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1.
Ad Maas 《Physics in Perspective (PIP)》2007,9(3):305-328
I first discuss Albert Einstein’s practical and educational background in engineering and then his invention of his “little
machine,” an electrostatic induction machine, while working in the Patent Office in Bern, Switzerland, between 1902 and 1909.
He believed that it could be used as a voltage or potential multiplier in experiments to test his new theory of Brownian motion
of 1905. I then discuss Einstein’s search for collaborators to produce it and the work that his friends Conrad and Paul Habicht,
in particular, did in designing and testing it. Although the initial response to it was promising, it never became a success
after Paul Habicht manufactured a few specimens of it beginning in 1912.Today only three specimens are known to exist; these
are preserved at the Zürcher Hochschule Winterthur, Switzerland, in the Physics Institute of the University of Tübingen, Germany,
and in the Museum Boerhaave in Leiden,The Netherlands. 相似文献
2.
We analyze the forgotten communication of Ettore Majorana (1906–1938?) on the Thomas-Fermi statistical model of the atom,
which he presented on December 29, 1928, during the XXII General Meeting of the Italian Physical Society in Rome, and which
was published in Il Nuovo Cimento, the Society’s journal, in 1929. His communication was not mentioned subsequently in any of the numerous publications of
Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) and his group in Rome, nor in any of the later accounts of Majorana’s life and work. We place Majorana’s
contribution within the context of contemporary research on the subject, point out its influence on the final formulation
of the Thomas-Fermi statistical model by Fermi and Edoardo Amaldi (1908–1989) in 1934, and discuss Majorana’s other scientific
contributions before his mysterious disappearance in 1938.
Francesco Guerra is Professor of Theoretical Physics in the Department of Physics at the University of Rome “La Sapienza.”
His main fields of research are quantum-field theory, statistical mechanics of complex systems, and the history of nuclear
physics. Nadia Robotti is Professor of History of Physics in the Department of Physics at the University of Genoa. Her main
fields of research are the history of atomic physics, quantum mechanics, and nuclear physics. 相似文献
3.
Paul Ehrenfest (1880–1933) received his Ph.D. degree at the University of Vienna in 1904 and moved with his wife and young
daughter to St. Petersburg in 1907, where he remained until he succeeded Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853–1928) in the chair of
theoretical physics at the University of Leiden in 1912. Drawing upon Ehrenfest’s correspondence of the period, we first examine
Ehrenfest’s difficult and insecure years in St. Petersburg and then discuss his unsuccessful attempts to obtain a position
elsewhere before he was appointed as Lorentz’s successor in Leiden.
Pim Huijnen is writing a doctoral dissertation in history; the present paper is based upon his Master’s Thesis, “‘Die Grenze
des Pathologischen’: Het leven van fysicus Paul Ehrenfest, 1904–1912,” University of Groningen, 2003. A.J.Kox is Pieter Zeeman
Professor of History of Physics at the University of Amsterdam. 相似文献
4.
Benjamin Bederson 《Physics in Perspective (PIP)》2005,7(4):453-472
I discuss the family background and early life of the German theoretical physicist Fritz Reiche (1883–1969) in Berlin; his
higher education at the University of Berlin under Max Planck (1858–1947); his subsequent work at the University of Breslau
with Otto Lummer (1860–1925); his return to Berlin in 1911, where he completed his Habilitation thesis in 1913, married Bertha
Ochs the following year, became a friend of Albert Einstein (1879–1955), and worked during and immediately after the Great
War. In 1921 he was appointed as ordentlicher Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Breslau and worked there until he was dismissed in 1933. He spent the academic
year 1934–1935 as a visiting professor at the German University in Prague and then returned to Berlin, where he remained until,
with the crucial help of his friend Rudolf Ladenburg (1882–1952) and vital assistance of the Emergency Committee in Aid of
Displaced Foreign Scholars, he, his wife Bertha, and their daughter Eve were able to emigrate to the United States in 1941
(their son Hans had already emigrated to England in 1939).From 1941–1946 he held appointments at the New School for Social
Research in New York, the City College of New York, and Union College in Schenectady, New York, and then was appointed as
an Adjunct Professor of Physics at New York University, where his contract was renewed year-by-year until his retirement in
1958. 相似文献
5.
