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# In the academic journal Physical Review Letters of 24 November 1975 there appeared a cryogenics paper, "Two-, Three-, and Four-Atom Exchange Effects in bcc 3He", by members of the Department of Physics of the University of Michigan…
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/v-akademicheskom-zhurnale-physical-review-letters-ot-24-noiabria-1975-goda-vyshla-statia-po-kriogenike-two-three-and-four-atom-exchange-effects-in-bcc-3he-pod-avtorstvom-sotrudnikov-fiz/
- Published: 2020-12-03T09:58:19.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:41:52.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Science, People, Humour

In the academic journal Physical Review Letters of 24 November 1975 there appeared a cryogenics paper, "Two-, Three-, and Four-Atom Exchange Effects in bcc 3He", by Professors J. H. Hetherington and F. D. C. Willard of the Department of Physics of the University of Michigan. Five years later Professor Willard published this paper in France. Meanwhile, behind the name Felis Domesticus Chester Willard there hid the persona of a cat, encoded in the Latin designation of the genus and species of the domestic cat, the nickname Chester, and the name of Willard's feline father. The co-author was Professor Hetherington's cat, to whom he had resorted as a ruse, so as not to rewrite, under pressure from the editors, a paper bristling with the pronoun "we". In the end the deception was exposed, but Chester the cat is considered the first scientist of the feline family, not counting the cat from Pushkin's Lukomorye, of course.

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