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A brief book on the life and works of 14 atomic scientists, including some of the great minds about whom little is known in general scintific literature and some interesting women scientists whose life woulf inspire any reader---lives of Lise Meitner, Henrietta Blau among others. Not much science is discussed, so that lay persons can read this article.At the same time, the conditions in those turbulent years 1905 to 1945, culminating in the explosion of atomic bomb is briefly described.The conditions of women scientists at that period is carefully discussed.
Citation preview
Lesser Known Atomic Scientists
Dr N K Srinivasan
Introduction
The development of atomic energy ,both for peaceful and for
military purposes, marks a high point of scientific
achievement in the 20th century. Every school boy has heard
about the making of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos,New Mexico
and the dropping of two atom bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
in Japan in the year 1945. Less well known is the story of
constructing the nuclear reactor with crude equipment at the
University of Chicago by Enrico Fermi and his team, thus
proving the nuclear chain reaction to generate lot of energy
by nuclear fission.This happened in 1942.
The story of atom bomb , the involvement of the US army and
other details have been well chronicled.
Almost every educated person has heard of the famous
mathematical formula:
E = m c2
the Einstein's equation, linking mass and the energy released when mass m
is converted to energy.
Several names of scientists pop into our mind when we talk of atomic
energy and atom bomb and later developments: Albert Einstein, Neils
Bohr,Max Planck, Marie Curie, Enrico Fermi,Paul Dirac, John Oppenheimer,
Edward Teller,Otto Hahn among others.
We also hear the names of early pioneers who unraveled the stucture of
atoms and discovered several "Sub-atomic' particles, thereby laying the
foundation of atomic physics: J J Thompson [discovery of electron],W
Roentgen [ discovery of x rays], Ernest Rutherford [ structure of
nucleus], Chadwick [discovery of neutrons], Marie Curie [discovery of
Radium],Becquerel [radioactivity], Neils Bohr[structure of hydrogen atom],
Erwin Schrodinger[ wave mechanics], Werner Heisenberg [ matrix mechancis
and the uncertainty principle] and so on.
Some were awarded Nobel prizes, either for physics or chemistry, and thus
became instantly famous in the eyes of the public.[Rutherford was amused
when he got Nobel prize for chemistry and not for physics. Till recently
the sharp division among physicists and chemists as professional groups
remained.] There were and are anomalies in the award of Nobel prizes that
one would not take this aspect of award of Nobel prize to any
one seriously. For instance, Albert Einstein was awarded Nobel prize for
his formulation of photo-electric effect using quantum theory and not for
his theory of Relativity ! Some died before they could be given,for
instance Moseley.
What is interesting , many did not receive Nobel prizes at all, even
though their work was seminal or pivotal in the development of atomic
physics. Their works were either ignored or side-lined in the public
domain ,though their works are carefully studied by students of atomic
physics and became important foundation pillars of atomic and nuclear
physics. [In this article, I use the term atomic physics to include
nuclear physics too.]
This article is an attempt to bring out the great contributions of the
lesser known scientists of this era-- along with some of the anecdotes and
ironies one find in their lives.In this effort, a number of biographies of
individual scientists as well as some autobiographies have been
extensively consulted. I must add that this is only a small sample of
much that is available or known about these scientists and several others
not mentioned here.
In writing this article, I am inspired by some life stories which could be
inspiring to others as well---to the younger generation of science
students and general public.It is indeed my personal opinions and
proclivities that surface here...no rational argument or logical analysis
can be attributed to this selection of scientists.
The story of atomic physics and the growth of this field are colored by
two factors: 1 The contribution of Jewish scientists who faced many
persecutions or were victims of prejudices in Europe and to a lesser
extent in the United States and their migration to the USA and
2 the circumstances surrounding World War I and WW 2.
[ How many young promising scientists went to the battles of these wars
and died there? --This could be a separate study in itself. A prominent
case is that of Moseley [who studied characteristic X ray spectra and
developed periodic table of elements based on atomic number] who was
killed in Gallipoli during world war 1.]
I may also add that while many well-known women scientists contributed so
much, their works have not been high-lighted or described adequately for
young readers, with the exception of Marie Curie.Some women scie,ntists
are included in this article---- Lise Meitner, Madame Wu , Marietta Blau,
Marguerita catherine Perey and Maria Goeppert-Mayer.
Some of the scientists who were not living in Europe or USA but doing
great research in physics had only marginal expression in mainstream
physics. A notable exception was Satyendranath Bose . S N Bose had
corresponded with Albert Einstein and developed independently the
statistical distribution that governs the behavior of certain particles
[photon,for instance]; Einstein approved his formulation,edited his paper
and after translation from English to German, communicated to a German
journal. This distribution is called 'Bose-Einstein distribution'' and
those particles following this distribution are called 'Bosons'. Later
Einstein developed the concept of Bose-Einstein condensation which was
proved experimentally only in 1995. Many have heard of 'Bosons' but not
about S N Bose from University of Calcutta in India. He is included in
this article.
There is also a story of a physicist who disappeared suddenly in Italy.