A. P. French 《Physics in Perspective (PIP)》2008,10(1):110-122
I sketch the rich life and multifaceted work of Philip Morrison (1915–2005), from his early life in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
and higher education at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley, to his contributions
to the Manhattan Project, his research at Cornell University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after the war,
his subsequent political activity on behalf of nuclear disarmament, his role in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence,
and his enormous influence as an educator, public speaker, and writer.
A.P. French is Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 相似文献
6.
Paul Halpern 《Physics in Perspective (PIP)》2007,9(4):390-405
I examine the changing attitudes of Oskar Klein (1894–1977) and Albert Einstein (1879–1955) toward the notion of extending
general relativity by an extra dimension with the aim of encompassing electromagnetism and gravitation in a unified field
theory. I show how Klein developed his model of five-dimensional unification with the goal of explaining the discreteness
of atomic energy levels, and how Einstein later embraced that goal. By examining the correspondence between Klein and Einstein,
some of which was relayed through Paul Ehrenfest (1880–1933), I speculate that Klein’s work helped motivate Einstein to explore
deterministic five-dimensional theories as a potential alternative to probabilistic quantum mechanics. Finally, I consider
the contributions of Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) to the subject and elucidate his role in convincing Klein and Einstein that
their models were not viable.
Paul Halpern is Professor of Physics at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. He currently is a member of the Executive
Committee of the Forum on the History of Physics of the American Physical Society. 相似文献
7.
Sara Lippincott 《Physics in Perspective (PIP)》2006,8(4):408-450
Robert F. Christy, Institute Professor of Theoretical Physics Emeritus at Caltech, recalls his wartime work at Los Alamos
on the critical assembly for the plutonium bomb (“the Christy bomb”); the Alamogordo test, July 16, 1945; the postwar concerns
of ALAS (Association of Los Alamos Scientists); his brief return to the University of Chicago and move to Caltech; friendship
with and later alienation from Edward Teller; work with Charles and Tommy Lauritsen and William A. Fowler in Caltech’s Kellogg
Radiation Laboratory; Freeman Dyson’s Orion Project; work on the meson and RR Lyrae stars; fellowship at Cambridge University;
1950s Vista Project at Caltech; his opposition to the Strategic Defense Initiative; and his post-retirement work for the National
Research Council’s Committee on Dosimetry and on inertial-confinement fusion. 相似文献
8.
Max Jammer 《Physics in Perspective (PIP)》2007,9(3):266-280
I summarize the historical development of concepts of time in physics from antiquity to the end of the twentieth century.
Editors’ Note: Max Jammer received the American Physical Society/American Institute of Physics Abraham Pais Prize for the
History of Physics for 2007, “For his groundbreaking historical studies of fundamental concepts in physics, including his
comprehensive account of the development of quantum mechanics.” We publish here his Pais Prize Lecture, which was presented
at the APS meeting in Jacksonville, Florida, on April 16, 2007. 相似文献
9.
Matthew Trainer 《Physics in Perspective (PIP)》2008,10(2):212-223
In 1905 Lord Kelvin (1824–1907) was awarded the second John Fritz Medal for a lifetime of outstanding achievements in science
and technology. I sketch Kelvin’s life, education, and work in thermodynamics, electrical technology, and instrumentation,
and his role in the laying of the Atlantic cable. I then turn to Kelvin’s four visits to America, in 1876 on the centenary
of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America; in 1884 when he gave his famous Baltimore Lectures at
The Johns Hopkins University; in 1897 when he visited Niagara Falls for the third time and advised George Westinghouse (1846–1914)
on how to develop its enormous water power for the generation of electricity; and in 1902 when he advised George Eastman (1854–1932)
on the development of the photographic industry.
Written in connection with the Kelvin Centenary Year 2007; see “Celebrating the Life of Lord Kelvin,” University of Glasgow
News Review No. 11 (2007), 4.
Matthew Trainer: Matthew Trainer received his M.Phil. degree in physical sciences at the University of Edinburgh in 1980 and
currently is a laboratory instructor at the University of Glasgow where his research focuses in part on the life and work
of Lord Kelvin. 相似文献
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12.
