a lovely setup, showing phase transitions from the NUT spacetimes to the Bolt spacetimes very analogous to the Hawking-Page transitions in the context of AdS-Schwarzschild black holes. (I note that Hawking, Hunter and Page later came out with some similar results to ours.) [...] [...] I spoke about our work together in 1998/1999, in collaboration with Roberto Emparan and Rob Myers. The title was “A is for Action, A is for Andrew”, and the talk was similar to the one I gave at the memorial conference in Louisville. I’ve described a bit of it in an earlier post. I spoke for example about the fun we had collaborating on our first paper together, with Emparan and Myers, on the NUTs and Bolts of AdS. We’d got excited about the fact that the AdS/CFT correspondence had suddenly given meaning to all sorts of computations that people had been perfecting (particulalry the Gibbons-Hawking calculus (as I like to call it) for the thermodynamics of spacetimes) using a whole raft of examples involving gravitational instantons, etc, in a number of contexts. AdS/CFT provided a way of making sense of those objects in a unitary quantum field theory context, and we were excited to work out several examples. Notably, nobody seem to have done the work for Taub-NUT and Taub-Bolt spacetimes, and so that was our first step, and we presented that vey shortly, after a flurry of excited emails while all four authors were scattered around the planet (I was in my New York Summer hideout of that period, for example). We discovered a lovely setup, showing phase transitions from the NUT spacetimes to the Bolt spacetimes very analogous to the Hawking-Page transitions in the context of AdS-Schwarzschild black holes. (I note that Hawking, Hunter and Page later came out with some similar results to ours.) [...]

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