I include brief life sketches of the following scientists:
1 Leo Szilard
2 Madame Wu
3 John von Neumann
4 George Gamow
5 John R Dunning
6 Maria Goeppert Mayer
7 Frederick Reines
8 Ettore Majorana
9 Llewellyn Thomas
1o Marietta Blau
11 Arnold Sommerfeld
12 Marguerite Catherine Perey
13 Lise Meitner
14 Satyendranath Bose
Leo Szilard
A Hungarian by birth, he was a genius who invented several
things.After he heard about the nuclear fission [discovered by
Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann] Szilard immediately
thought of the possibility of chain reaction to produce nuclear
energy. He designed an atomic reactor in a London hotel room. He
even patented the design. Later he would also patent the design
of a cyclotron--a particle accelerator.
He worked with Max von Laue on x-ray difraction experiments in
Berlin and later with Albert Einstein on thermodynamics and
designed a refrigerator which went into commercial production, to
be replaced by Freon system later.[1922-1930]
Later Szilard ,fleeing from Germany in 1933, worked in Oxford for
some years. Later he moved to the USA and was working with
Enrico Fermi at Columbia University in 1938. He performed simple
experiments at Columbia to prove the multiplication of neutrons
with nuclear fission using Uranium and graphite as moderator to
slow down the neutrons, along with John Dunning.
Leo Szilard , more than any other person at that time, realized
the full import of nuclear chain reaction; he wrote that night
after the successful experiment of chain reaction at the
laboratory: "That night there was very little doubt in my mind
that the world was headed for grief." [ Walter Zinn worked with
Szilard at Columbia University and later at Chicago.]
[The Germans were also close on the heels of this work, trying to
produce nuclear chain reaction.They used a graphite derived from
silicon carbide which contained boron as an impurity. Boron is a
good absorber of neutrons and hence they could not achieve chain
reaction.What a blessing! Szilard gathered graphite without the
boron impurity and so was successful in achieving chain reaction.
Later he would persuade Einstein at Princeton to sign the famous
letter to the president F D Roosevelt which Szilard drafted--- on
the necessity of developing an atomic weapon.The Manhattan
project is a brainchild of Leo Szilard.
Then he moved to University of Chicago along with Enrico Fermi to
build the "Atomic Pile" and the nuclear reactor went critical on
Dec 2nd , 1942 [Chicago Pile 1].
Szilard moved to Los Alamos laboratory to join hands with Fermi
and Oppenheimer to work on the atomic bomb. He was critical of
war efforts and was disillusioned with greater control of the
project by military generals.He had many arguments with Gen
Leslie Groves, the military director of the project while J
Oppenheimer was the scientific director. He was against the use
of the atom bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and much of what
happened during the cold war. Like many atomic scientists, he was
a pacifist and truly beleived that the atom bomb should not be
used in any war.
After the war, he switched from atomic physics to molecular
biology and colloborated with Aaron Novick, the founder of the
Institute of Molecular Biology at Eugene, Oregon.The European
Microbiology Lab was established at his suggestion. Its library
is named after Szilard.
He was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 1960. For his own
treatment, he devised an equipment for Cobalt 60 radio-isotope
treatment for cancer.
During the last few years, he worked at the Salk Institute in
San Diego in the company of his old friend Jacob Bronowski. He
died at the age of 66.
A crater in the Moon is named after Leo Szilard.
Madame Wu
Chien Shing Wu, widely known as Madame Wu , is a woman physicist
born in Jiangsu province in China. She studied in Nanjing
University and later moved to Taiwan.Like many women scientists
of her era, she sought a school teaching career, before taking up
research.From 1930 to 1934, she studied at the physics department
of National Central University in Taiwan, and became a researcher
at the Institute of Physics there.
She is best known for her work on proving experimentally the
violation of parity principle , proposed by T D Lee and C Y Yang
at Columbia University. It is interesting that all the three
scientists were of Chinese origin. Yang and Lee got the
Noble prize for their theoretical work, but Madame Wu did not get
it. [Incidentally both Yang and Lee studied at the University of
Chicago and an anecdote has that S Chandrasekhar [the Indian
astrophysicist who also received the Nobel prize later] would
drive several miles to teach Yang and Lee and later told that his
entire class of two students got the Nobel prize.]
She came to University of California at Berkeley with a
fellowship and became a student of E.O.Lawrence of cyclotron fame
and received her Ph D in 1940. She later went to Princeton and
from there to Columbia University [New York city] where she
remained from 1944 to 1980--her entire career.
It is interesting to note that as an experimenter she was highly
accomplished--a fact not very well known.She was part of
Manhattan Project which started at Columbia lab. Her major role
as an experimenter was to develop the diffusion process for
enriching uranium---that is ,separating U 235 from U 238 using
gaseous diffusion of uranium hexafluoride---a process at once
diifcult and risky.
She had several nick-names such as " First Lady of
Physics'and "The Chinese Madame Curie".An unassuming lady, she
received the first Wolf prize for physics from Israel. She died
in 1997.
John von Neumann
John von Neumann belongs to the
rare category of versatile genius
and child prodigies. [Many
child prodigies do not flower into
geniuses in later life.]He was a polymath, with wide interests
and mastery of different fields.