Leslie Foldy’s diminutive stature and modest demeanor gave little clue to the powerful intellect responsible for several significant
advances in theoretical physics.Two were particularly important. His 1945 theory of the multiple scattering of waves laid
out the fundamentals that most modern theories have followed (and sometimes rediscovered), while his work with Siegfried Wouthuysen
on the nonrelativistic limit of the Dirac equation opened the way to a wealth of valuable insights. In this article we recall
some of the milestones along Foldy’s path through a life in physics.
Some of the anecdotes we report here were related to one of the authors (PLT) just before an event in 2000 celebrating Foldy’s
80th birthday, while others were told to us over the course of the nearly forty years during which we were colleagues. Still
others were uncovered during the course of WJF’s research for his book, Physics at a Research University: Case Western Reserve 1830–1990 (Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University, 2006). Other details were provided by Foldy’s widow, Roma.
Philip L. Taylor is the Perkins Professor of Physics and Professor of Macromolecular Science and Engineering at Case Western
Reserve University. William J. Fickinger is Professor Emeritus of Physics at Case Western Reserve University. 相似文献
13.
Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze 《Physics in Perspective (PIP)》2007,9(1):26-57
The theoretical physicist Philipp Frank (1884–1966) and the applied mathematician Richard von Mises (1883–1953) both received
their university education in Vienna shortly after 1900 and became friends at the latest during the Great War.They were attached
to the Vienna Circle of Logical Positivists and wrote an influential two-part work on the differential and integral equations
of mechanics and physics, the Frank-Mises, of 1925 and 1927, with its second edition following in 1930 and 1935.This work
originated in the lectures that the mathematician Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) delivered on partial differential equations
and their applications to physical questions at the University of G?ttingen between 1854 and 1862, which were edited and published
posthumously in1869 by the physicist Karl Hattendorff (1834–1882).The immediate precursor of the Frank-Mises, however, was
the extensive revision of Hattendorff’s edition of Riemann’s lectures that the mathematician Heinrich Weber (1842–1913) published
in two volumes, the Riemann-Weber, of 1900 and 1901, with its second edition following in 1910 and 1912. I trace this historical
lineage, explore the nature and contents of the Frank-Mises, and discuss its complementary relationship to the first volume
of the text that the mathematicians Richard Courant (1888–1972) and David Hilbert (1862–1943) published on the methods of
mathematical physics in 1924, the Courant-Hilbert,which, when it and its second volume of 1937 were translated into English
and extensively revised in 1953 and 1961, eclipsed the classic Frank-Mises. 相似文献
14.
Ruth Lewin Sime 《Physics in Perspective (PIP)》2006,8(1):3-51
As President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and its successor, the Max Planck Society, from 1946 until 1960, Otto Hahn (1879–1968)
sought to portray science under the Third Reich as a purely intellectual endeavor untainted by National Socialism. I outline
Hahn’s activities from 1933 into the postwar years, focusing on the contrast between his personal stance during the National
Socialist period, when he distinguished himself as an upright non-Nazi, and his postwar attitude, which was characterized
by suppression and denial of Germany’s recent past. Particular examples include Hahn’s efforts to help Jewish friends; his
testimony for colleagues involved in denazification and on trial in Nuremberg; his postwar relationships with émigré colleagues,
including Lise Meitner; and his misrepresentation of his wartime work in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. 相似文献
15.
Sidney Borowitz 《Physics in Perspective (PIP)》2008,10(3):287-294
I sketch the lives and work of the Norwegian physicist Kristian Birkeland (1867–1917) and the English mathematician Sydney
Chapman (1888–1970), focusing particularly on Chapman’s controversy with Birkeland over the origin and development of auroras,
a controversy that Chapman conducted with Birkeland for more than fifty years after Birkeland’s death.
Sidney Borowitz is Professor Emeritus of Physics at New York University. 相似文献
16.
