http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/11.29/15-coleman.html

In addition to lots of great quotes and a mention of Sidney’s multi-decade poker game (joining it in 1987, I was a very late-comer), Roberta tells a story I’d never heard about Sidney’s famous sartortial “look:”

In the 1960s, he threatened to sue a student publication for calumny, because they said he taught physics in a purple polyester suit. “It was wool,” he sniffed.

The first time I ever saw Sidney was in Princeton in 1972 or 1973. Wearing a glamorous bottle-green velveteen jacket, he was the focus of every eye in Jadwin Hall. Or maybe I’m wrong and that jacket was really wool. I wish he were here right now to threaten to sue me.

In the archives of Harvard there is a one-hour movie reel of one trademark-funny and sharp Sidney Coleman lecture from 1994, “Quantum Mechanics in Your Face.”

This movie just got posted to Google Video on November 22: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4674461198051839963&hl=en

It would be even greater if there were some more Sidney lectures available…

Number 37 (someone counted them) is Sidney Coleman.

You can see the whole marvelous thing on Errol Morris’s website: http://www.errolmorris.com/content/shortfilms/oscarmovie.html

A picture Sidney used to have in his office. Really!

http://www.marcelduchamp.net/images/L.H.O.O.Q.jpg

Cover up to the chin (and alter the mustache, ditch the goatee) and note the resemblance.

Plus an extra email link from Ken, who urges everyone (at least those of us not upset by naughty Frenchness, as Sidney was surely not) to check out what “L. H. O. O. Q.” means:

http://www.marcelduchamp.net/L.H.O.O.Q.php

“How do you do physics at Harvard?

You go to Witten to give you a problem to work on.

You go to Coleman to tell you how to solve it.

Then you go to Weinberg to write you a reference letter.”

“Modesty forbids me, but honesty compels me…”