He is best known for his mathematical 'game theory' and work
on opearations research;indeed he was one of the greatest
mathematicians of 20th century.He was not only a pure
mathematician, but applied mathematician as well---he was a great
mathematical physicist and also a mathematical
economist ,contributing to econometrics. His contribution to
early computer science is well-known. The computer architecture
with sequential processing is still called ' Neumann
architecture'. He even wrote the instruction set for the first
large computer ENIAC .
His memory was phenomenal and could recite literary pieces of
several pages; he did much mental calculations at fantastic
speed, including summing up an infinite series.
He is also well known for his work on atom bomb at Los Alamos
laboratory , along with Fermi, Oppenheimer,and later with Edward
Teller on thermonuclear or hydrogen bombs with nuclear fusion. He
had no qualms about working on these military projects---he was
against fascism and communism. He was not a pacifist . He held
the view that nuclear weapons could be a deterrent too.
John von Neumann was born in Budapest in 1903 to wealthy Jewish
parents. His father was a banker and a lawyer. Affectionately
called 'Johnny" of "Jancsi", he was far ahead of his school
curriculum; so his father appointed private tutors for him. At
the age of 8, he was familiar with Newton's calculus.When he was
15, he had mastered calculus and other math subjects that his
tutor Gabor Szego, on meeting him first was moved to tears. By
the age of 19, he wrote his first mathematical paper. A legend
has it that he received his undergraduate degree and Ph D at the
same year--when he was 22 years old.
Then he moved to ETH in Switzerland, where he learned math under
Georg Polya. Under his father's pressure, he also got a degree in
chemical engineering from ETH--- a subject that could be
more useful for later life.!
He became a privat-dozent at the young age of 23 in Berlin.By
1929, he had published 32 mathematical papers, at the rate of one
paper every month.
In 1930, he was invited to join the Institute for Advanced
Studies in Princeton, New Jersey; the other persons invited along
with him were Albert Einstein and Kurt Godel. Johnny remained
with the Insitute till his death in 1957.He became a US citizen
in 1938.
His early work was to put quantum mechanics on a firm
mathematical basis ,using operator formalism and Hilbert
space. He applied group theory and other mathematical tools for
economics, which were later developed by many Nobel Laureates,
such as Kenneth Arrow and John Nash.He also developed much of
operations research [OR] and linear programming methods and
duality theorem, colloborated with George Dantzig at Stanford.His
work on linear programming was immediately applied for many
commercial problems.
His lasting work was in Los Alamos laboratory---with early work
on 'explosive lenses' and shaped charges for efficient thermo-
nuclear (hydrogen) bombs to compress plutonium core for Nagasaki
bomb.He fully supported such military efforts as he was much
against communism and also the fascist regimes in Germany and in
Italy.
After the war in 1945, he continued as a consultant to US
government on designing bombs and ICBMs. He was the head of a
committee for ICBMs ,called Neumann Commitee. He coined the
term " MAD" --Mutually Assured Destruction. Along with Stanislaw
Ulam, a close friend and a Polish mathematician, he developed
simulation methods using random numbers,called Monte-Carlo
method. For all his passionate work for the military, he inspired
the character of Dr Strangelove.He filed a secret patent for a
hydrogen bomb design along with Klaus Fuchs in 1946.[Klaus Fuchs
later defected to Soviet Union and became the first nuclear spy.]
He continued to be a consultant for various corporations such as
RAND and IBM,staying at Princeton.
In personal life, he was one with lot of appetite for jokes.He
used to share jokes with his friend Stanislaw Ulam till the
end.He could work in a noisy place without getting
disturbed,because of his power of intense concentration. He was
married and had a daughter.
In 1955, he was diagnosed with cancer---may be due to his
exposure to nuclear radiations during the underwater
nuclear tests at Bikini islands.He stayed at Walter Reed Hospital
in Washington D.C. for nearly 18 months and then died .
A crater in the Moon is named after 'Johnny" von Neumann.
George Gamow
George Gamow is better known for his popular science books such
as "Mr Tompkin in wonderland" and "One,two, three---infinity"
which educated a generation of young persons including me on
modern physics. Gamow, a Russian Jew who emigrated to USA under
trying circumstances, was a scientist who made great
contributions to the theoretical aspects of Quantum mechanics and
astrophysics.
His theory of alpha decay from radio-active substances
developed "Quantum tunneling process" in which a few particles
can escape from the potential well or barrier of a nucleus---a
result of probabilistic nature of wave function---a particle can
exist outside its confines though only a few can do so. Gamow
also developed, when he was in Neils Bohr institute, a
simple "liquid drop model" for nuclear fission or fusion of two
atoms, taking into account conversion of mass into energy, like
two drops may coalesce to reduce its surface tension.This model,
later developed by Neils Bohr and John Wheeler became a working
model for nuclear physicists for many years.
In later years, he devoted his time to problems of astro-
physics. He was an early advocate of big-bang theory.
Gamow was born in Odessa in Ukraine to Jewish parents. He
studied at University of Leningrad. One of his friends was Lev
Landau.
