Fritz Reiche and the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars

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.     

Hermann Jahn and Rudolf Renner of the Jahn–Teller and Renner–Teller effects

Vibronic interactions have received increasing attention in modern structural chemistry. Edward Teller played a pioneering role in understanding and describing them during the “molecular physics” period of his scientific career. Very little is known about the two scientists who contributed significantly to our knowledge about these effects and whose names have become associated with Teller’s. This Editorial is devoted to Hermann Jahn and Rudolf Renner and attempts to lift them out of oblivion by paying them tribute for their contributions.

Spectral and thermal studies of some 4-(O-acetyl)glycopyranosylaminopyrimidine derivatives

A spectral study (IR and UV spectroscopies) of seven 4-(O-acetyl)glycopyranosylaminopyrimidine derivatives has been carried out. The thermal study of the compounds allowed us to characterize the following processes: (i) desolvations, (ii) solid-solid transitions, (iii) melting, (iv) pyrolytic decompositions. Through the IR spectral study it was established that pyrolytic decompositions of all the compounds start with the acetyl groups. The reaction orders and activation energies of the deacetylation processes have been calculated.     

In Appreciation

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.     

分子轨道理论奠基人之一:约翰·爱德华·兰纳-琼斯

约翰·爱德华·兰纳-琼斯(1894—1954)是英国杰出的理论化学家。兰纳-琼斯因其在分子结构、原子价和分子间力等方面的研究而闻名,其中最重要的是提出了表达中性原子或分子之间的相互作用的一个简单的数学模型,这个模型被称为兰纳-琼斯势函数(也称L-J势函数或6～12势函数);他是第一个以目前普遍使用的方式使用原子轨道的线性组合来定量描述分子轨道(LCAO MO理论)的人,被称为分子轨道理论的奠基人之一。本文介绍了约翰·爱德华·兰纳-琼斯的生平,并对兰纳-琼斯提出兰纳-琼斯势函数和建立分子轨道的原子轨道线性组合法的过程进行了详细论述。     

The Paternity of the H-Bombs: Soviet-American Perspectives

There are major problems in the history of the American and Soviet hydrogen bombs. They are associated with the Teller-Ulam and Teller-Oppenheimer controversies, and the question of whether the design of the Soviet H-bomb was an independent conception. Because of the scarcity of documentary evidence, these problems have little chance of being settled if the histories of the two are considered separately within their national frameworks. Considered comparatively, however, they can help clarify these problems separately and convert them into different facets of this most important segment in the history of the thermonuclear age.The recently disclosed evidence on the history of the Soviet H-bomb, in particular, on Klaus Fuchs’s key idea of radiation implosion, validates Edward Teller’s view on the invention of the H-bomb, including his understatement of his own accomplishment and his concern about the benefits and head start that the Soviet H-bomb program could have gotten from Fuchs’s espionage. In addition, the Russian perspective on the realities of illusory worlds during the Cold War helps us see these illusory worldviews as largely responsible for the intensity of the H-bomb debate in the United States. Gennady Gorelik is a research fellow in the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and is the author of biographies of Matvei Bronstein and Andrei Sakharov.     

A Conversation with Robert F. Christy – Part II

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.     

From Natural History to the Nuclear Shell Model: Chemical Thinking in the Work of Mayer,Haxel, Jensen,and Suess

In 1949 the nuclear shell model was discovered simultaneously in the United States and Germany. Both discoveries were the result of a nuclear scientist looking at geochemical and nuclear data with the eyes of a chemist. Maria Goeppert Mayer in the United States and Hans Suess in Germany both brought a chemists perspective to the problem; the theoretical solution was subsequently supplied independently by Mayer and Hans Jensen.Karen E. Johnson is Priest Associate Professor at St.Lawrence University, where she teaches physics and history of science. She is currently writing a dual biography of Maria Goeppert Mayer and Joseph E.Mayer.     

The Drawing or Why History Is Not Mathematics

The mystery of whether or not Werner Heisenberg gave Niels Bohr a drawing that Bohr came to believe was that of a German nuclear weapon, is discussed and resolved.     

Pioneering Women in the Spectral Classification of Stars

Spectra reveal more about the constitution of stars than can be ascertained by any other means. About 1867 Angelo Secchi classified stellar spectra into five distinct categories. No significant improvements in his system could be made until the advent of dry-plate photography. Then both Henry Draper in New York and Edward C. Pickering at Harvard began taking hundreds of spectrum plates. After Draper's death in 1882, his widow endowed The Henry Draper Memorial at Harvard for the analysis of stellar spectra. Pickering then employed mainly women to help him devise a more detailed system of classification than Secchi's. Ultimately, the most appreciated lady became the one who dutifully carried out the routine work of classifying exactly as she was told, while another slowly made independent new discoveries that Pickering would not accept even after other astronomers proved them to be highly significant. RID="*" ID="*"E. Dorrit Hoffleit, age 95, received her Ph.D. degree at Radcliffe College in 1938, was Director of the Nantucket Maria Mitchell Observatory from 1957 to 1978, and is Senior Research Associate, Retired, in the Department of Astronomy at Yale University.