Albert Hibbs

Albert R. Hibbs was a noted mathematician known worldwide as "the voice of JPL". He was born in Akron, Ohio on October 19, 1924 and died on February 24, 2003 of complications following heart surgery.

Hibbs was chosenFact|date=April 2008 to become an astronaut on an Apollo moon mission, but the program ended before his turn came.

In 1949, Hibbs and Roy Walford took time off, from graduate school and medical school respectively, to go to Reno and Las Vegas to beat the casinos at roulette. Studying biases in the roulette wheels, they made thousands of dollars (a significant sum at the time), variously estimated between $6,500 ("Life" magazine) and $42,000 (a Walford obituary).Fact|date=April 2008 According to Albert Hibbs himself, during an episode of You Bet Your Life on which he was a contestant, he made "about $12,000."

In 1962, Hibbs began hosting a Saturday morning educational program on NBC television entitled "Exploring". It mostly, but not exclusively, covered scientific topics, featuring segments with the [http://www.tvparty.com/lostny2ritts.html Ritts puppets] , cinematic short subjects, animated versions of famous legends, and music. It ran for several years, but received poor ratings, and was constantly shifted around the schedule.

Hibbs took his Ph.D. under Richard Feynman, with the study subject being the creation of ocean waves. He also transcribed and edited Feynman's lectures in quantum electrodynamics, and is coauthor for their book path integrals and quantum mechanics. [Feynman, R.P. and Hibbs, A.R. "Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals", McGraw Hill: 1965 (ISBN 0-07-020650-3).] He called upon his mentor at least once to provide recommendations to NASA for his selection as a science astronaut in the Apollo program. [See letters in the "1966-1969" section of cite book
title = Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of ...
author = Richard Phillips Feynman
publisher=Basic Books |year=2005 |isbn=0738206369]

Hibbs enjoyed making kinetic sculpture as a hobby and was fascinated by self-actuated machines-- a field where he once again collaborated in a well known idea-experiment of Feynman's. According to Feynman, it was Hibbs who originally suggested to him (circa 1959) the idea of a "medical" use for Feynman's theoretical micromachines (see nanotechnology). Hibbs suggested that certain repair machines might one day be reduced in size to the point that it would, in theory, be possible to (as Feynman put it) "swallow the doctor." [See "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" essay linked below. ]

Notes

External links

* [http://pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/EandS/articles/LXVI/assorted.html Obituary by California Institute of Technology]
* [http://www.its.caltech.edu/~feynman/plenty.html Feynman's classic 1959 talk: "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" in which Feynman specifically credits Hibbs with the idea of a micro-doctor machine which could be swallowed.]