He came to Gottingen, the Mecca of atomic physicists at that
time-- when Max Born was training many young physicists
there.Later he spent three years [1928-1931] with Neils Bohr at
Copenhagen. He spent a few years as Rockefeller Fellow at
Cambridge university,in Ernest Rutherford laboratory.
In 1928, he solved the alpha decay problem using the tunneling
effect. Simulataneously R W Gurney and E U Condon also came with
the the same solution, but their calculations were less rigorous.
Gamow was able to calculate the half life of isotopes with alpha
decay and introduced a " Gamow factor' into this process.[Read
his popular book with plenty of anecdotes: " Thirty years that
shook physics"--Dover pub].
He returned to Russia---may be a wrong move for him!---and
built a cyclotron at the Radium Institute which was completed
only in 1937.In 1931, he had bad encounter with the communist
regime. He was denied the permission to attend a scientific
conference in Italy. Gamow decided to escape from Russia with his
wife 'Rho" . He made two attempts to escape. In one attempt , he
stayed in a sea-side resort near the black sea; he planned to
rent out a boat and then escape at night with his wife by rowing
to a place in Turkey..During this journey,however, there was
heavy storms in the sea and Gamow returned to the resort, without
authorities getting any information on his attempt. The second
attempt was to reach Norway from Murmansk.Again bad weather
prevented this escaapade and so Gamow failed in both the attempts
to escape from Russia.
Things changed for the better in 1933. He got the permission to
attend the Solvay Conference [ a prestigeous conference in which
almost all top atomic scientists participated] in Brussels. He
left with his wife who posed as his secretary-- with official
passports. With the generous spirit of Marie Curie and Neils
Bohr, the couple could stay outside Russia. Gamow went to the
Curie Insitute in Paris and later to University of London. He
moved to University of Michigan, Aan Arbor in USA later and
emigrated to USA.
His work now turned to nuclear explosions. He became a
professor at George Washington University at Washington D C . He
invited Edward Teller from Hungary to join him [1936]. The basic
work relating to thermo-nuclear [H-Bomb] devices were done at
that time. His theory of beta decay took shape and he wrote a
paper on 'Gamow-Teller selection rule".
During the war years, he did not work on Manhattan project when
Teller moved to Los Alamos. But Gamow stayed at George Washington
University in D C and consulted for U S Navy on sub-marine
related problems with other professors.
After the war , he turned his attention to problems of
astrophysics---things relating to star formations. A major paper
was produced in 1945 with Carl Weizsacker. With Raplh Alpher and
Hans Bethe [Cornell University], Gamow worked out the nuclear
reactions in stars and synthesis of chemical elements from
hydrogen in stars. Alpher-Bethe-Gamow theory was called "alpha-
beta-gamma " theory by him!.
Gamow predicted the background microwave radiation in the
Universe due to Big-bang explosion; [a prediction which was later
observed by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in 1978 for which they
received Nobel prize.]
In later years Gamow moved to University of Colorado, Boulder,
where he would do some work relating to molecular biology;he
worked on the synthesis of proteins from the molecular blocks in
DNA chains.
He was a gifted writer on popular science, as mentioned earlier,
comparable to the younger author Isaac Asimov.He also wrote an
autobiography--" My World Line--An informal autobiography" Viking
Press , 1970.
He died at the age of 64, in 1968.
[Note: The present author met him in 1960 when he gave a lecture
on the "Age of the Earth' with pronounced Russian accent. He was
already obese .He said later that his liver was sending him a
bill.]
John R Dunning
John Dunning is a well-known experimenter who proved the release
of neutrons during the nuclear fission and also measured the
enormous amount of energy theoretically postulated by Lise
Meitner and Otto Frisch in Europe. He led a team which formed the
group to develop the conditions for the nuclear reactions in
Manhattan project initiated by Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard that
started in Columbia University, New York. The work was done in
great secrecy in the basement of Pupin building ,the physics
department there.
The frenzy of activity started after Neils Bohr who was
visiting Princeton for a conference received a telegram from Otto
Frisch from Stockholm [Jan 1939]. Frisch was the nephew of Lise
Meitner. Otto Frisch and Lise Meitner both met during the
Christmas vacation [Dec 1938] and discussed the discovery of
nuclear fission by Otto Hahn and Strassmann, both earlier
colleagues of Lise Meitner in Berlin. This was indeed a secret
information, conveyed to Lise Meitner before the publication by
Otto Hahn. Meitner immediately worked out the calculations for
the process of a Uranium atom splitting into two halves [one half
being Barium atom found in the experiment] and realised, using
mass defect, that enormous energy [about 200 Mev per fission]
would be released. The exciting possibility of releasing this
energy occupied the heated discussion between Meitner and Frisch
during the breakfast stroll in snow-covered garden in Meitner's
home. Frisch, being a fellow of the Bohr Institute, wanted to
communicate this to Neils Bohr in Princeton.
Neils Bohr, excited by the news from Otto Frisch, immediately
walked into the conference room and spilled the beans ----
announced this discovery that uranium atom could be split, with
formation of barium atom to the assembly of great physicists.
