Alpha Institute for Advanced Studies (AIAS)

Next, we will see how Myron's work as Mansel's understudy came to fruition. At the NPL, in 1980, Myron and George W. Chantry founded the EMLG, the European Molecular Liquids Group, and Myron gave it its logo of a drop of water about to fall. A conference followed in Sicily in 1981, where the plan of work, the Delta Project [9], was discussed. Myron used a vast award from the SERC to acquire a new state of the art Apollo pulsed laser that provided a much richer source of photons than previously available at far infrared and microwave frequencies. Eventually the laser was transferred to the University of Pisa as part of one of the endeavours of the Delta Project of the EMLG in those early days. The EMLG is still going strong and now has links with a similar Japanese group, the JMLG. Subsequent to the 1981 conference in Sicily, the EMLG has established and maintained a series of 38 international conferences (the EMLG/JMLG annual meetings) in 17 different countries, as a platform for information exchange between researchers and students. Some of those meetings were supported by NATO as NATO Advanced Study Institutes, and by the European Science Foundation (ESF) as part of the prestigious ESF conference series. Myron became the EMLG’s first scientific coordinator, while George became its Chairman, and Jack Yarwood its Secretary, and they were instrumental in the conferences held in Dublin in 1982 and Florence in 1983. Fittingly, the 1984 conference was held in Nice and organised by Professor Brot.

At this time, Myron left the EDCL for two other component colleges of the University of Wales, Bangor and Swansea, and so gave up his role as the official scientific coordinator of the EMLG. This was because, at that time, with mail still such an important part of the coordination, a permanent postal address was needed, and Myron was starting to become an itinerant scientist, following where his work took him. The EMLG continued with Myron in the background, and since Myron had been the driving force behind organising new conferences, that aspect changed to maintaining the, by now, very successful international conferences. Nevertheless, in Bangor, Myron was still able to organise a Nuffield Foundation conference, before moving back to the Swansea Valley, where he had been born and grew up. Myron would soon be on the move again, this time to America, but would again, eventually, return to Swansea to direct the Alpha Institute for Advanced Studies, which he would set up to help him in his quest to find and then develop, the long sought unified field theory.

Myron's connection to Aberystwyth had spanned fifteen eventful years, where he had built up a large postdoctoral team, and had used far infrared spectroscopy and computer techniques to probe the nature of photon collisions with molecules and how these collisions caused molecules to librate, spin or translate (move forward). By the time Myron left Aberystwyth, he had developed the technique of field applied computer simulation, which showed that computers could reproduce various fields that had been applied experimentally, and so the study of the dynamics of molecules could now be greatly extended by supercomputers. Thus, the focus of Myron's work was shifting to pioneering supercomputers as the third pillar of research (along with theoretical work and experiment) into the dynamics of molecules, which involved him in very complicated non-linear Euclidean geometry, which would become perhaps the most important aspect of his research. Crucially, Myron had developed the mathematics in Aberystwyth that would be needed later in his career, for the coupling of the curved spacetime of gravity with the non-Euclidean geometry of electromagnetism, when Myron became involved in the quest to unify all of the forces of nature! In the meantime, in the University College of North Wales, at Bangor, and the University College of Swansea and in America, Myron would continue to build on the contacts that he had fostered on the way to forming the EMLG, and much of this collaboration was brought to the public in the journal Series, Advances in Chemical Physics starting with Volume 62, in a manner that followed the approach of its founding editor, Ilya Prigognine.

Ilya Prigognine, the Director of the International Solvay Institutes for Physics and Chemistry, was the 1977 Nobel Prize winner for chemistry and the founder and series editor of Advances in Chemical Physics, with Volume 1 being published in 1957. This prestigious journal soon also had Stuart Rice as its joint series editor. Stuart was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1999 by President Clinton. Ilya had put great planning into the establishment of his journal and it had become the premier publication in its field. Whereas other journals came out in dribs and drabs throughout the year and had to be bound during the summer months when the students were away, Ilya had the foresight to plan a year or two ahead, so that the articles came out as chapters in an immaculately bound volume annually, complete with index, preface and introduction, and the whole series was shelved in the EDCL library. This series is bound as quality book editions, even though it is in reality a journal, and it has an editorial board of accomplished chemical physicists listed at its front. The aim of this journal is to keep chemical physicists up to date in their specific areas, and to also let non specialists know what is going on throughout chemical physics, thus allowing diverse cross fertilisation to occur. Myron was seen as the world leader in his field by Prigognine, adding credence to JMT’s view that Myron was the man to watch! So, after contributing to Volume 44 with Gareth and Russell Davies in 1980, Myron was thrilled to be invited by Ilya to be the editor of a special volume, Volume 62 of Prigogine’s book series, and to select an international group of scholars to present the very important developments in the theory of relaxation processes. Here, for the first time, the basic equations of motion were being brought to the world in a form suitable for the computation of a variety of observable phenomena in several different disciplines, with Myron contributing a chapter on how molecular dynamics were affected by intense external fields. Myron had made many contacts on the way to forming the EMLG, so he was able to invite some of them to report their contributions in this field in this or later volumes. Myron had so many contacts respond for this venture that Ilya immediately asked him to edit a follow-on volume, as Advances in Chemical Physics, Volume 63, with both volumes being published in January, 1985. This was just the beginning of their twenty years of collaborations, which went on till Ilya, sadly, died in 2003. By then, Myron had also edited Volume 85, as well as the game changing Volume 119, which came out in three parts in 2001, and alerted the world that the Heaviside Paradigm was ending and the Post Einsteinian Paradigm shift was starting, bringing in the new physics, bang in time for the new millennium!

