Obituary

We mourn the death of Professor Dr. Gilbert Grynberg, April 17, 1948 - January 27, 2003. We have lost an excellent and highly esteemed scientist, an outstanding character and a good friend. He has been a very active colleague in the merger of Zeitschrift für Physik and Journal de Physique in the early days. As one of the Co-Editors-in-Chief of The European Physical Journal D, from its start, he has formed the scienti.c standards of EPJ. Untiringly he has served our Journal with greatest dedication. We are grateful that he has been with us. The editorial board and o.ce of EPJ B Siegfried Grossmann, Denis Jérome, Antonio Paoletti     

Editorial

The two Editors-in-Chief of EPJ D are now Tito Arecchi and Jean-Michel Raimond. Ingolf Hertel's term came to its end and he will be now acting as an External Advisor. He should be warmly thanked for the work he accomplished during the hard times of the journal's creation. The present success of EPJ D owes a lot to his dedication and to the continued efforts of Gilbert Grynberg, whose untimely death has been a loss for physics as well as for this journal. Jean-Michel Raimond is at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie and the Institut Universitaire de France, in Paris. His research is performed at the Laboratoire Kastler Brossel of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, on cavity quantum electrodynamics, at the fulcrum between fundamental quantum mechanics studies and the development of quantum information techniques. Published online 5 May 2003     

Note from the publishers

We have learnt with much sadness of the death of Gilbert Grynberg. To those who knew him, as a talented teacher and brillant researcher, are also aware of the exceptional courage with which he fought his illness, surrounded by his family. Gilbert Grynberg was one of the Editors-in-Chief of Section D of the European Physical Journal to which he dedicated much of his time since his nomination in 1998. In collaboration with his colleagues, Gilbert Grynberg greatly contibuted to developing the journal and ensuring its excellent scientific quality. All the staff of EDP Sciences, SIF and Springer-Verlag with whom he collaborated over the years express their deepest sympathy to all those were close to him.     

Obituary Gilbert Grynberg (1948-2003)

We mourn the death of Professor Dr. Gilbert Grynberg, April 17, 1948 - January 27, 2003. We have lost an excellent and highly esteemed scientist, an outstanding character and a good friend. He has been a very active colleague in the merger of Zeitschrift für Physik and Journal de Physique in the early days. As one of the Co-Editors-in-Chief of The European Physical Journal D, from its start, he has formed the scienti.c standards of EPJ. Untiringly he has served our Journal with greatest dedication. We are grateful that he has been with us. The editorial board and o.ce of EPJ B Siegfried Grossmann, Denis Jérome, Antonio Paoletti     

This issue is dedicated to our friend and colleague Gilbert Grynberg

The Editors of this special issue and the partners of the QSTRUCT European Network are deeply saddened by the news of Gilbert Grynberg's departure. It was Gilbert's vision which first brought together specialists in optical and atomic physics to form the research field of quantum structures and to found the QSTRUCT Network. Within the Network, Gilbert worked tirelessly to promote collaboration and the exchange of new ideas. He was particularly popular with young researchers, who appreciated his eagerness to share ideas and who were inspired by his clarity of thought. It was Gilbert who first proposed a special issue of EPJ D dedicated to quantum structures. Sadly he will not see its publication. We remember a special scientist and educator, a colleague who was passionate about physics but brought his infectious sense of fun to all who worked with him. Even in the face of great hardships he remained a vibrant and enthusiastic member of our scientific family. We will all miss him.     

Henri Victor Regnault: Experimentalist of the Science of Heat

Henri Victor Regnault (1810–1878) was one of the most famous French experimental scientists of the nineteenth century. After studying and carrying out research at the école Polytechnique and the école des Mines in Paris, he was elected to the Paris Académie des Sciences in 1840 and was appointed Professor of Experimental Physics at the Collège de France in 1841. His initial researches were in chemistry, but his careful experimental investigations of the law of the specific heat of solids that Pierre Louis Dulong (1785–1838) and Alexis Thérèse Petit (1791–1820) proposed in 1818 opened the door to his transition to physics and to his pioneering experimental researches on various thermodynamic properties of liquids and gases. I focus particularly on his investigations on the expansion, compressibility, vapor pressure, and speed of sound in gases. He also made important contributions to the new art of photography and to the ceramic industry as director of the Sèvres factory, at a time when his personal life was filled with tragedy. While his experimental work was acclaimed by his contemporaries, it has been largely neglected by scientists and historians today.     