[There is another version of this story; Lise Meitner told Neils
Bohr about the results of Otto Hahn on uranium fission and her
calculations before Neils Bohr left Stockholm by boat to New
York. During the travel in the ship, Bohr discussed this problem
with Leon Rosenfeld and forgot to mention that the information
should be kept secret. It was Rosenfled who told other
physicists. Soon after that, Bohr realised the mistake and tried
to preserve the priority of Otto Hahn and Strassmann and Lise
Meitner, the Berlin team; the paper,however, was was already
published by these authors in Germany, a fact not known to Neils
Bohr at that time.]
This triggered a frenzy of activity among the physicists in the
US, in various universities... Whoever had a source of neutron
went ahead to try it out. John Dunning who received the news at
New York , along with Enrico Fermi, was the first one to try out
and develop a series of experiments leading to the demonstration
of nuclear chain reaction.
John Dunning grew up in Nebraska and was an experimenter from his
early days at school;he built a radio transmitter as a school
boy. Later, along with his father, built several radio stations
and sold them later.
He came to Columbia University as a student in physics and had
enormous encouragement as an experimenter. He had built a neutron
source by the method used in Berlin by Lise Meitner and others--a
small quantity of radon gas enclosed in a tube with a piece of
beryllium.[Radon gas can be collected from the emanations from a
piece of radio-active radium.]
His first aim was to note the large release of energy and also
the production of 'more than one neutron per fission' so that a
chain reaction could be initiated for nuclear fission of uranium
atoms. With his students [Harold Anderson, E T Booth,G N Glascoe
and FG Slack] he built an ionisation chamber to detect the large
energy release of energy from the fission of uranium atoms. He
would establish later that the fission comes from U 235 isotope
of uranium.
The energy release from the fission was indeed in the range
of 100 to 200 MeV, as predicted by Lise Meitner with Otto
Frisch. The classic paper by Dunning's team was published
in the year 1939: " The Fission of Uranium" by H L Anderson,
E T Booth, J R Dunning, E Fermi, G N Glascoe and F G Slack,
Phys Rev March 1, 1939.
This work not only triggered the Manhattan project but
would lead to the construction of first atomic reactor with
chain reaction {Chicago-Pile 1] at University of Chicago by
Fermi and later to the making of atom bomb at Los Alamos
laboratory, in New Mexico.
John Dunning requested Prof Arnold Nier, a chemist who was
expert in mass spectrograph to isolate U-235 isotope from
the abundant U-238 in a sample of Uranium ---at University
of Minnesota---in 1940.. [A piece of uranium typically
consists of 0.7% U 235 isotope and the rest U 238
isotope.] A small tiny bit of U 235 was received by Dunning
for establishing the fission of U 235 atoms by slow
neutrons.The separation of U 235 from normal Uranium or
enrichment of uranium in sufficient quantities of a few
kilograms would be a major undertaking for the bomb makers.
John Dunning immediately set about the separation process
for U -235. He chose the gas diffusion method ,using uranium
hexa-fluoride---a tough material to handle. There were lot
of chemical problems to solve...Prof Dunning had
colloboration with the chemist Prof Harold Urey , also at
Columbia,to conduct this project.[H C Urey received Nobel
prize for his early work on Deuterium and heavy water.]
A large scale plant to make U-235 by diffusion was set up
with Dunning's consultations at Oak Ridge Laboratory at
Tennessee.. [This process would also consume lot of electric
power.]
Meanwhile Fermi, Harold Anderson and his team moved to
Chicago to build the pile using natural Uranium, as part of
the Manhattan project. They would discover that Plutonium
was produced in nuclear reactors which could be separated
from uranium rods; plutonium also is a fissile material and
could be used for building an atom bomb. A plutonium plant
was set up at Hanford,Washington state and some of Fermi's
assistants moved there for the Hanford plant.
Another group of scientists gathered at Los Alamos
laboratory, New Mexico to design and to fabricate the bomb.
John Oppenheimer was the scientific director and Gen Leslie
Groves was the military director at Los Alamos. Dunning
became a consultant to the Los Alamos team but stayed at
Columbia University.
Meanwhile John Dunning spearheaded two projects.He built a
highly successful cyclotron in his laboratory. This
cyclotron is a permanent exhibit now at Smithsonian museum
in Washington D C. The second project was the building of a
large synchro-cyclotron for nuclear experiments.[SAM
project]
Dunning received many awards and a also a substantial amount
in lieu of patent rights from U S|Atomic energy commission.
This amount he donated to Columbia University. He became a
full professor in 1946 and later Dean of Engineering and
Apllied Sciences school there.
John Dunning was an inspired experimenter and trained many
young scientists in experimental nuclear physics. He was at
the critical time of enormously significant nuclear work at
the right place with E Fermi. Gen Leslie Grove said later: "
I feel very strongly that Dr Dunning has not been
appreciated by his country for his work on the {Manhattan}
project." Be that as it may, he was admired and loved by his
students and collagues.
He died at the age of 67 years in 1975.
---------------------------------------------------
Maria Goeppert-Mayer
A legend in her lifetime, this woman physicist from Germany had
excellent education but also her share of problems as a woman in
professional circles. She was born in Poland in 1906 ,in an
intellectual family atmosphere. On her father's side, there were
seven generations of professors. She studied at University of
Gottingen, a place of active physics presided over by Max Born.
