How strange to learn that one of the most important men in your intellectual life has vanished from this world without you ever knowing it. I just got a letter informing me that nearly 3 weeks ago, Dr. Jürg Saladin of the University of Pittsburgh, Professor Emeritus of physics and my graduate thesis advisor in the 1980s, had died after a long illness. Jürg and I had a very conflicted relationship. I wasn’t the best student he ever had, but he acknowledged that I was a hard wo