Tsung-Dao Lee
Qingmin Liu
How was Fermi as a supervisor? What was he like to work with?
Tsung-Dao Lee: He took very few students. Because I was his theory student. And he would have each week we spent one afternoon with us just talking, the two of us.
You say you were his theory student. Did he have one theoretical student at a time?
Tsung-Dao Lee: At that time when I was his student he only had one theory student. He had other experimental students. You see that is very time consuming. He spent an afternoon each week. He was at the zenus of his career.
Giving a whole afternoon every week is amazing.
Tsung-Dao Lee: Of course later I realised that this was tremendous. And essentially it was just talking to each other.
Did you feel a great burden that you had to prepare for each of these afternoon sessions?
Tsung-Dao Lee: He had what I would call and later I realised a tremendous technique. You see he said there are things I would like to know. He called me Lee because Tsung-Dao was much too difficult. Lee, why don’t you look up and give me a lecture next week. He was preparing something. I was very happy to teach Fermi. Of course this is an excellent way of building the student confidence and then he would ask questions and I would have to answer. Everything has to be proved just like that and why the reason. Later I realised that this was a fantastic effort of Fermi’s part. Personally guiding. To transfer his knowledge to build up the young man’s confidence. I mean this was a phenomenal thing. this is why Fermi produced so many good students.
Highly selective in his choice.
Tsung-Dao Lee: You cannot take more. He was himself of course extremely busy. He was doing experiments but also, after WWII, he was the one who really contributed and creating the energy, the nuclear energy. And to this I think I will always remember what a great teacher and what a great physicist Fermi was and I benefited by that.
Yes he died very young. The things you learnt from him about the way you should treat students is that something you’ve carried on in your own teaching career?
Tsung-Dao Lee: I try. Also I maintain with my PhD student … I always spend similar, whole afternoon, talking. And different people you do slightly different things.
I imagine it’s very rare to find somebody who actually responds to this in a really productive way.
Tsung-Dao Lee: That’s because Fermi was such a great teacher and I am not.