She was in the compnay of great physicists like Enrico Fermi,
Heisenberg, Dirac, Pauli and James Franck in Gottingen and other
centers.
While in Gottingen she married the American physicist Dr Joseph
Edward Mayer in 1930. Being Jewish , she realised that the
political atmosphere was getting hostile in Germany. The couple
moved to the US in 1930.
She spent many years in several universities as a scientific
assistant; Johns Hopkins [1931-39], Columbia [1940 -46] and
Chicago. After work at Chicago,she got a teaching position for
sometime at Sarah Lawrence college.In between she had worked in
Los Alamos atom project in New Mexico.The jobs were few those
days and it was indeed difficult for a woman to get any academic
position .
Finally she had a part-time job at Argonne National Lab,during
which time she developed the shell structure for nucleus. This
answered the question why certain isotopes were more stable than
others, the so called 'magic numbers'.[Isotopes with number of
neutrons or protons in this sequence are found to be very stable:
2,8,20,28,50,82 and 126.]
This work was immediately recognized and Maria Mayer received
Nobel prize in 1963, the second woman to receive Nobel prize for
physics after Marie Curie.
She became a full professor at Univ of California, San Diego and
helped to build a physics department there. She died in 1972.
A crater on Venus is named after her.
Frederick Reines
Frederick Reines is credited with the identification of neutrinos
, along with his coworker Clyde Cowan. Reines's background is
interesting.Born in a middle class Jewish family in Paterson, New
Jersey, he grew up in a small community in upstate New York. His
father, an immigrant from Russia, ran a country store. Reines was
exposed to country life and lot of music and literature studies.
He was good in history subjects but did poorly in math and
science at school.He had a great singing voice and even
considered a singing career. He graduated from Union Hill school
and took interest in science due to some teachers at high school
days.
Later he obtained MS degree from Stevens Institute of Technology,
Hoboken and then Ph D from New York University. Towards the end
of war, he went to Los Alamos laboratory and worked under Richard
Feynman. Soon he was hooked to fundamental particles physics and
nuclear reactor work.
Neutrino is a small tricky particle to trace. It has very little
mass and no charge. It can pass through miles of rock easily,
since it has weak interactions with atoms.
Neutrino was postulated by Wolfgang Pauli [of "exclusion
principle" fame] in 1930 ---to explain the interaction between
neutron, proton and electron/positron in the nucleus, following
the theory of beta decay by Enrico Fermi. But neutrino has been
elusive to find . In 1950, Reines worked at the nuclear reactor
facility at Hanford ,Washington and did basic experiments to
track the neutrino. Note that neutrino cannot be detected by
cloud chamber and other devices.The neutrinos are generated from
nuclear reactors. Reines , along with Clyde Cowan moved to
Savannah Reactor facility [at Augusta ,Georgia] where a powerful
reactor was available.
The experimental set up of Reines appears simple. The neutrinos
[or anti-neutrinos] were led from the reactor to large water
tanks containing water mixed with cadmium chloride . Cadmium
atoms would absorb the neutrons. Reines and Cowan shielded the
apparatus from stray cosmic rays. A bank of 5 inch
photomultiplier tubes lined the water tank to record feeble light
sparks signalling the creation of neutrino-related reactions.The
number of observed positrons coincided with Fermi's theory.The
presence of neutrinos was proved in 1956.
Later Reines turned his attention to stars which would emit
neutrinos. A copious stream is expected during the explosion of
stars or supernovas.He discovered neutrinos in supernovas ,thus
opening up neutrino astronomy, a field growing even today. As
professor and head of physics department, he served at Case-
Western University from 1959 to 1966.His work on cosmic
rays ,hunting for neutrinos, went on when he moved later to
University of California , Irvine. He also initiated programs for
radiation therapy in later years.
He was one of those scientists who were awarded Nobel prize much
later than their year of work. Reines got nobel prize in 1995. He
died in 1998.
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Ettore Majorana
Ettore Majorana was in the forefront of research in nuclear
physics and quantum mechanics. In fact he found neutron before
its discovery by James Chadwick but missed publishing it. His
work on statistical model for atomic structure with Enrico Fermi
brought him a permanent place in quantum theory. His work on
fermions, called Majorana fermions , led to work on particles
which are of fundamental significance ; the Majorana fermions are
intensely studied and were found in April 2011.
For all his reputation, especially in Italy,Majorana disappeared
in 1938 during a boat trip from Palermo to Naples.More about this
later.
Ettore Majorana was born in Sicily in 1906. His father was also a
physicist. Gifted in mathematics from boyhood, he studied first
engineering in 1923. After that, at the urging of Emilio Segre [a
Nobel prize winner later and a student of Fermi],he took to
physics and became a student of Enrico Fermi at the University
of Rome.This was in 1928. His scintific career extended only for
ten more years.
His early work was on atomic spectroscopy.In his first paper in
1928, he developed a model for atomic structure. This potential
model is now called "Thomas -Fermi model" ,since Lowellyn Thomas
also independently developed this model. This model has been
widely used in solid state physics. He also developed "auto-
inonisation' for certain explanantion in atomic spectra in 1931.
