A memory of Mark Azbel

In their obituary for Mark Azbel in the October 2020 issue of Physics Today (page 67 ), Bertrand Halperin, James Langer, and Roman Mints wrote that “Life in his presence was never dull.” How right they are.

In the early 1980s, Mark spent several summers at Bell Labs, where he sat at the extra desk in my office. He was a friendly and soft-spoken man. One day I came into the office, said hello, and sat down at my desk, with my back to him. He picked up the telephone and tapped a few numbers, and I heard one side of an interesting conversation:

“Hello, operator? I would like to make telephone call to Soviet Union please.

“My name? Azbel.

“Azbel. A as in asparagus, Z as in Riemann zeta function, B as in Bogoliubov-Born-Green theory, E as in electron–phonon coupling, …”

At that point, I was walking out the door, hand over mouth, trying hard to stifle my laughter.

Azbel finished with “… and L as in Landau damping.”