Selected Works of Hans A. Bethe

Selected Works of Hans A. Bethe
Author: Hans A. Bethe
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 624
Release: 1997
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9789812795755

Hans Bethe received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1967 for his work on the production of energy in stars. He helped to shape classical physics into quantum physics and increase the understanding of the atomic processes responsible for the properties of matter and of the forces governing the structures of atomic nuclei. This collection of papers by Hans Bethe dates from 1928, when he received his PhD, to the present.

Nuclear Forces

Nuclear Forces
Author: Silvan S. Schweber
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 602
Release: 2012-06-18
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0674065530

On the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima, Nobel-winning physicist Hans Bethe called on his fellow scientists to stop working on weapons of mass destruction. What drove Bethe, the head of Theoretical Physics at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, to renounce the weaponry he had once worked so tirelessly to create? That is one of the questions answered by Nuclear Forces, a riveting biography of Bethe’s early life and development as both a scientist and a man of principle. As Silvan Schweber follows Bethe from his childhood in Germany, to laboratories in Italy and England, and on to Cornell University, he shows how these differing environments were reflected in the kind of physics Bethe produced. Many of the young quantum physicists in the 1930s, including Bethe, had Jewish roots, and Schweber considers how Liberal Judaism in Germany helps explain their remarkable contributions. A portrait emerges of a man whose strategy for staying on top of a deeply hierarchical field was to tackle only those problems he knew he could solve. Bethe’s emotional maturation was shaped by his father and by two women of Jewish background: his overly possessive mother and his wife, who would later serve as an ethical touchstone during the turbulent years he spent designing nuclear bombs. Situating Bethe in the context of the various communities where he worked, Schweber provides a full picture of prewar developments in physics that changed the modern world, and of a scientist shaped by the unprecedented moral dilemmas those developments in turn created.

Prophet of Energy

Prophet of Energy
Author: Jeremy Bernstein
Publisher: Plume Books
Total Pages: 228
Release: 1981
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780525476771

In the Shadow of the Bomb

In the Shadow of the Bomb
Author: S. S. Schweber
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2013-10-31
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1400849497

How two charismatic, exceptionally talented physicists came to terms with the nuclear weapons they helped to create In 1945, the United States dropped the bomb, and physicists were forced to contemplate disquieting questions about their roles and responsibilities. When the Cold War followed, they were confronted with political demands for their loyalty and McCarthyism's threats to academic freedom. By examining how J. Robert Oppenheimer and Hans A. Bethe—two men with similar backgrounds but divergent aspirations and characters—struggled with these moral dilemmas, one of our foremost historians of physics tells the story of modern physics, the development of atomic weapons, and the Cold War. Oppenheimer and Bethe led parallel lives. Both received liberal educations that emphasized moral as well as intellectual growth. Both were outstanding theoreticians who worked on the atom bomb at Los Alamos. Both advised the government on nuclear issues, and both resisted the development of the hydrogen bomb. Both were, in their youth, sympathetic to liberal causes, and both were later called to defend the United States against Soviet communism and colleagues against anti-Communist crusaders. Finally, both prized scientific community as a salve to the apparent failure of Enlightenment values. Yet their responses to the use of the atom bomb, the testing of the hydrogen bomb, and the treachery of domestic politics differed markedly. Bethe, who drew confidence from scientific achievement and integration into the physics community, preserved a deep integrity. By accepting a modest role, he continued to influence policy and contributed to the nuclear test ban treaty of 1963. In contrast, Oppenheimer first embodied a new scientific persona—the scientist who creates knowledge and technology affecting all humanity and boldly addresses their impact—and then could not carry its burden. His desire to retain insider status, combined with his isolation from creative work and collegial scientific community, led him to compromise principles and, ironically, to lose prestige and fall victim to other insiders. S. S. Schweber draws on his vast knowledge of science and its history—in addition to his unique access to the personalities involved—to tell a tale of two men that will enthrall readers interested in science, history, and the lives and minds of great thinkers.

