Cool Cat Is The Co-Author Of An Academic Physics Paper On Atomic Behavior At Different Temperatures

Now that's a sentence you don't say every day.

Elana

• Published in Animal Stories
• May 17, 2020

The 1970's has never been disappointing or boring, but 1975 was surely one of the most interesting years of them all because that's when a cat found himself as the presumably proud co-author of an academic physics paper on atomic behavior at different temperatures.

While your cat has been stepping on pie crust and noshing on your plants, a cat elsewhere is basically a genius. Not that we encourage unfair comparisons of cats or anything, but it's okay if you look at your cat (right meow,) and ask, "hey cat, why aren't you co-authoring any academic papers?" Would it kill our cats to contribute to the household or society instead of barfing a hairball in my slipper?

Jack H. Hetherington, a professor of physics at Michigan State University titled his piece Two-, Three-, and Four-Atom Exchange Effects in bcc 3He and despite the fanciful co-author, it was indeed a serious paper that went on to become very influential, even being regularly cited in related works over the years.

The paper, written in 1975, was set to be published by a scientific journal published by the American Physical Society called Physical Review Letters. Of course Hetherington wanted his paper to be reviewed by a friend before he submitted it for publication.

Hetherington's friend did notice a discrepancy: he had used "we" throughout his entire paper.

Hetherington’s colleague was quick to point out that "Physical Review Letters" would only publish papers using "we" and "our" if the paper had multiple authors.

Hetherington’s paper, however, did not have multiple authors. These days, it can be very quick to replace words in academic papers but in the 1970's with a typewriter? Not so much.

The physics professor had quite the dilema! Should he re-write his paper? Alas, he came out with a genius plan instead.

Hetherington revealed in the book More Random Walks in Science published in 1982 why he chose not to add some random co-author to his paper.

For one, the financial compensation for published writing is altered with each additional author. However, and more importantly, a scientific writer's reputation relies on what they publish. Their reputation and word can be damaged when several authors are on it!

Hetherington wrote:

“Therefore, after an evening’s thought, I simply asked the secretary to change the title page to include the name of the family cat, a Siamese called Chester, sired one summer by Willard. I added the initials F D in front of the name to stand for Felix Domesticus and thus created F.D.C. Willard.”

His name is F.D.C. Willard.

Might I add, that when people see F.D.C. Willard's portrait they usually think, "of course this distinguished creature co-authored a physics paper. Of course."

Hetherington submitted his paper to Physical Review Letters and his co-author was depicted as a fellow colleague from Michigan State University.

It was published in issue 35.

In his book More Random Walks in Science, Hetherington ponders:

“Why was I willing do to such an irreverent thing? Against it was the fact that most of us are paid partly by how many papers we publish, and there is some dilution of the effect of the paper on one’s reputation when it is shared by another author. On the other hand, I did not ignore completely the publicity value, either. If it eventually proved to be correct, people would remember the paper more if the anomalous authorship were known. In any case, I went ahead and did it and have generally not been sorry.”

“I went ahead and did it and have generally not been sorry.”

Limited edition copies of his paper included the cat's pawprints as signatures and people responded generally well, with delight, to the concept. The story goes that when inquiries were made to Hetherington's office at Michigan State University, and Hetherington was absent, the callers would ask to speak to the co-author instead.

In his book, however, Hetherington says the editors did not seem to find it funny. “For some reason, [they] seem to find little humour in the story,” the professor says.

Unsurprisingly, the Internet loves it.

It's made it's way across multiple social media platforms.

Popularity for the fun fact is present on Reddit and Tumblr especially.

And F.D.C. Willard always delights.

Elana