IBM Kingston, Cornell, ETH, Zurich, and the Magnetising Photon

Myron could see that powerful computers were the way forward as he moved further into the computer simulations of molecular dynamics, and soon became the biggest user of the Manchester computer, Britain’s most powerful. This did not go unnoticed in the USA and Myron was soon to be head hunted to cross the pond! Myron’s farewell paper [10] was written with his EMLG colleagues of Trinity College, Dublin, and communicated to the Royal Society by Francis James Macdonald Farley FRS in April of 1986. It described the culmination of Myron’s far infrared work and how the inertia and polarisations of molecules relate to the Debye theory, rounding off Myron’s EDCL research adventure, which followed Mansel’s lead. This paper was selected by Farley, on its scientific excellence and originality and for representing a significant advance in our understanding of molecular dynamics, for publication by the Royal Society. It was Myron’s 210th paper, since his first in 1973, giving him a publication rate of 16 papers a year, equating to a novel new paper every three weeks over the eventful thirteen years!

Myron's area of focus was now to change. For over a decade Myron had been involved with bringing disparate groups of molecular dynamics focussed teams together. His scientific coordination of these groups had resulted in the dynamics of simple molecules in the gas and liquid phases being studied simultaneously across Europe by various spectroscopic probes and computer simulation. He had been the key player in the formation of the EMLG, which would be his legacy to European research. Myron's personal interest was for much of this time, using far infrared spectroscopy and computer simulation to take our understanding of Brownian motion forward. This had been used in 1905 by Einstein, as one of his Miracle Year papers, to demonstrate to mathematical physicists, that atoms and molecules really did exist! At this time, Paul Langevin took Einstein's work forward with his famous Langevin equation, which Myron was to use extensively in his early work. With the group at Trinity College, Myron took this work on Brownian motion forward again, with their 'Itinerant Oscillator' description of Brownian motion. The Trinity group have continued to this very day with this type of research, despite age catching up with them. At this time however, it was the parting of the ways, as Myron headed for America and a new focus of research, the nature of light and the photon. Myron was thus, following Einstein not only in his relocation to the New York area of the US of A, but also in the nature of his research!

Myron crossed the pond to work at IBM’s supercomputer facility in New York State with Enrico Clementi [11] and George Chiao-Jang Lie, the manager of IBM Kingston. He also worked with Professor Konrad Singer and David Heyes back at Royal Holloway College on his brief return to London [12]. At Kingston, Myron found that IBM were starting to operate an internal email system and had produced the world’s first personal computer, the PS1. This was to make it much easier to communicate with colleagues across the world as the Internet took hold, and saved Myron much on time and postage. Myron started to use the new technique of computer animation in Kingston, and produced twenty papers in the Clementi environment between 1987 and 1988. Myron was interested in field induced optical activity [13] and came across a paper by George Wagniere’s team of the Physical Chemistry Institute, University of Zurich, on the inverse Faraday Effect, before relocating to Cornell University for three years to again use IBM’s supercomputers.

Myron was now getting interested in circularly polarised beams, and worked with Chris Pelkie to produce an award-winning animation of the inverse Faraday Effect, which used very innovative computer technology for its time [14]. The world’s leading team in polarised light applied in the field of chemistry was led by Dean George Henry Wagniere in the University of Zurich. Consequently, to facilitate a better collaboration between the IBM team in Cornell and the Wagniere group, Myron accepted Wagniere’s invitation and moved to Zurich, with support from the Swiss NSF, during the middle year of his time at Cornell [15]. In Zurich, Myron gained unlimited computer time at the IBM computer facility at ETH University (Einstein’s Alma Mater). Back at Cornell in November 1991, Myron made a breakthrough in our understanding of light with his discovery of the B(3) field of electromagnetic radiation. This was based on the ability of circularly polarised light of any frequency to produce magnetization in matter, which Myron realized was evidence for a longitudinally directed and fundamental B(3) field. Vector analysis was used to show that the conjugate product of nonlinear optics must produce a longitudinal field in free space. This was published as three papers, [16] [17] in 1992 and [18] 1993 in ‘Physica B’. This was a huge step forward that allowed the development of O(3) electrodynamics in a generally covariant format when the longitudinal component of the photon was incorporated as the B(3) field. This caught the attention of Prince Louis de Broglie's assistant, Jean-Pierre Vigier, in Paris, who was on the editorial board of Physics Letters A. Vigier had been left Louis’ actual chair on his retirement, which Vigier proudly now sat on when pondering the nature of the photon at his desk. This led to a decade long collaboration between Myron and Vigier, with them publishing together and with Vigier’s team forging links with Myron’s team.

The advent of Myron's B3 field meant that the photon would now need to be described as a three-dimensional entity. This meant that it could no longer be developed as a product of special relativity in a flat space, as was still usual in the Heaviside approach in use at that time. This meant that Myron's work would now focus on developing the mathematics of twisting and rotating spacetime to describe the nature of light. This would take the best part of ten years, mirroring Einstein's quest for his famous field equation. On completion, this adventure into non-Euclidean geometry would put the description of electromagnetism on a par with that of gravity, opening the door to unification of the four fundamental forces of nature!

