Faust in Copenhagen : A Struggle for the Soul of Physics

by Segre, Gino (Author)

• ISBN13: 9780143113737
• ISBN10: 0143113739
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-05-27
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)

Summary

A physicist himself, Gino Segrè writes about what scientists do—and why they do it—with intimacy, clarity, and passion. In Faust in Copenhagen, he evokes the fleeting, magical moment when physics—and the world—was about to lose its innocence forever. Known by physicists as the miracle year, 1932 saw the discovery of the neutron and antimatter, as well as the first artificially induced nuclear transmutations. However, while scientists celebrated these momentous discoveries—which presaged the nuclear era and the emergence of big science—during a meeting at Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen Institute, Europe was moving inexorably toward totalitarianism and war.

Author Biography

Gino Segr+¿ is a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania. An internationally renowned expert on highenergy elementary-particle theoretical physics, he is the author of A Matter of Degrees: What Temperature Reveals About the Past and Future of Our Species, Planet, and Universe.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Munich Then and Now	p. 9
The Changing Times	p. 17
The 1920s
The Birth of the Quantum
Why Copenhagen?
The Meetings Begin
The 1932 Meeting
Goethe and Faust	p. 39
In the Glow of Goethe
The "Copenhagen Faust"
The Front Row: The Old Guard	p. 51
Niels Bohr
Paul Ehrenfest
Lise Meitner
The Front Row: The Revolutionaries	p. 71
Old Age Is a Cold Fever
Werner Heisenberg
Wolfgang Pauli
Paul Dirac
Classical Mechanics versus Quantum Mechanics
The Front Row: The Young Ones	p. 95
The Curse of the Knabenphysik
Max Delbruck
The Coming Storm	p. 101
The Periodic Table
The New Kepler
Gottingen in 1922
Triumph and Crisis
The New Optimism
The Revolution Begins	p. 129
Helgoland
Another Sleepless Night
Waves or Particles
Heisenberg versus Schrodinger
Uncertainty and Complementarity
The King in Decline	p. 155
The Crucial Solvay Conference
Einstein-The King
The Great Synthesis	p. 165
Dirac's Equation
How Max Delbruck Joined Knabenphysik
Physics Begins to Split
Delbruck's Choices
Conservation of Energy	p. 181
The Mysteries of the Nucleus
The Barrier Is Too High
Heaven and Earth
The Revolutionary Proposals
The Three Young Geniuses Each Write a Book
The New Generation Comes of Age	p. 207
The Apprenticeship
Copenhagen 1932
The "Blegdamsvej Faust"
Delbruck's Dilemma
The Miracle Year	p. 229
The Discovery of the Neutron
Copenhagen and the Neutron
The Miracle Year
Big Science Is Born
The Hammer and the Needle
Ehrenfest's End	p. 249
Epilogue: Or What Happened Afterward to the Front Row's Other Six	p. 257
How Meitner Discovered Nuclear Fission
How Bohr Lived Happily Ever After
How Dirac Got Married
How Heisenberg Inspired His Friend to Paint Like Titian
How Pauli's Anima Made Him Leave the United States
How Delbruck Became a Biologist
Coda	p. 271
Acknowledgments	p. 273
Notes	p. 276
Bibliography	p. 293
Index	p. 298
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