[Pw_forum] a question about the name ESPRESSO

[Nicola Marzari]

Dear L F Huang,

Trieste (where the code originates) is the main shipping port in Italy 
for coffee
imports, and the city has a long tradition of coffee houses and of 
coffee producers
(the beans themselves are grown elsewhere).

The most famous of these companies is "Illy", that is extremely tech savy -
this below is an article that the company founder wrote a few years ago 
for "Scientific
American": http://www.podmerchant.com/coffee/complexity-of-coffee.pdf

What might intrigue you is that we invented the name while waiting in
Beijing airport a flight to Xi'an - we were in Beijing for a summer school
at the institute of physics (2004), and we decided to spend the weekend in
the old capital.

Here is the team at work - I believe Shobhana, Ralph and Carlo are
missing, among those that were there :
http://quasiamore.mit.edu/personal/xian/espresso.jpg

            nicola


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Prof Nicola Marzari   Department of Materials Science and Engineering
13-5066   MIT   77 Massachusetts Avenue   Cambridge MA 02139-4307 USA
tel 617.4522758 fax 2586534 marzari at mit.edu http://quasiamore.mit.edu