The Enigmatic Photon, Volume 119, and the Paradigm Shift

Myron's main focus had shifted again, this time to the mathematical physics of the photon and its role in producing electromagnetic fields. This required the development of non-Euclidean geometry to describe the nature of spin for a photon now considered to have both spin and length. The mathematics of spin was developed by Gauss and Hamilton, and then soon after made all encompassing by Clifford. This shift in focus would lead Myron's mathematical Odyssey over the next ten years to echo Einstein's struggle with the Riemannian geometry of curved spacetime, but would be focussed on the Clifford algebra needed to describe the twisting and spinning of spacetime, and how to link it to energy, mass and momentum. Amazingly, Myron’s work in far infrared spectroscopy and molecular dynamics had made it necessary for Myron to learn the mathematics required to describe how photons pushed molecules forward and caused them to rotate as they interacted with chemical bonds. A case of serendipity if ever there was one! In this venture, Myron's had gained the support of one Jean-Pierre Vigier who himself had connections going back to the dawn of quantum mechanics, in the form of Einstein's friend and ally, the aristocrat Prince Louis de Broglie. Vigier brought to the table the insights on the nature of light that he had gained from his comrades Albert Einstein, Louis De Broglie and David Bohm, while Myron brought his vast knowledge of chemical physics into play, having experimentally pioneered our understanding of the nature of light through his work on how photons interact with matter in the far infrared.

John Dalton, working in Manchester, published a list of the relative atomic weights of atoms in 1805, and soon his atomic theory was adopted by chemists, opening the way to the construction of the periodic table. Maxwell and Boltzmann described the movement of atoms and molecules in terms of particles moving randomly with an energy distribution, which could describe pressure and diffusion in terms of the collisions of such particles, Faraday used electrolysis to relate accurately their weights to their number. All of this occurred in the nineteenth century; however, physicists were not able to accept that atoms existed until Einstein used Brownian motion and statistics to finally get them on board with his 1905 paper. His friend Paul Langevin then took the maths foreward with his Langevin equation and dynamics, doing much to establish molecular dynamics as a subject. This shows that both Langevin and Einstein had a good grounding in chemical physics, which shaped their thinking. Langevin, who was also Prince Louis de Broglie’s supervisor, helped promote relativity with his twin paradox interpretation, and explained paramagnetism in terms of the spin of electrons within atoms.

In his 1924 Ph.D. thesis, de Broglie asserted that all matter has wave properties, which meant that electrons exhibited wave particle duality. His supervisor, Paul Langevin, thought such a postulate could cause shock waves in the world of physics, so he sought reassurance from Einstein, who was visiting Paris at the time. Einstein, who had already come up with such a description for light, saw no problem with this revolutionary idea, and so Louis was awarded his Ph.D. forthwith. Just three years later, experimental evidence in the form of a diffraction pattern produced by electrons bombarding nickel supported the hypothesis, and consequently, in 1929, Louis was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics and his pilot wave theory became the foundation of quantum mechanics.

Louis' student Jean-Pierre Vigier worked as his assistant from 1948 to 1962, promoting the deterministic views of Einstein, Langevin and Louis regarding the photon, electron and molecular dynamics. He was also was known for his researches in to stochastic processes, and so had a background that was a good fit with Myron's. Vigier was refused a visa to become Einstein’s assistant in America, (despite having earned the Legion d’honneur for his work with the French resistance), due to his political views. Prince Louis retired in 1962, leaving Vigier to take their work forward.

To celebrate Louis' ninetieth birthday, Vigier edited a book with Alwyn van der Merwe that gave the great physicists of the day a forum to discuss their differing views on relativity and electromagnetism and light. This marked the start of a long association between Vigier and Alwyn and ultimately with Myron, with the trio coming together to take physics into the realms of unified field theory. The book was produced to mark Louis' ninetieth, and Wigner's and Dirac's eightieth birthdays, with invited essays describing the differing views of the big beasts of the day on wave particle duality of the photon and electron. Alwyn had been providing a forum for such essays in his journal, Foundation of Physics, before he teamed up with Vigier to edit the ground breaking volume. It was published in 1984 as “Quantum Space and Time - The Quest Continues” (also edited by Asim Barut), and in it Alwyn van der Merwe brought together 48 essays from physicists around the globe. Eventually, in the nineties, the tide changed in favour of de Broglie, and more recently, the advent of attosecond lasers have shown the views of the Copenhagenists to be quaint and unphysical.

This cooperative venture with Vigier made van der Merwe's journals and publishing ventures an important outlet for the AIAS in terms of papers and monographs, when seven years later Myron and Vigier started working together on the nature of the enigmatic photon. Soon, Myron would also be joined in his research efforts into unification by Mendel Sachs. Mendel had a strong scientific and engineering background, and Alwyn was first amongst equals in the editing and publishing of papers concerning the foundations of physics.

