Posted on 11/07/2005 3:35:33 PM PST by linkinpunk
Today: November 07, 2005 at 14:0:17 PST
Nobel Prize Winner Gets Prison in Crash
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SANTA MARIA, Calif. (AP) - A Nobel Prize-winning physicist was sentenced Monday to two years in prison for killing a man and injuring seven other people while going more than 100 mph in his sports car.
John Robert Schrieffer, 74, a Florida State University professor who taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara until 1991, pleaded no contest July 25 to vehicular manslaughter for crashing into a van last year.
Schrieffer had nine prior speeding tickets and was driving with a suspended license at the time. His attorney said the scientist fell asleep at the wheel of his Mercedes-Benz.
Under a plea bargain with prosecutors, Schrieffer was supposed to get eight months in the county jail. But Superior Court Judge Jim Herman decided otherwise after listening to tearful relatives of the crash victims during an August hearing.
"I think you need a taste of state prison," Herman said at the time. "The tragedy of this case is that you're a bright man who has made great contributions to society. ... It's a puzzle why you decided to drive high-performance cars at great speeds on public highways."
Colleagues had described Schrieffer earlier as a cautious person.
"This is not the Bob I worked with," said Brown University professor Leon Cooper, who with Schrieffer and John Bardeen was awarded the Nobel in physics in 1972. "This is not the Bob that I knew."
F = ma. You'd think the winner of the Nobel Prize in physics should understand that much.
Age 74? I can't help wonder if he's had one or more minor strokes.
"... you're a bright man"
Nobel Prize-winning physicist John Robert Schrieffer and Judge Jim Herman come to the conclusion that 1+1=3.
Because he was a Nobel Prize winner he believed himself to be "super-cool".
Any according to the superconducting theories he helped developed he believed that he would be able to tunnel through any cars he happened to come in contact with.
In a way I kinda feel sorry for him; he probably always wanted a nice sports car but didn't have the means to buy one until he won the Nobel Prize. 'Course, even then I don't know if he'd have enough to buy a 65 AMG.
This is very very sad, because Bob Schriefer is one of the great physicists of our age.
Well, now he'll have some nice quiet study time.
But even more importantly, KE= mv^2, showing that the energy available in a crash is proportional to the square of velocity.
This guy was going 100mph which means there was four times the amount of damage potential as driving 50mph.
He's a peace-nik, global warming activist. In his fancy fast car, he's got arrogant bastard written all over him.
Probably the same that Ariana Huffinton gets in her SUV.
bump
A bar of soap is dropped from a height of one meter at an acceleration of 9.8 meters per second....
(I'm sorry, but I have been advised by the moderators not to show the rest of that physics problem.)
DING! DING! DING!
We have a winner!
Personality disorders in combination with senility can precipitate many incongruous things.
And intelligence plus education while young is no guarantee of common sense, judgement or immunity from senility...
This is not the Bob I worked with,
This is not the Bob that I knew,
That Bob was sweet as apple Granny Smith,
That Bob was as stable as Peru
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.