What Little I Remember

What Little I Remember
Author: Otto Robert Frisch
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
Total Pages: 154
Release: 2019-08-17
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Otto Robert Frisch took part in some of the most momentous developments in modern physics, notably the discovery of nuclear fission (a term which he coined). His work on the first atom bomb, which he saw explode in the desert “like the light of a thousand suns”, brought him into contact with figures such as Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, Richard Feynman and the father of electronic computers, John von Neumann. He also encountered the physicists who had made the great discoveries of recent generations: Einstein, Rutherford and Niels Bohr. This characterful book of reminiscences sheds an engagingly personal light on the people and events behind some of the greatest scientific discoveries of this century, illustrated with a series of fascinating photographs and witty sketches by the author himself. “This is a happy book, from which the author's personality and his enjoyment of physics, of music, of life, emerges clearly. It is also a portrait of the pre-War world of physics, of days of small numbers and small apparatus, of times when a physicist could think of an ingenious experiment today and set it up tomorrow.” — Rudolf Peierls, Nature “In writing a charming, light-hearted cameo of his life and times as a scientist, Professor Frisch has revealed more about science than many authors with greater pretensions. This is a book that deserves to be read, and will be enjoyed, by a wide audience.” — The Economist “Despite his modest title, what Frisch ‘manages to remember’ is quite impressive. He loved to tell stories and his many vignettes of his associates... include nearly every outstanding physicist who worked in nuclear physics.” — Science “In the straightforward narrative style he developed writing lay treatments of modern physics, Frisch recounts his memories of significant men and events in the history of physics between 1920 and 1960... Frisch tells his stories well...” — Robert W. Seidel,Isis, A Journal of the History of Science Society

Formation and Evolution of Black Holes in the Galaxy

Formation and Evolution of Black Holes in the Galaxy
Author: Gerald Edward Brown
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 530
Release: 2003
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9789812382504

In published papers H A Bethe and G E Brown worked out the collapse of large stars and supernova explosions. They went on to evolve binaries of compact stars, finding that in the standard scenario the first formed neutron star always went into a black hole in common envelope evolution. C-H Lee joined them in the study of black hole binaries and gamma ray bursts. They found the black holes to be the fossils of the gamma ray bursts. From their properties they could reconstruct features of the burst and of the accompanying hypernova explosions. This invaluable book contains 23 papers on astrophysics, chiefly on compact objects, written over 23 years. The papers are accompanied by illuminating commentary. In addition there is an appendix on kaon condensation which the editors believe to be relevant to the equation of state in neutron stars, and to explain why black holes are formed at relatively low masses.

Niels Bohr's Times

Niels Bohr's Times
Author: Abraham Pais
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 596
Release: 1991-10-17
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0192522302

The life of Niels Bohr spanned times of revolutionary change in science itself as well as its impact on society. Along with Albert Einstein, Bohr can be considered to be this century's major driving force behind the new philosophical and mathematical descriptions of the structure of the atom and the nucleus. Abraham Pais, the acclaimed biogrpaher of Albert Einstein, here traces Bohr's progress from his well-to-do origins in late nineteenth-century Denmark to his position at centre stage in the world political scene, particularly during the Second World War and the development of atomic weapons. Pais' description moves through the science as it was before Bohr, as it became because of Bohr, and thence to Bohr's scientific and philosophical legacy. That legacy is contained both in theory as it is now universally enshrined, as well as in its practice in such great Danish institutions as Riso. But more than that, Pais captures the essence of Bohr, the intensely private family figure who, despite appalling personal tragedy, became one of the most loved cultural figures of recent times.

Nuclear Physics

Nuclear Physics
Author: W. Heisenberg
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2019-05-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1504058720

The Nobel Prize–winning physicist offers a fascinating popular introduction to nuclear physics from early atomic theory to its transformative applications. Theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg is famous for developing the uncertainty principle, which bears his name, and for his pioneering work in quantum mechanics. A central figure in the development of the atomic bomb and a close colleague of Albert Einstein, Heisenberg wrote Nuclear Physics “for readers who, while interested in natural sciences, have no previous training in theoretical physics.” Compiled from a series of his lectures on the subject, Heisenberg begins with a short history of atomic physics before delving into the nature of nuclear forces and reactions, the tools of nuclear physics, and its world-changing technical and practical applications. Nuclear Physics is an ideal book for general readers interested in learning about some of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century.

Genius in the Shadows

Genius in the Shadows
Author: William Lanouette
Publisher: Skyhorse
Total Pages: 691
Release: 2013-09-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1628734779

Well-known names such as Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Edward Teller are usually those that surround the creation of the atom bomb. One name that is rarely mentioned is Leo Szilard, known in scientific circles as “father of the atom bomb.” The man who first developed the idea of harnessing energy from nuclear chain reactions, he is curiously buried with barely a trace in the history of this well-known and controversial topic. Born in Hungary and educated in Berlin, he escaped Hitler’s Germany in 1933 and that first year developed his concept of nuclear chain reactions. In order to prevent Nazi scientists from stealing his ideas, he kept his theories secret, until he and Albert Einstein pressed the US government to research atomic reactions and designed the first nuclear reactor. Though he started his career out lobbying for civilian control of atomic energy, he concluded it with founding, in 1962, the first political action committee for arms control, the Council for a Livable World. Besides his career in atomic energy, he also studied biology and sparked ideas that won others the Nobel Prize. The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, where Szilard spent his final days, was developed from his concepts to blend science and social issues.