In the nineties and into the millennium, Myron and Vigier wrote the ground breaking book series 'The Enigmatic Photon', which came out in five volumes. The first volume, entitled ‘The Field B(3)’, came out in 1994 and was devoted to the photon, and it presented the first systematic development of the fundamental magnetizing field of electromagnetic radiation by describing the properties of B(3) in a vacuum and in the interaction of light with matter. Volume 2, Non-Abelian Electrodynamics, followed in 1995, dealing with the development of non-Abelian, or O(3), electrodynamics (in which B(3) is incorporated systematically). It opens with the derivation of the novel field B(3) from the Dirac equation of relativistic quantum field theory. The existence of B(3) in the vacuum means that the gauge group of electromagnetism becomes 0(3), the group of rotations. This is non-Abelian, and so requires a self-consistent development of the vacuum Maxwell equations themselves. This volume also discusses the role of B(3) in unified field theory and quantum electrodynamics.

In 1996, the third volume was a four author book, with Myron and Vigier’s contributions being augmented by Stanley Jeffers and Sisir Roy. The Theory and Practice of the B3 Field, develops both the theory and practical applications of the B(3) field. The opening chapters are based on the Dirac equation of a single fermion in a circularly-polarized electromagnetic field, an equation that defines the way in which B(3) interacts with matter. These chapters predict the theoretical possibility of nuclear magnetic resonance at infrared and visible frequencies, while the final two chapters treat the theory of B(3) in cosmology and predict future experimental developments. Volume 4, entitled ‘New Directions’, came out in 1998 and was followed by the final volume, O3 Electrodynamics, in 2002, thus completing this five-book series on the Fundamental Theories of Physics.

Volume 5 was written entirely by Myron, because Vigier was now finding that age was catching up with him. Here Myron sums up the advances made in the description of the photon over the last ten years. The first part of volume 5, describes electrodynamics as a gauge field theory, while the second part describes the history of the development of O(3) electrodynamics via 20 selected papers. It is shown that the non Abelian nature of the O(3) theory gives rise to novel concepts such as classical quantum polarization and magnetization, which are missing from U(1) electrodynamics entirely. In O(3), potentials are physically meaningful and there is a four vector that quantizes directly to photon momentum! Gauge transformation in O(3) theory is a geometrical process with physical meaning and there a four vector potential that polarizes directly into photon momentum. Myron had changed the landscape from which the nature of the photon was to be viewed in this collaboration with Vigier, but this work was only a fraction of the output of his work in this time frame.

In parallel to these five volumes, over this ten year period, Myron continued his collaborations with Prigognine, having been again invited by Ilya to edit another special volume of Advances in Chemical Physics, Volume 85 (in two parts), entitled ’Modern Nonlinear Optics’, with Stanislaw Kielich, of the Kielich Research Institute at Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznan in Poland, with both parts being published in 1993. However, Myron’s work in his area of chemical physics was so prolific that a few years later Ilya Prigognine, seeing that this subject area was at last coming of age, tasked Myron with being the editor of yet another special edition of Advances in Chemical Physics, Volume 119. The title of the volume was again 'Modern Nonlinear Optics', and with Myron going into overdrive, it had to be published in three parts, in 2001. Myron used his role as editor to repeat his success in forming the EMLG, but this time on a global scale. Modern Nonlinear Optics, Volume 119, presented a dialogue between the, by now, two prevailing schools of thought: one concerned with quantum optics and Abelian electrodynamics, the other with the emerging subject of non-Abelian electrodynamics and unified field theory. The older paradigm, the Maxwell Heaviside theory, was developed in fields such as quantum optics, antenna theory, and holography, but it was also being challenged using general relativity, O(3) electrodynamics, superluminal effects, and several other theories. This brought a new millennial interpretation to this area of physics and showed how things were now moving into a new paradigm, signalling the importance of non-Euclidean geometry for a better understanding of electromagnetism and its relationship to quantum theory and gravity. Volume 119 surveyed developments in nonlinear optics over the previous ten years, and included advances in light squeezing, single photon optics, phase conjunction optics, and laser technology. It reviewed thousands of papers emerging from both schools of thought and provided the most up-to-date and complete coverage available at that time.

This was a watershed volume in the history of physics, because chemical physicists had now come together to unravel a path to take them further in our understanding of the photon, and generally covariant electromagnetism was now joining generally covariant general relativity in describing the nature of the fundamental forces of Nature. Both light and gravity could now be described using non-Euclidean geometry, with gravity described as the curving of spacetime and light as the twisting or rotating of spacetime. The ground work had been laid, in Volume 119 of Advances in Chemical Physics, for these two aspects of non-Euclidean geometry to soon be integrated, and the vehicle for this was to be the Alpha Institute for Advanced Studies, with Myron as its Director!

The Formation of the Alpha Institute

Nonlinear optics was a subject area brought in to being by Debye, and the unit of polarisation, ‘The Debye Unit’, is named after him. This subject was highly specialised, and it was being developed mainly at Aberystwyth (Mansel Davies wrote Debye’s obituary for the Chemical Society), and in Poland by Kielich’s group. Myron had set about contacting groups and individuals worldwide who had expertise in nonlinear optics, and the nature of the photon and its interactions with chemical bonds. This led to nonlinear optics being coordinated worldwide for the first time, and catalysed its progression to a more main-stream subject in a world now needing to get to terms with the use of lasers, dielectrics and semiconductors in a new millennium full of new electronic devices.

