That's Not Physics
Have you ever left a colloquium or a seminar and thought to yourself “that was interesting, but it wasn’t physics”? If so, you are in good company, because there has long been disagreement in our community about which research specialties belong to the canon of physics and which do not, particularly when it comes to hiring faculty members into physics departments to train PhD students. In this talk, I discuss some aspects of this debate from the founding of the American Physical Society to the present day. Examples include a field that was once a part of physics but is not anymore; a field that was once “not physics” but is definitely so today; and a field whose status as “physics” remains unsettled in the minds of many.