Harry Lehmann and the analyticity unitarity programme

I try to describe the extremely fruitful interaction I had with Harry Lehmann and the results which came out of the analyticity unitarity programme, especially the proof of the Froissart bound, which, with recent and future measurements of total cross-sections and real parts, remains topical.Comment: (10 pages, latex

History of Spin and Statistics

These lectures were given in the framework of the ``Dixi\`eme s\'eminaire rhodanien de physique'' entitled ``Le spin en physique'', given at Villa Gualino, Turin, March 2002. We have shown how the difficulties of interpretation of atomic spectra led to the Pauli exclusion principle and to the notion of spin, and then described the following steps: the Pauli spin with 2$\times$2 matrices after the birth of "new" quantum mechanics, the Dirac equation and the magnetic moment of the electron, the spins and magnetic moments of other particles, proton, neutron and hyperons. Finally, we show the crucial role of statistics in the stability of the world.Comment: latex file, 7 figures, 3 table

Liturgy at Ground Level

(Excerpt) On the back yard of our parish lot is a patch of ground I drive by every day. It is the place where we have a bonfire of trees and greens on the Twelfth Night of Christmas. Each Ash Wednesday, if it is not covered by snow, it is a blackened smudge on the face of the lawn. By Easter, however, that patch seems the most alive. For there the green blade rises, unhindered by dead overgrowth, looking even greener against the charred earth