Thus an expert group of chemical physicists and mathematicians came forward to contribute to the two-part ground breaking volume “Advances in Chemical Physics” (Volume 85, 1993), and in so doing laid the ground work for the formation of the Alpha Institute for Advanced Studies. The AIAS came into being initially in its prototype form as the Institute for Advanced Studies, Alpha Foundation Institute, in 1996, with around twenty founding members. When Myron started writing books and papers with Vigier in the early nineties, Vigier’s collaborators Nils Abramson and Bo Lehnert, who had already written papers with Vigier, got to know of Myron’s work and vice versa and became founding members of the AIAS alongside some contributors to Modern Nonlinear Optics, who were similarly well placed to join the AIAS. Bo Lehnert was well able to appreciate the importance of Myron’s work, because he himself had independently, unknown to Myron till then, also developed a similar theory to Myron’s B(3) field theory of the photon. In 1998, Myron was elected Director of the AIAS, and in 1999 the group started having papers published collectively as the “AIAS group”. Their laboratories were listed individually and a research institute address in Hungary was also used as a central contact point (until the creation of the AIAS website).

As such experts on the nature of electromagnetism continued to pool their knowledge and ideas into Myron’s twin projects, the continuing ‘The Enigmatic Photon’ series and the three-part ‘Modern Nonlinear Optics’, Volume 119, our knowledge of this fascinating area of physics leapt forward. Some of the contributors came forward to become a part of the fledgling AIAS. In addition, Professor John B. Hart of Xavier University, the organiser of the famous 1962 ‘Conference on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics’ there, was thrilled to become a founding member.

Boris Podolsky, Einstein’s famous assistant, completed his career at Xavier University. Einstein, Boris and Nathan Rosen came up with the EPR Paradox as an attempt to prove to mathematical physicists, led by Neils Bohr and his supporters of the Copenhagen interpretation, that quantum theory was deterministic and not governed by probability in an unrealistic way. Einstein and Rosen also came up with the idea of an Einstein Rosen Bridge, which is featured in modern science fiction films, such as ‘Thor’ (and Podolsky and Rosen were featured in the Meg Ryan film IQ, with Einstein being played by Walter Matthau).

Professor John B. Hart, as Podolsky’s Head of Department, took the opportunity to organise the famous Xavier University Conference there in 1962 [19], with Podolsky, Rosen, Eugene Wigner and Paul Dirac [20] as some of the illustrious attendees. John proclaimed ECE theory to be the physics of the next two hundred years, and had a big sign erected on his detached house in the Xavier campus, with the AIAS website proudly shown.

Ilya Prigognine died in Brussels in May, 2003, at the age of 86, leaving a vast scientific legacy. The AIAS is grateful for the help he gave in getting our physics out into the world. This gap left by his departure was only partially filled by our book series, ‘Generally Covariant Unified Field Theory’, a cluster of other books and our website becoming increasingly well known, which allowed us to publish our own new Unified Field Theory (UFT) series of papers directly on our website. To date, we have over 450 UFT papers and we are working on publishing further textbooks.

The first AIAS website, on which our preprints could then be posted, took off thanks to Bob Gray at Biophan Inc. in New York State, who constructed it in May 2002. Myron was thrilled to find that for the first time he was getting feedback in real time of the interest being shown in his work. Through the website, Myron was able to present the progression from O(3) electrodynamics to a theory that included gravitation, and then to a unified field theory, in a rapid, comprehensive and coherent manner. The website was later improved and redesigned by Sean MacLachlan.

The website became the path by which the next generation of AIAS members were to make themselves known to Myron. They were a diverse group of individuals, often with more than the typical academic background to offer, with many working in a range of jobs that often meant they could bring a wider range of skills to the table. It turned out that they had learned about Myron through his papers in the fall of 1999, in the Journal of New Energy [21]. Myron had gone back to Maxwell’s original quaternion equations to see what new information and insights could be gleaned. The technological implications of Myron’s insights were also soon recognised by a number of individuals working in certain departments of the US Government and Navy, and contact was made in due course. John Hart (1924-2007) himself had been an officer in the US Navy in World War 2 on Destroyer Escorts in the Pacific towards the end of World War 2. After serving as an Executive Officer, Communications Officer and Anti-Submarine Warfare Officer, he continued in the U.S. Naval Reserve for 26 years until his retirement. He performed reserve duty at many naval stations such as the Michelson Laboratory in the Mojave Desert at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, and the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C., and he co-authored the National Curriculum in navigation for the Department of the Navy. Lieutenant Commander John Hart was also the commanding officer of the U.S. Naval Research Unit that met at Xavier University. The U.S. Navy asked Myron to explain voltage spikes in novel circuits that had been built in Mexico by Alex Hill, and which they had tested and found to have an efficiency much higher than they had thought possible. Myron and Alex explained it by the new concept of Spin Connection Resonance (SCR), which introduced the potential of spacetime as a source of power in a way that is analogous to gravitational potential energy being a source of power due to the curvature of space. This could be the source of power that Tesla had started to access, without knowing exactly how he was achieving it. SCR is a Bernoulli Euler resonance and thus does not violate any basic theorem.

Charles Kellum, another member from the USA, was interested in developing antigravity technology. ECE theory was able to produce a framework for combing the force of gravity with electromagnetism, thus making antigravity technology for space vehicles a plausible possibility. Charles was in the US Marines from 1968 to 1971, before becoming a Naval Officer. As a naval officer Charles gained experience in managing large weapon systems research, and also conducted extensive research in advanced physics, which included designing a propulsion system based on a concept that he has pioneered. He has since worked with a high-technology partnership that is looking at developing an advanced aerospace propulsion capability, based on the curvature of spacetime, including gravitation and electromagnetism, the realm of ECE theory, which shows that gravitation and electromagnetism are both manifestations of spacetime curvature.