Faraday and the Philosophical Magazine

Faraday is considered to be one of the greatest scientists of all time. He not only was a meticulous experimentalist, a true experimental wizard, but also a very prolific author. The many important contributions (almost 50) that he published in the Philosophical Magazine make it highly desirable to catalogue his various inventions, ‘discoveries’ in his own words, in a scientific language so characteristic of the nineteenth century. It is the purpose of this commentary to guide the reader through his achievements in electrochemistry, magnetism, electric and electromagnetic induction, even ‘industrial’ applications; to enable him to address a present day audience by means of his contributions to the Philosophical Magazine.     

Dick Crane��s California Days

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.     

From Student of Physics to Historian of Science: T.S. Kuhn’s Education and Early Career, 1940–1958

I first show that Kuhn came to have doubts about physics soon after entering college but did not make up his mind to leave the discipline until 1947–1948 when a close association with Harvard’s President James B. Conant convinced him of the desirability of an alternative career in the history of science. I go on to maintain that it was realistic for Kuhn to prepare for such a career in essentially autodidactic ways both because he enjoyed Conant’s patronage and because he could expect that his credentials in physics would be an asset in this relatively young interdisciplinary specialty. I then suggest that it was through his work as a teacher, researcher, and journeyman gatekeeper in the history of science that Kuhn gradually came to identify with the field. Finally, I argue that his training in physics, his teaching of general-education courses, and his hopes of influencing current philosophy of science helped shape his early practice as a historian of science. By way of epilogue, I briefly consider Kuhn’s path from his tenuring at Berkeley in 1958 to the appearance of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962.     

Illusion and reality in the quantum world

Often considered as the last ‘encyclopedist’, Henri Poincaré died one hundred years ago. If he was a prominent man in 1900 French Society, his heritage is not so clearly recognised, particularly in France. Among his too often misunderstood works is his contribution to the theory of relativity, mainly because it is almost never presented within Poincaré's general approach to science, including his philosophical writings. Our aim is therefore to provide an historical account of the main steps (experimental as well as theoretical) which led Poincaré to contribute to the theory of relativity. Starting from the optical experiments which led to the inconsistency of the classical (Galilean) composition law for velocities to explain light propagation, we introduce the FitzGerald and Lorentz contraction which was viewed as the ‘sole hypothesis’ to explain the Michelson and Morley experiment. We then show that Poincaré's contribution starts with a discussion of the principles governing the mechanics and was built step by step up to express in all its generality the principle of relativity. Poincaré thus showed the invariance of the Maxwell equations under the Lorentz transformation. In doing so, he also discovered the right composition law for velocities. Poincaré's approach to philosophy is detailed to help the reader to understand what a theory meant to him.     

Martin J. Klein: From Physicist to Historian

To his friends, colleagues, and students, Martin Klein was a gentle and modest man of extraordinary integrity whose stellar accomplishments garnered him many honors. I sketch his life and career, in which he transformed himself from a theoretical physicist at Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Case Institute of Technology into a historian of physics while on leave at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Study and the University of Leiden and then pursued this field full time at Yale University.     

Editorial

With this volume The European Physical Journal D (EPJ D) continues its tradition of publishing a selection of papers drawn from the bi-annual main conference in the field of cluster physics. The readers should be aware that this is not a conference proceeding in the normal sense of the word, i.e. it is not a collection of all posters and papers presented at this conference. Rather, the guest-editors for this volume of EPJ D have selected only such papers from this conference which comply with the normal high quality standards of a refereed international scientific journal -- in terms of novelty, soundness and scientific quality. The guest-editors have made sure that all papers have been subject to a standard refereeing process which ensures these high standards as expected by the readers of EPJ D. We trust that the specific collection of papers published in this volume will contribute to the future attractiveness of EPJ D especially in the ever growing field of cluster physics.     

