Writing the Biography of Hans Bethe: Contextual History and Paul Forman1

Some facets of the life of Hans Bethe after World War II are presented to illustrate how Paul Forman’s works, and in particular his various theses—on mathematics and physics in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany, on physics in the immediate post-World War II period, and on postmodernity—have influenced my biography of Bethe. Some aspects of the history of post-World War II quantum field theory, of solid state/condensed matter physics, and of the development of neoliberalism—the commitment to the belief that the market knows best, to free trade, to enhanced privatization, and to a drastic reduction of the government’s role in regulating the economy—are reviewed in order to make some observations regarding certain “top-down” views in solid state physics in postmodernity, the economic and cultural condition of many Western societies since the 1980s, the decade in which many historians assume modernity to have ended.     

产品可靠性的重新下降？

不久前，我们的行业遇到了元件可靠性问题，大批量产品用户发现美国公司的存储器IC的故障率比日本同类产品高。通过努力，现在各类IC都很可靠，硬IC故障也很少。我们的其它元件．比如无源元件、印线电路板等，情况也大多是如此。     

芯片尺寸是否越大越好?

把更多的功能和更多的门电路集成在一块芯片上的能力——无论你将这块芯片称为SoC(单片系统)、ASIC(专用集成电路)还是称为一块大型集成电路——正在迅速提高。在亚微米设计和亚微米制造工艺的推动下,以及在更好的EDA工具和程序库的支持下,人们可以把数百万个子电路集成在一块硅片上。这种情况也许会有人认为,一种定制的、一块集成电路的体系结构——或许还能得到几个新奇而又     

Weimar Physics: Sommerfeld’s Seminar and the Causality Principle

The development of quantum mechanics in the period 1920–1927 posed challenges to the understanding of causality and its incorporation into the new dynamics. Though aware of these challenges to the classical concepts of causality and to the conservation laws of energy and momentum, Arnold Sommerfeld and the members of his seminar never wavered in their commitment to the conservation laws because of their belief in the “preestablished harmony” between mathematics and physics that Felix Klein, David Hilbert, and Hermann Minkowski had championed. I survey these developments and trace how the concept of causality was reformulated in scattering theory by Gregor Wentzel, Enrico Fermi, and Giulio Racah.     

The Shelter Island Conferences Revisited: “Fundamental” Physics in the Decade 1975–1985

The focus of this broad historical overview of “the steady evolution of theoretical ideas” from Shelter Island I in 1947 to Shelter Island II in 1983 is some of the developments in “fundamental” physics after the establishment of the standard model, in particular, the adoption of the view that all present day field theories are “effective field theories” based on the gauge concept; taking seriously big bang cosmology, grand unified field theories (GUTs), and inflation; and the emergence of a new symbiosis of physics and mathematics.     

你能决定新产品是否应该上马吗?

在开发产品时, 你花了很多时间,也很辛苦,而你的竞争对手却比你更快推出更好或者更宜的产品,比你先进入市场,这时你一定十分恼火。     

开发人员要学会等待

我们生活在一种期求一时满足的文化氛围之中，无论你是一位想从网上获得信息或者想享受音乐或视频信息的消费者，还是一位希望看到自己最近编码工作成果的工程师，你都希望得到一时的满足，而且面在就希望得到。你对你最新IC设计的第一块硅片长达数月的等待似乎觉得漫长而无法接受；假如我们都面对很短的产品周期，则情况就是这样。     

另类传感器观念:汽车传感器

今天的轿车装满了传感器,用以提供性能和安全的关键数据.一开始,传感器是信号路径中的第一条链路,用来监视引擎和传动系统的各项参数,比如氧气、流体、温度、电压和电流,但它们的用途很快扩大到了来自各种致动器和电动机的反馈回路,其中包括防抱死系统和电动窗电动机.当然,传感器对于气囊部署系统的碰撞传感是至关重要的.     

激发情感 创造伟业

最近，我参加了Analog Devices公司四十周年庆祝活动。该公司是EDN的一家重要广告客户。毫无疑问，我带回的启示对于我们与行业中许多占主导地位的公司(无论它们的规模大小和创建时间长短)全都适用。     

我们正在失去创新的追求吗？

如果你关心业界工程师和各家公司的状态，就请去看看今年3月21日发行的《Business Week》，它可以注册后免费在线阅读或在当地图书馆借阅。本期的封面故事是“创新的外包”，其中包含了各种实例和很多我们已知与听到的东西：工程设计职能以及所有其它的功能都在离我们“远去”，而这些都是公司的精髓，我们正在加快它们的蒸发。