The Alpha Institute utilises the maths of Hamilton, Lagrange, Bernoulli, Euler, Riemann, Clifford, James Clerk Maxwell and Cartan, and applies it to describe the geometry of the spacetime of electromagnetism, gravity and quantum mechanics. The AIAS builds on the insights of the Civil List Scientists, Dalton, Joule, Herschel, Faraday, Heaviside and Myron Wyn Evans. The ground breaking work of Planck, Debye, Davies, Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen, Prince Louis de Broglie and Jean-Pierre Vigier, and their contribution to our understanding of quantum theory and electromagnetism, are extended and described using non-Euclidean geometry to model the nature of spacetime and its intimate links to electromagnetic potentials and fields.

Unification

Over the winter of 2002 and into 2003, the new ECE theory crystallised when Myron came across the well-known book by Sean Carroll: ‘Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity’, which brought to Myron the geometry of Elie Cartan, opening the way to the promised land of the grand unified field theory that had been Einstein’s quest in his later years.

Myron was transfixed by Chapter 3, which is a brief synopsis of the geometry developed by Cartan in the 1920’s. The geometry was elegant, but abstract, and Myron set about turning it into a form that is more practicable and better understood by non-specialists, a process that he would pursue for the rest of his life!

Cartan had recognised that torsion was a fundamental property of geometry and could be used to extend general relativity in the ways that Einstein needed. However, Einstein had developed his general theory of relativity from 1905 to 1915, before Cartan geometry had been formulated. Consequently, Einstein’s use of curvature for gravity was just an approximation and only suitable up to the scale of the Solar System, beyond which the inverse law tells us that the curving of space would become weaker and torsion effects would become significant. As such, the incorporation of torsion was needed to correct the approximations used in the twentieth century and to allow unification to take place. Cartan had told Einstein as much in the 1920’s, but developing the Riemannian mathematics for the Einstein-Hilbert equation had taken both Einstein and Hilbert to their limits. So, after corresponding with Cartan in the twenties, Einstein left for the USA and the Institute for Advanced Studies and that was that, while Cartan continued developing his elegant mathematics back in France. While torsion had also been ignored by mathematical physicists throughout the twentieth century, the inclusion of the chapter on Cartan mathematics in Carroll’s textbook showed that some could see that it was important, but could not extend it in the way that was needed. However, Myron could!

In fact, Cartan geometry was a piece of cake to Myron. He had been dealing with non-Euclidean geometry all of his working life, in the form of Riemann geometry and Clifford algebra, combined with the work of Lagrange, Hamilton, Bernoulli and Euler. In comparison to the Clifford algebra he had been using to describe the enigmatic photon and electromagnetism, it was a breath of fresh air, and a form of geometry that Myron could master in just three months!

Torsion is defined in the first structure equation of Maurer and Cartan in terms of the tetrad and spin connection. Myron noticed that the first structure equation, written in terms of differential forms, had the same format as some vector equations of O(3) electrodynamics. That brought to mind the words of Kepler “Ubi material, ibi geometria” – “Where there is matter there is geometry”.

In March, 2003, Myron inferred the first ECE hypothesis - that the electromagnetic potential is a Cartan tetrad with a scalar proportionality, A(0). It then followed that: a) the electromagnetic field is the Cartan torsion within the same proportionality constant A(0); b) the gravitational potential is also a Cartan tetrad within another scalar proportionality; and c) the gravitational field is also Cartan torsion. Cartan’s elegant geometry meant that the B(3) field could be incorporated naturally into classical electrodynamics. There is also a counterpart to B(3) in gravitational theory.

This work in March of 2003 was the start of the first successful unified field theory in the history of physics!

Recognition and Moving Forward

In 1977, Sir John Meurig Thomas FRS had suggested that Myron may outperform him in their scientific careers. That year was a watershed for the EDCL and indeed for chemistry in Britain. For the EDCL to have JMT as its Head of Department, Mansel Davies as his deputy, and Professor John Stuart Anderson FRS, Professor J.O. Williams and the rising star Myron Evans in the department all at the same time was remarkable and a high point in the history of chemistry in the whole of the University of Wales. However, things were changing in the world of chemistry and physics. The EDCL had doubled in size in the sixties, with an extension connecting to the main building, complete with a large lecture theatre and library. However, as the number of students going to universities rocketed, the number of students opting to study chemistry and physics to the final year of their degrees plummeted across the UK. This was because, until then, the main courses in colleges reflected the ‘A’ levels being offered in schools to gain university entrance. However, universities now started offering more and more courses, and more and more topics outside the main subjects of chemistry and physics. So as student numbers soared, the numbers taking chemistry and physics diminished rapidly, causing departments across the UK to close in quick succession. Today, there is a shortage of chemistry and physics teachers as the chickens have come home to roost. Similarly, the Chemical Society had to merge with the Royal Institute of Chemistry and the Faraday Society, to become The Royal Society of Chemistry. In 1978, JMT left for Cambridge and Mansel retired, and soon J.O. would leave and Myron would cross the pond. It would be hard to say who was the best out of Mansel, JMT and Myron, and that would not even be a relevant question to ask. It is better to marvel that they were all in the same department in the same time frame. However, there is no doubt that JMT went on to have a glittering career and fame. On the other hand, Myron’s work was soon to cause a paradigm shift in physics, a view that some mathematical physicists contest as if their lives depended on it. After the formation of the AIAS, Myron ran into difficulties caused by these mathematical physicists, and so he returned to Wales to set out the next phase of his scientific life, back home in the little cottage in which he was born in the Swansea Valley. From there he directed the operations of the AIAS for twenty years. Like Einstein, who ended his career at the Institute for Advanced Studies, probing the nature of the universe through non-Euclidean mathematics, Myron was to do the same, but from his home by using the power of the Internet to communicate rapidly and intensively with his AIAS colleagues worldwide, such that the last twenty years of his life were to become the most productive.