John Tyndall’s Vertical Physics: From Rock Quarries to Icy Peaks

I analyze, through the work of the Irish physicist John Tyndall (1820–1893), the close relationship formed in the mid-nineteenth century between advances in the physical sciences and the rise of mountaineering as a sport. Along with groundbreaking experimental research in the physical sciences, Tyndall worked throughout his career to define and popularize the study of physics. He also was a pioneering mountaineer during the golden age of mountaineering. As he practiced his science, from rock quarries to the study of the blue sky, Tyndall’s interests in the fundamental forces of Nature brought him to the summits of mountains. His sojourns to the mountains, in turn, affected the manner in which he approached his researches. His science and mountaineering were tellingly mixed, and worked in unison to shape public perceptions of what physicists did during a period of increasing specialization and popularization of the field.     

Eugen von Gothard and His X-Ray Experiments

Eugen von Gothard (1857–1909) made significant contributions to astrophysics and founded the Astrophysical Observatory in Herény, Hungary, in 1881. He also was a gifted instrument maker who designed and produced the apparatus and equipment he needed to carry out his researches, which enabled him to respond immediately to Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen’s astonishing discovery of X rays. Von Gothard took his first X-ray photograph on January 23, 1896, thus inaugurating his first series of experiments, which ended on May 26, 1896. He carried out a second series of experiments on June 21–22, 1905, four years before his premature death at age 51.     

Quantum interference and cryptographic keys: novel physics and advancing technologies (QUICK)

This special issue of The European Physical Journal - D was organised in conjunction with the conference “Quantum interference and cryptographic keys: novel physics and advancing technologies (QUICK)", that took place in the Institut d'études Scientifiques de Cargèse from April 7th to 13th, 2001. This conference was organised at the initiative of the European Quantum Communication and Cryptography projects QuComm, S4P, QuiCoV, EQUIS and EQCSPOT, in the framework of the European Union IST/FET/QIPC program. The conference successfully achieved its goal which was to provide a forum for scientific exchanges for one hundred researchers and students, from academia and industry, working world-wide on the physics, implementations, and applications of quantum communications. The papers in this special issue give an account of some highlights of the conference. They were selected and refereed according to the high quality scientific standards of the European Physical Journal and include topics of the highest contemporary interest in the field, such as practical implementations and security proofs of Quantum Key Distribution, single photon sources, new schemes involving quantum continuous variables and the manipulation of non-classical light. We acknowledge the support given by the European Commission (High Level Scientific Conference), QUIPROCONE (Network of Excellence), the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the Délégation Générale pour l'Armement (DGA), the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (European Research Office) and the USAF European Office of Aerospace Research and Development. We hope this issue will remind all participants of the special atmosphere of creative work and co-operation of the conference, and will give the general readership of EPJ D a feeling for the character of this attractive field of research. Finally, we warmly thank the Cargèse team and the EPJ D Editorial Office for their efficient and friendly help with all organisational issues. Philippe Grangier, John Rarity, Anders Karlsson     

Bruno Rossi and the Racial Laws of Fascist Italy

Bruno Rossi (1905–1993), one of the giants of 20th-century physics, was a pioneer in cosmic-ray physics and virtually every other aspect of high-energy astrophysics. His scientific career began at the University of Florence in 1928 and continued at the University of Padua until 1938, when the Fascist anti-Semitic racial laws were passed in Italy. He was dismissed from his professorship and was forced to emigrate, as described in unpublished letters and documents that display the international character of physics and physicists. His young bride Nora Lombroso, his love of physics, and the solidarity of the physics community gave him the courage to begin a new life in Copenhagen, Manchester, and in the New World at the University of Chicago, Cornell University, Los Alamos, and after the Second World War at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he became the center of a worldwide research network.     

Richard Gans: The First Quantum Physicist in Latin America

Richard Gans (1880–1954) was appointed Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Physics of the National University of La Plata,Argentina, in 1912 and published a series of papers on quantum physics between 1915 and 1918 that marked him as the first quantum physicist in Latin America. I set Gans’s work within the context of his education and career in Germany prior to 1912 and his life and work in Argentina until 1925, as well as the foundation of the Institute of Physics of the National University of La Plata in 1906–1909 and its subsequent development by Emil Bose (1874–1911). I conclude by commenting on Gans’s life after he returned to Germany in 1925 and then immigrated once again to Argentina in 1947.     