Kimball A. Milton 《Physics in Perspective (PIP)》2007,9(1):70-114
Julian Schwinger’s influence on twentieth-century science is profound and pervasive. He is most famous for his renormalization
theory of quantum electrodynamics, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1965 with Richard Feynman and Sin-itiro
Tomonaga. This triumph undoubtedly was his most heroic work, but his legacy lives on chiefly through subtle and elegant work
in classical electrodynamics, quantum variational principles, proper-time methods, quantum anomalies, dynamical mass generation,
partial symmetry, and much more. Starting as just a boy, he rapidly became one of the preeminent nuclear physicists in the
world in the late 1930s, led the theoretical development of radar technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
during World War II, and soon after the war conquered quantum electrodynamics, becoming the leading quantum-field theorist
for two decades, before taking a more iconoclastic route during the last quarter century of his life. 相似文献
17.
Quirino Majorana (1871–1957) was an outstanding Italian experimental physicist who investigated a wide range of phenomena
during his long career in Rome,Turin, and Bologna. We focus on his experiments in Turin during 1916–1921 and in Bologna during
1921–1934 to test the validity of Albert Einstein’s postulate on the constancy of the speed of light and to detect gravitational
absorption. These experiments required extraordinary skill, patience, and dedication, and all of them confirmed Einstein’s
postulate and Isaac Newton’s law of universal gravitation to high precision. Had they not done so, Majorana’s fame among historians
and physicists no doubt would be much greater than it is today.
Giorgio Dragoni is Professor of History of Physics at the University of Bologna. Giulio Maltese is a Roman member of the Italian
Society for the History of Physics and Astronomy. Luisa Atti is a Bolognese member of the Association for the Teaching of
Physics. 相似文献
18.
Ursula Pavlish 《Physics in Perspective (PIP)》2011,13(2):189-214
I draw on my interviews in 2005–2007 with Gerson Goldhaber (1924–2010), his wife Judith, and his colleagues at Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory. I discuss his childhood, early education, marriage to his first wife Sulamith (1923–1965), and his further
education at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (1942–1947) and his doctoral research at University of Wisconsin at Madison
(1947–1950). He then was appointed to an instructorship in physics at Columbia University (1950–1953) before accepting a position
in the physics department at the University of California at Berkeley and the Radiation Laboratory (later the Lawrence Berkeley
Laboratory, today the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), where he remained for the rest of his life. He made fundamental
contributions to physics, including to the discovery of the antiproton in 1955, the GGLP effect in 1960, the psi particle
in 1974, and charmed mesons in 1977, and to cosmology, including the discovery of the accelerating universe and dark energy
in 1998. Beginning in the late 1960s, he also took up art, and he and his second wife Judith, whom he married in 1969, later
collaborated in illustrating and writing two popular books. Goldhaber died in Berkeley, California, on July 19, 2010, at the
age of 86. 相似文献
19.
Charles H. Holbrow 《Physics in Perspective (PIP)》2011,13(1):36-57
Horace Richard Crane (1907–2007) was born and educated in California. His childhood was full of activities that helped him
become an outstanding experimental physicist. As a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology (1930–1934),
he had the good fortune to work with Charles C. Lauritsen (1892–1968) just as he introduced accelerator-based nuclear physics
to Caltech. They shared the euphoric excitement of opening up a new field with simple, ingenious apparatus and experiments.
This work prepared Crane for his career at the University of Michigan (1935–1973) where in the 1950s, after making the first
measurement of the electron’s magnetic moment, he devised the g−2 technique and made the first measurement of the anomaly in the electron’s magnetic moment. A man of direct, almost laconic
style, he made lasting contributions to the exposition of physics to the general public and to its teaching in high schools,
community colleges, four-year colleges, and universities. I tell how he became a physicist and describe some of his early
achievements. 相似文献
20.
Paul Halpern 《Physics in Perspective (PIP)》2005,7(4):390-403
I explore the early life and contributions of Peter Bergmann (1915–2002), focusing on his family background, education, and
ideas. I examine how Bergmann’s formative years were shaped by the outspoken influence of his mother, a leading educational
reformer; the distinguished reputation of his father, a renowned materials chemist; and his cherished hope of working with
Albert Einstein (1879–1955), to whom he eventually became an assistant. Inspired by these and other notable thinkers, Bergmann
became an exemplary organizer, educator, and mentor in the fields of general relativity and quantum gravity. 相似文献