Myron’s prodigious work over thirty eventful years was widely seen as deserving recognition, by the Welsh and British governments at the highest level, after Professor Bo Lehnert, Member of the Royal Swedish Academy and King of Sweden Gold Medallist, contacted them to point out the extent of Myron’s contributions to British science. Bo stated that, "As a result of the theory by Evans, we now see that an axial magnetic field component B(3) exists in the direction of propagation of an individual photon. Regarding such a photon as an axisymmetric wave packet of limited transverse section, it is inevitable that the packet should possess a three-dimensional magnetic field pattern; having an axial field component B(3) and an associated angular momentum (spin). This fundamental contribution by Evans leads to a better understanding of the enigma of the photon than can be offered by conventional theory. Accordingly, the results by Evans have inspired a number of scientists and research groups to perform further investigations along this line of approach. The research by Evans is thus of great importance to the scientific community and to the further development of modern physics and chemistry."

It was soon accepted that the award of a Civil List pension would be appropriate, if supported by the relevant Royal Societies and senior scientists who had deep knowledge of Myron’s work. Civil List pensions are granted by the sovereign from the Civil List upon recommendation of the First Lord of the Treasury. They can be (but rarely are) awarded for attainment in literature and the arts, as has happened with William Wordsworth, Lord Byron's mother and more recently Molly Parkin. Much more rarely, a Civil List pension is awarded for useful discoveries in science, as was done for the score or so Civil List Scientists such as Faraday, Joule, Dalton, Herschel and Oliver Heaviside. The Civil List scientists are members of a famous and historically important group whose work has often been so significant that it is associated with a paradigm shift. As an additional example, the theory of evolution by natural selection is widely attributed to Charles Darwin, but Darwin asserted that it could be argued that Alfred Wallace had an equal claim to the theory and campaigned successfully for Wallace’s contribution to be recognised by Queen Victoria and the state, by the award of a Civil List pension to him.

In 2003, no scientist had been recognised in this way for many years. However, Professor Bo Lehnert had now started the ball rolling and Myron was being actively considered for this high honour. The Royal Society was consulted and the Royal Society of Chemistry took the lead role in the nomination process, starting in 2003 by contacting the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Gordon Brown). A cluster of international referees were consulted, which included Professor Alwyn van der Merwe and Professor John Hart. Professor Van der Merwe of the University of Denver was yet another close contact of Myron concerning his publications and collaborated with him on many ventures in the nineties. Alwyn had translated one of Prince Louis de Broglie’s books from French to English and was the founding editor of Foundations of Physics Letters in 1988, the Editor-in-Chief of Foundations of Physics, Series Editor-in-Chief of Fundamental Theories of Physics and a former Queen Victoria Scholar. Alwyn stated that he believed history would record that Myron was a man way ahead of his time and without peers among his contemporaries both in volume of creative output and in boldness of vision in extending Man’s understanding of the true laws of Nature.

Professor Hart stated that, ”I have never known anyone of the genius and productivity of Myron Evans. He has created a Grand Unified Field Theory that has achieved what Einstein only dreamed of doing. All the equations of physics can be derived from his theory. His theory has opened doors to vast new sources of energy, new types of MRI without magnets, and new types of space propulsion. He has shown the connection between gravity and electromagnetism, and has probed the depths of differential geometry. He has also explained atomic spectra in terms of mass density, which means, in a sense, that mass is the same as charge. I am very excited to witness the birth of a new age of physics based on extensions of theories created by geniuses of the past. Myron Evans is without a doubt the shining star of the 21st Century”.

After due consideration, it was decided that the award of a Civil List Pension was desirable and so Gordon Brown passed the process on to Tony Blair, his neighbour in Downing Street, where international references were again taken up. On the 27th of September, 2004, out of the blue, Myron received a letter from 10 Downing Street from Tony Blair’s Appointment Secretary, telling him that his contribution to British science was being considered for a Civil List Pension, having been nominated by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

On March 14th, 2005, in accordance with Section 5 of the Act of 1837, Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth signed the Warrant and stated she was graciously pleased to grant the Warrant in recognition of Myron's services to science in the 54th year of Our Reign. So, in 2005, by Act of Parliament and Royal Assent, Myron became the first Civil List Scientist in many years and was the only living scientist then on the list. Myron was also invited to Buckingham Palace later that year, and in 2008 he was also given his own Coat of Arms by the official heraldic authority, the College of Arms (or Heralds’ College), and it is featured in the right-hand corner on the home page of this website.

