Lawrence Krauss’ Erdos-Bacon-Sabbath Number

Lawrence Krauss

Dr. Lawrence Krauss

Dr. Lawrence Krauss is a well-known physicist whose public profile has really exploded in the last few years.  He’s the author of “The Physics of Star Trek” and has become an in-demand lecturer, essayist, and public intellectual figure along the same lines as my personal man-crush Neil Degrasse Tyson.  In other words, this is a dude we need to get on the EBS list.  My friend @NotMattBellamy suggested him as a potential candidate, and we’re thrilled to announce that he is indeed on the list.  And this is fresh off the press (as of late March 2013), as he gets on the list thanks to starring in a feature documentary called “The Unbelievers”, which nets him a Bacon number of three.  @NotMattBellamy pointed out that he’s also been involved in music, such as performing with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, which gets him a Sabbath number of six.  As a working theoretical physicist, his Erdos number is a slam dunk — January First-of-May over at the Erdos-Bacon-Sabbath Project found the shortest link so far of length four (though I bet with some digging we could get that lower).  So for now, Dr. Krauss has an Erdos-Bacon-Sabbath Number of thirteen!

Dr. Krauss also happens to be the prime architect of one of my favorite scientific theories of all time – that we may cause the end of the universe by observing the universe.  Read more about it over at my article on “Science Destroys The World”.

The Details

Erdos number, thanks to January First-of-May

Lawrence M. Krauss to Francesco Iachello:

Spin-dependent scattering of weakly interacting massive particles in heavy nuclei

Francesco Iachello, Lawrence M. Krauss, Giuseppe Maino

Journal: Physics Letters B – PHYS LETT B , vol. 254, no. 1-2, pp. 220-224, 1991

Francesco Iachello to Raphael D. Levine

Algebraic Theory of Molecules

Francesco Iachello, Raphael D. Levine, R. Stephen Berry

Journal: Physics Today – PHYS TODAY , vol. 49, no. 3, 1996

Raphael D. Levine to Peter Salamon

A geometrical measure for entropy changes (Citations: 2)

Tova Feldmann, R. D. Levine, Peter Salamon

Journal: Journal of Statistical Physics – J STATIST PHYS , vol. 42, no. 5, pp. 1127-1134, 1986

Peter Salamon to Paul Erdos

THE SOLUTION TO A PROBLEM OF GRÜNBAUM

PETER SALAMON, PAUL ERDŐS

The paper characterizes the set of all possible values for the number of lines determined byn points forn sufficiently large. For(2) (n- k),the lower bound of Kelly and Moser for the number of lines in a configuration with n – k collinear points is shown to be sharp and it is shown that all values between M mn (k) …

For a total Erdos number of four.

Bacon Number

Excellent timing!  Dr. Krauss recently released a documentary called “The Unbelievers” which co-stars many big celebrities who have Bacon numbers of Dos, including Cameron Diaz, Woody Allen, and Ricky Gervais.  This gives him a Bacon number of three.

Sabbath number

He performed with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, narrating a performance of Gustav Holst’s “The Planets”. The Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, in turn, performed with a drum ensemble called D’Drum, who in turn have collaborated with Stewart Copeland. According to the Black Sabbath game website, Copeland then ought to be traceable to Sabbath via “Sting (Sting, solo) B.J. Cole (Trapeze) Glen Hughes”, for a total Sabbath number of 6. He also apparently was nominated for a Grammy for writing liner notes for an album, though I’m on the fence as to whether that should count…