Special issue on Deformation of Dense Heterogeneous Matter

This special issue is dedicated to Professor H. Eugene Stanley. In fact it consists of a selection of contributions to the conference held in Messina on 6-8 December,2001 to honour his 60th birthday. It is hard to believe that Professor H. Eugene Stanley would be 60 years old. Judging from his scienti.c production, the number of books he has written and co-authored and from the number of students and collaborators,one would think that he has been working already for 100 years. On the other hand,judging from his energy,y outhfulness, creativity and enthusiasm,one would think he is 40. Gene Stanley or just Gene,as he is known worldwide,is a very unique person in our scienti.c community. He was a kind of Wunderkind in his twenties. At that time,he made a big splash through the exact solution of the spherical model and his work with Kaplan on the two-dimensional XY and Heisenberg models,and he was the youngest speaker at the Statphys Conference in Kyoto. At that age he also wrote his most famous book, Introduction to Phase Transition and Critical Phenomena,whic h is not only the most popular in this .eld but a masterpiece in pedagogical simplicity combined with scienti.c depth. All of us have used this textbook during our life. While critical phenomena have accompanied Gene throughout his life,from the very beginning he showed a very strong desire to enter new .elds,and in particular those related to medicine and biology. All along at MIT he was actively engaged in medical research and over the years he has made beautiful contributions to the sequencing of DNA strands, the heartbeat,the branching of the lung,Alzheimer's disease and explained why the stomach does not digest itself. After Gene joined Boston University and founded his famous Polymer Center,his laboratory became the most active and most visited one of his department and posed a serious competition to Harvard and MIT. While in the beginning polymers,exp erimentally and theoretically,w ere the main focus of this Center,yielding important results on gelation and the fractal nature of polymers,so on the center became a hotbed of creativity in modelisation and interdisciplinary research. In 1977,Gene proposed the structure of percolation clusters which is accepted today: singly connected "red" bonds linking multiply connected blobs. This work gave a new geometrical understanding to phase transition and much insight into the transport on random media. A particular emotional close relationship Gene kept with water. This important .uid mobilised his fantasy for over 25 years,and during this period he discovered most unbelievable e.ects,as for instance a critical point hidden in the metastable region of water's phase diagram. Collaborating with experimentalists,he still keeps verifying his predictions. The intense scienti.c activity,the large number of international visitors and of students of the highest capacity coming from all continents made and still makes the Polymer Center one of the most stimulating places to visit in the US. Out of the 72 PhD students and 90 PostDocs that Gene advised,man y have by now become famous professors. The scienti.c production was huge. With over 800 journal publications containing 102 Physical Review Letters and 34 articles in Nature,Gene is not only one of the most proli.c living physicists on earth,but also one of the most cited ones. In addition,he co-authored seminal books about fractal surfaces with Lazlo Barabasi and on econophysics with Rosario Nunzio Mantegna. In fact another of his favorite subjects,on which he also published with his son Michael, are .nancial markets. Last but not least,Gene is an excellent teacher,hea vily engaged also in pregraduate and college studies. At early times he already engaged high-school students to university research during their summer vacations which .nally led,for instance,Robin Selinger to become a professor in physics. He has been selected the Massachusetts Professor of the year, executed a programme for Childrens' Television Workshop and co-authored several college level textbooks. He has received generous funding from education agencies. The National Science Foundation awarded him the distinguished teacher's scholar prize in 2001. He also got many other awards including 4 honorary doctorates. On top of all these academic merits,Gene is a wonderful human being,constan tly engaged in helping the people around him,giving support to young and old and housing many guests with such a warm hospitality that is di.cult to match. He has friends in nearly every country of the world who admire him and are grateful to him. One could say without exaggeration that he is internationally the most popular statistical physicist in the world. When we learned in disbelief that he is going to turn 60,his friends strove for the privilege to host a meeting in his honour,and since the number of his friends is so great and so widespread,.nally four di.erent conferences were organised in di.erent places and with di.erent people to honour his birthday which is,to our knowledge,unique in the history of physics. The largest of these conferences with over 200 participants was the one organised in Messina. Re.ecting the broad spectrum of Gene's interest,man y subjects were dealt with in this meeting. The present issue of European Physial Journal E is just concentrating on contributions in the area of soft condensed matter. In fact we have chosen here only 14 selected contributions from the areas of glasses,gran ular matter and gels. Hans J. Herrmann ICA 1,Univ ersity of Stuttgart Francesco Mallamace University of Messina