Myron then gained permission from his various publishers to create an Omnia Opera, a list of his vast collected works, with hyperlinks to them. It is a feature of this website, which boasts around twenty thousand pages of new science and displays the hundreds of his papers that were published in the world’s best journals, vastly more than that of his detractors. The AIAS website is also archived by the National Library of Wales as a scientific website of national importance.

This article is only about the origins of the AIAS, and only goes as far as the millennium. What follows that is again hardly believable, but is well documented on this site in the form of the Unified Field Theory (UFT) Papers. They are also available by list and hyperlink, but be aware that they take some reading, because there are over 450 of them and they rewrite most of modern physics!

Enjoy!

References

1. M. W. Evans, Mansel Davies, and I. Larkin. Molecular Motion and Molecular Interaction in Nematic and Isotropic Phases of a liquid Crystal Compound. Journal of the Chemical Society, Faraday Transactions 2, 69(7), 1011-22 (1973).

2. J. Goulon, D. Canet, M. W. Evans, and G. J. Davies. Reinvestigation of the Methyl and Methoxy Group Hindered Rotation in p-Dimethoxybenzene by Comparison of Dielectric and Far Infrared Spectra with Carbon-13 NMR Relaxation Data. Molecular Physics 20(4), 973-95 (1975).

3. G. J. Davies and M. W. Evans. Far Infrared Manifestation of Intermolecular Dynamics in Compressed Gaseous and Liquid Chlorotrifluoromethane. Journal of the Chemical Society, Faraday Transaction 2, 71(7), 1275-92 (1975).

4. J. S. Rowlinson and M. W. Evans. The Motions of Simple Molecules in Liquids. Annual Rep. Prog. Chem., Sect A: Phys. Inorg. Chem., 72, 5-30 (1975).

5. G. J. Evans, M. W. Evans, J. H. Calderwood, W. T. Coffey and G. H. Wegdam. The Planar Itinerant Oscillator. A Discussion in its use in Reproducing Experimental Data from Three Separate Sources. Chemical Letters 50(1), 142-6 (1977).

6. E. Kestermont, F. Hermans, R. Finsy, R. Van Loon, G. J. Evans, and M. W. Evans. Numerical Solution for Itinerant Libration in Two Dimensions. Chemical Physics Letters 58(4), 521-4 (1978).

7. P. Grigolini, M. Ferrario and M. W. Evans. Probability Diffusion in non-Markovian, non-Gaussian Molecular Ensembles: A Theoretical Analysis and Computer Simulation. Zeitschrift fur Physic B, 41(2), 165-76 (1981).

8. M. W. Evans. Correlation and Memory Function Analysis of Molecular Motion in Fluids. Mansel Davies, Ed., Dielectric and Related Molecular Processes 3, 1-44 (The Royal Society of Chemistry, London, 1977).

9. M. W. Evans and J. Yarwood. Proposals for a European Project on the Consistent Evaluations of Molecular Dynamics in Liquids. Advances in Molecular Relaxation and Interaction Processes, 21(1) 1-87 (1981).

10. W. T. Coffey, P. Corcoran, and M. W. Evans. On the Role of Inertial Effects and Dipole-Dipole Coupling in the Theory of the Debye and Far-Infrared Absorption of Polar Fluids. Proc. Roy. Soc. London, A, 410(1838), 61-88 (1987).

11. M. W. Evans, G. C. Lie, and E. Clementi. Molecular Dynamics of Liquid Water in a Circularly Polarised Field. Journal of Chemical Physics 87(10), 6040-5 (1987).

12. M. W. Evans and D. M. Heyes. Brownian Dynamics Simulation. In E. Clementi ed., MOTECC 89, Chap. 9 (Escom, Leiden, 1989).

13. M. W. Evans. Chirality of Field Induced Natural and Magnetic Optical Activity. Physics Letters A 146(4), 185-9 (1990).

14. M. W. Evans and Chris Pelkie. Optical NMR Theory, Simulation and Animation. J Opt. Soc. Am., B-Opt Physics 9(7), 1020-1029, (1992); and Scientific Excellence in Supercomputing, The IBM 1990 Contest Prize Papers, Volume 1.

15. M.W. Evans, G. Wagniere and S. Wozniak. Molecular Dynamic Simulations of Nonlinear Optical Effects, Electric Polarization due to Optical Rectification in a Circularly Polarized Laser. Physica B, 173, 357 - 385 (1991).

16. M. W. Evans. The Elementary Static Magnetic Field of the Photon. Physica B 182, 227-236 (1992); also in Ref. 378, pp. 112 - 126.

17. M. W. Evans. On the Experimental Measurement of the Photon's Fundamental Static Magnetic Field Operator B: The Optical Zeeman Effect in Atoms. Physica B 182, 237-243 (1992).

18. M. W. Evans. The Photon's Magnetostatic-Flux-Density B(3): the Inverse Faraday Effect Revisited. Physica B 183, 103-110 (1993).

19. John B. Hart Conference on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics Collection. University Archives and Special Collections, Xavier University Library.

20. 1962 Conference Lecture at Xavier University. P. A. M. Dirac, The Evolution of the Physicist’s Picture of Nature. Scientific American May 1963.

21. Myron Evans (Ed.), Special “AIAS Papers” Issue of the Journal of New Energy, Volume 4, No 3, 1999.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Gareth Evans, Horst Eckardt and John Surbat for reading this work and helping with valuable suggestions.

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