The Life and Times of Modern Physics: History of Physics II

by Phillips, Melba

• ISBN13: 9780883188460
• ISBN10: 0883188465
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1993-01-01
• Publisher: Amer Inst of Physics

Summary

"Blurb & Contents" This collection of the finest recent articles from Physics Today is a fascinating chronicle of the people and events shaping modern science and society. Includes profiles, personal memoirs, and histories of important institutions and organizations. Among the more than 60 contributors are such distinguished figures as Murray Gell-Mann, Robert Hofstadter, Irving Langmuir, Abraham Pais, Norman Ramsey, Emilio Segre, and Victor Weisskopf.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Author Affiliations
Physics and Public Concerns	p. 1
Addressing public concerns	p. 3
Heisenberg, Goudsmit and the German atomic bomb	p. 10
Letters on the German atomic bomb effort in science	p. 19
The Khrushchev detente and emerging internationalism in particle physics	p. 26
Pathological science	p. 35
Physics and psychic research in Victorian and Edwardian England	p. 48
Correction and letters on pathological science	p. 57
Science at General Electric	p. 61
History of medical physics	p. 71
The site contest for Fermilab	p. 79
Physics Today and the spirit of the Forties	p. 88
Statesmanship in Physics	p. 95
Arthur Gordon Webster, Founder of the APS	p. 97
How the Jefferson Physical Laboratory came to be	p. 102
The Harvard summer school in astronomy	p. 108
Niels Bohr as fund raiser	p. 116
John Torrence Tate (1889-1950)	p. 125
Karl Taylor Compton (1887-1954)	p. 127
Jean Perrin and the reorganization of science	p. 130
Karl Kelchner Darrow - Writer, Councilor and Secretary	p. 137
My sixty years with the American Physical Society	p. 141
Edward Uhler Condon (1902-1974)	p. 146
Harlow Shapley (1885-1972)	p. 148
I. I. Rabi (1898-1988)	p. 149
Four decades of AIP	p. 151
Some Pathfinders of Modern Physics	p. 161
The physics of J. Willard Gibbs in his time	p. 163
Wallace Clement Sabine and acoustics	p. 172
Heinrich Hertz and the development of physics	p. 180
100 years of photoemission	p. 188
Michelson and measurement	p. 195
Michelson in 1887	p. 202
Einstein and ether drift experiments	p. 209
The impact of special relativity on theoretical physics	p. 212
Relativity and quantum theory	p. 221
Werner Heisenberg and the beginning of nuclear physics	p. 222
Hideki Yukawa and the meson theory	p. 230
The discovery of nuclear fission	p. 238
Lise Meitner dies; nuclear-physics pioneer (1878-1968)	p. 244
Maria Goeppert Mayer: Atoms, molecules and nuclear shells	p. 245
Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman	p. 251
Edwin P. Hubble and the transformation of cosmology	p. 260
A history of the synchrotron	p. 267
Von Karman: Fluid dynamics and other things	p. 273
Physicists Primarily as People	p. 279
Einstein and Germany	p. 281
Enrico Fermi (1901-1954)	p. 291
Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958)	p. 296
Personal memories of Pauli	p. 300
George Uhlenbeck and the discovery of electron spin	p. 306
Samuel A. Goudsmit (1902-1978)	p. 313
Physicists I have known	p. 315
Paul P. Ewald (1888-1985)	p. 321
Lev Davydovich Landau	p. 323
Reminiscences of Landau	p. 327
Landau's attitude toward physics and physicists	p. 335
My years with Landau	p. 343
Dick Feynman - the guy in the office down the hall	p. 348
Peter Kapitza (1894-1984)	p. 353
Paul Adrian Maurice Dirac (1902-1984)	p. 355
Felix Bloch (1905-1983)	p. 356
Jerrold Reinach Zacharias (1905-1986)	p. 357
Frank Oppenheimer (1912-1985)	p. 358
Nicholas C. Christofilos (1916-1972)	p. 360
Luis W. Alvarez (1911-1988)	p. 361
For Further Reading	p. 365
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.