He obtained doctorate with Fermi as thesis advisor from
University of Rome. Fermi remained his mentor for the rest of
his short life.
In 1932, he published a paper on the behaviour of aligned atoms
in varying magnetic fields-- a problem that led I I Rabi and
others to radio-frequency spectroscopy. He did work on
relativistic theory for mass spectrum. Many of his papers were
written in Italian and therefore went unnoticed for several
decades in western Europe and USA.
He was the first to propose the presence of neutrons based on
radio-active data of Joliot and Irene Curie [daughter of Marie
Curis and Nobel prize winners]. Fermi told him to write a paper
on this work but Majorana postponed and the credit of finding
neutron went to James Chadwick.
Majorana equation yields particles that are their own
antiparticles which are called Majorana Fermions. Majorana
remained humble and often considered his own work as trivial.
At Fermi's insistence, Majorana left Italy and joined W
Heisenberg at Leipzig, Germany in 1933. [1933 was a sensitive
year when Nazi power was rising and scientists of Jewish faith
had tough time to work in peace and many left Germany.]He
extended the theory of nucleus using exchange forces developed by
Heisenberg. He also went to Copenhagen to work with Neils Bohr.He
also did seminal work on neutrinos. His last paper in 1937 was on
electrons and positrons ,written in Italian.
In the fall of 1933, Majorana returned to Italy in poor health,
with abdominal problems and nervous exhaustion. He became a
recluse and remained at home for nearly four years. He was also
harsh towards family members. He practically stopped publishing,
though some minor work was done in geophysics and electrical
engineering. Meanwhile he became a full professor at University
of Naples in 1937.
While on a boat trip from Palermo to Naples, Majorana
disappeared. Several investigations were made, but his body was
never found. He had apparently withdrawn his money from bank
earlier to the trip. On Mar 25,1938, Majorana had written a
letter to the Dirctor of Physics Institute at Naples that he
should be remembered and he had made an unavoidable decision.
Did Majorana commit suicide? Did he escape to Argentina or join a
monastery?
Was he kidnapped and killed by those against nuclear weapons? Did
Nazi military establishment abduct him to force him to work on
nuclear bomb and send him later to Argentina after the war? --
Many such questions are asked even today.Several books have been
written on the disappearance of Majorana. Emilio Segre told that
most probably he had committed suicide.
[Note: On March 2011, one witness appeared stating that he had
met Majorana in Buernes Aires after World War II. On June 7th
2011, a photo taken in 1955 in Argentina was presented. Therefore
there is a possibility that Majorana was forced to work for
Germany military on nuclear bomb related work and later sent to
Argentina to avoid punishment from the Allies. This is my
conjecture.]
[Note: Recently in 2011, Majorana Fermions have been detected in
nano-material research and this has raised hopes of quantum
computing again.See BBC news- 13th April, 2012]
His mentor, Enrico Fermi paid his tribute to Majorana towards the
end of his own life in 1954: "There are many categories of
scientists--There are also people of first class, who make great
discoveries,fundamental for the development of science. But then
there are the geniuses, like Galileo Galilee and Newton. well,
Ettore Majorana was one of them. "
Llewellyn Thomas
Llewellyn Thomas is best known for his work labelled "Thomas-
Fermi potential" for heavy atoms---- to apply Schrodinger's
wave equation for larger atoms.Thomas developed this model first
and Fermi came up with this a year later and expanded it. This
model--'Thomas--Fermi model' ---has many applications and is
widely used in Solid State Physics. Thomas made another great
development ---introduced 'Thomas factor' for explaining the
Zeeman effect with 'spin-orbit coupling". Both the works ---
Thomas-Fermi model and Thomas Factor--- were done before he was
23 years old.
Born in London in 1903 in a Welsh family, he was home-schooled
till 7th grade by his mother. He was a voracious reader . He
entered Trinity College, Cambridge and studied under E A Milne.
Later he went to Copenhagen, the Mecca of Atomic Physicists , in
1925, and spent a year with Neils Bohr.It was an exciting time
at Bohr's Institute with Heisenberg and Schrodinger bring in
their works on matrix mechanics and wave mechanics. By his own
admission, Thomas was slow in learning the new things
and "understood nothing for 4 to 5 years!".
It was around this time, however, Thomas developed the two works
mentioned earlier. He studied the fine structure of atomic
spectra and applied relativistic corrections, having studied
theory of relativity with Arthur Eddington a year before. He did
the required calculations and came up with the Thomas factor,
which he discussed with Kramers and Bohr. Bohr urged him to
publish this in 1926. He returned to Trinity College ,Cambridge
and obtained his Ph D in 1927.
In 1929, he moved to the USA, and became an assistant professor
at Ohio State University, Columbus. He had always the streak of
doing practical work too.He developed the isochronous cyclotron
and did work on numerical methods. He stayed at Ohio State for
17 years.
During the war years, 1943-45, he went to Aberdeen Proving
Grounds for work in Ballistics Research Lab where he had the
company of luminaries like Edwin Hubble,Joseph Mayer, John von
Neumann,I I Rabi and S Chandrasekhar. He did theoretical work on
shock waves .
