Origin of The Term
According to Steven A. Moszkowski (a student of Maria Goeppert-Mayer), the term "magic number" was coined by Eugene Wigner: "Wigner, too, believed in the liquid drop model, but he recognized, from the work of Maria Mayer, the very strong evidence for the closed shells. It seemed a little like magic to him, and that is how the words ‘Magic Numbers’ were coined.”
Read more about this topic: Magic Number (physics)
Famous quotes containing the words origin of, origin and/or term:
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The origin of storms is not in clouds,
our lightning strikes when the earth rises,
spillways free authentic power:
dead John Brown’s body walking from a tunnel
to break the armored and concluded mind.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“No—is a term very frequently employed by the fair, when they mean everything else but a negative. Their yes is always yes; but their no is not always no.”
—Anonymous, U.S. women’s magazine contributor. M, Weekly Visitor or Ladies Miscellany, p. 203 (April 1803)