Physicist Leon N Cooper has one of the strangest middle names ever.

It's not Neil, as was erroneously reported by the Nobel Committee upon awarding Cooper the 1975 Physics Prize.

It's not Nathan, which, according to his family, the N was supposed to stand for (and would make a perfectly cromulent Jewish middle name)... but it doesn't.

It's not Nebuchadnezzar, Napoleon, or Nancy.

Note how we didn't write "Leon N. Cooper". That would be incorrect. He is "Leon N Cooper". His middle name is...

N.

In fact, you can say that it stands for... Nothing.