IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING MAGAZINE
[21]
NOVEMBER 2005
INTRODUCTION TO NOISE
“Noise,” as an idea, a subject, a field, an instrument, came uponthe scene with a power and swiftness that transformed all of sci-ence and our views of the nature of matter. At birth, it solved themajor issue of its time, perhaps, the greatest idea of all time—theexistence of atoms. The debate on the reality of atoms hadreached a crescendo. The debaters were the greatest of scientists;there was no middle ground, either atoms exist or they do not.The bitterness of the atomists and anti-atomists got extreme, and while no one dreamed of seeing an atom, everyone knew they were debating the greatest of issues:
“
If . . . all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, andonly one sentence passed on to the next generations of crea-tures . . . it is . . . all things are made of atoms
.”
—Richard Feynman As it turned out, not only do atoms exist, but they are themost exquisite creation of nature; neither the solar system,galaxies, nor anything else can rival the atom’s simple complexi-ty. The 19th century, the century of great achievements—ther-modynamics, electromagnetism, chemistry, and the industrialrevolution—did not need the “atom.” Yet, it was the century of the atomist debate, a debate that raged into the beginning of the20th century; until Einstein, always aiming at the greatest of problems, and aiming to solve them simply, saw the instrumentto prove their existence! In a few simple pages he invented noiseand thus “noise” was born. This was in 1905. Things movedquickly. Within a few years, Perrin verified Einstein’s main pre-diction and also his prediction that noise could be used to calcu-late Avogadro’s number! Avogadro, who came up with one of themost profound ideas of all time, died without any recognition,never dreamed that there would be a number named after him,and certainly he, nor anyone else, could have imagined thatnoise would be the instrument for its calculation and for theawarding of a Nobel Prize.It was the end of the anti-atomists but the beginning of theproud history of noise. Immediately after Einstein, there was aflurry of ideas of the most profound kind that continues to thisday. Within three years, Langevin started the field of stochasticdifferential equations, although that was not his motivation.There were numerous important contributions that laid boththe foundation of “noise” and its application to many fields. Thehistorical twists are fascinating. Who could have imagined thatthe search for atmospheric noise would lead to the discovery of the noise at the origin of the universe and establish the “bigbang” theory of the universe?But noise, considered by many as unwanted, and mistakenlydefined as such by some, has little respectability. The term con- jures up images of rejection, images of building filters to elimi-nate it. Yet it is an idea that has served mankind in the mostprofound ways. It would, indeed, be a dreary world without noise.It is now 100 years since Einstein devised “noise.” Noise per-meates every field of science, and every field seems to have itsown version of its history. While some fields tell it almost prop-erly, most don’t. The often told version—that Brown discovered,Einstein explained, Langevin simplified, and Perrin verified—isa serious historical distortion. But more importantly, it leavesout the drama and excitement of the story. The story of noise isa fascinating one, but its divergence into many subfields hasoften resulted in a lack of understanding of noise’s true histori-cal development. We try to give it some justice and discuss who were the main players, who did what, when, and why, and thereasons for the impact on so many fields. But more importantly, we aim to show that the history of noise is a tale worth telling. We hope, though, that we do not say any more than most read-ers want to know.
HISTORY AND SCIENCE HISTORY
Almost every school child since the dawn of school has hatedthe study of standard “history.” Rightfully so, since it is as bor-ing as things can be. In one way or another, we are told thathistory is important. And in one way or another, we are told, asSantayana put it, “Those who cannot learn from history aredoomed to repeat it.” This is certainly one of the silliest thingsever said. Presumably, what is lamented here are the horrible
© I M A G E S T A T E
Leave a Comment