Soon after the war, IBM started the Thomas Watson computing lab
at Columbia Unviersity, and Rabi and Eckert induced Thomas to
join .Interestingly his title at Watson lab was a "technician".
Soon he became a faculty member of Columbia 's physics department
as well.It was here that he developed large computing devices and
also algorithms for numerical methods. He did practical work in
making magnetic core memories for computers. He was so highly
respected by the computing fraternity that he was nick-named "the
sage of 116th street" ---the first location of IMB-watson lab
near Columbia University in Broadway, Manhattan, New York city.
After retirement from Columbia, Thomas moved to North Caroline
State University and was considered an encyclopaedic scholar by
students. He died in Raleigh ,N C in 1992.
Marietta Blau
Marietta Blau was an Austrian physicist of Jewish family. She is
credited with early work on photographic emulsion method for
detecting nuclear particles, finding their tracks and
characterisitics ,besides cloud chambers and scintillation
counters. She detected cosmic ray particles by this method at
high altitudes [above 2500 meters] using baloons.
Her work was pioneering ,though C F Powell received far greater
credit for his work later and also received Nobel Prize. Marietta
Blau did experiments with limited facilities , often making her
own emulsions with paraffin and carbon soot.
Like many other Jewish scinetists, she had to flee Austria when
it was annexed [Anschluss] with Germany by Adolf Hitler. For most
of the early years, she worked as unpaid assistant...the
reason---She was a woman;she was Jewish--period.Even in the USA,
her position was not satisfactory and she did not receive the
recognition she deserved.
She studied at the University of Vienna from 1914-18 and obtained
her doctorate in 1919. Her career began in the Radium Institute
in Vienna , from 1923 to 1938, where she worked unpaid. It was
here that she developed the emulsion technique and recorded the
tracks of atomic particles. She could separate the tracks of
alpha particles from that of protons.Her family was well-off,
making money out of selling sheet music and had to support
her. The institute did give her small funds for experimental
work. For her significant work, she received Leiben prize from
Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1937. This was the only formal
recognition for her work.
In the fateful year of 1938, like many other scientists, Marietta
Blau escaped from Vienna . From there she moved to Paris and
joined the Curie Institute. Soon she got in touch with the
British photo-film maker Ilford and made better emulsion
films .One note says that she got some financial support frrom
the Austrian Association of University Women while she was in
Gottingen and later in Paris.
With her student, Hertha Wambacher, she studied cosmic rays
wtih her emulsion method.She did this work at high altitudes, at
2500 meters above sea level.She observed first nuclear
disintegrations ,which they called 'Blau-Wambacher Stars".Her
seminal publication was : "photographic tracks from cosmic rays"
Nature,142,613,1938.
Much credit was given later to Prof C F Powell and his team in
England for their work on emulsion technique and cosmic ray
studies leading to the discovey of pi-mesons or pions. Marietta
Blau's pioeering work was almost ignored by the science
establishment, though some British scientists did mention her
work from which Powell apparently derived his method. Powell, at
the University of Bristol, almost had a 'cottage industry' with
links to chemists,theorists and many women scanners to do large
exploration of cosmic rays. Marietta balu's work consisted of a
small team. Powell and Occhialini did receive Nobel prize and
Marietta Blau did not.[She was nominated several times by Erwin
Schrodinger for Nobel prize but still she did not receive the
prize.]
[Her student and coworker for many years, Wambacher was a
member of Nazi party. This fact might have created some prejudice
against Blau's achievements.]
She moved to Oslo from Paris and then sailed to the USA. With
intercession of Albert Eistein she got a teaching position in
Technical University, Mexico city. She moved to Mexico city with
her ailing mother. She could do hardly any research work there.
She even studied problems of local interest such as the effect of
solar radiation on a population living at high altitudes and
radioactivity of minerals found in Mexico.
After her mother's passing in 1944, she moved to the USA,to New
York city where his brother lived. For some time she was
employed at the International Rare Metals Refiney, New York
[1944-48], a company doing extraction of uranium and other
metals.She developed instruments for industrial and medical
applications of radium. Later she had short assignments at
Columbia University [1948-50] and Brookhaven National Lab [Long
Island][1950-55] and finally a permanent teaching position at
University of Miami[1955-60].While at Brookhaven she developed
the emulsion method for detecting high energy particles generated
from particle accelerators [synchro-cyclotrons and Bevatrons] and
early work on photo-multiplier tubes to imporve the performance
of scintillation counters.She received an award--the Leibnitz
award from the Academy of Sciences in Berlin. But the Academy was
located in East Berlin under Soviet union.The US State department
dissuaded her to visit there. Blau declined the award.
In 1960, Blau did return to Vienna, partly being home sick and
personally not being healthy, and worked in the Radium Institute
again. Though she received the Schroedinger prize of the Austrian
Academy of Sciences, she could not become a regular member of the
Academy due to prejudices against women scientists.
She died in Vienna in 1970--at the age of 76.
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-----------------------------
Arnold Sommerfeld
Here is a quiz for you: Can you name the scientist who was
nominated for Nobel prize 81 times but failed to get the prize?
Can you name the physicist who trained four great physicists who
went on to get nobel prizes--namely Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang
Pauli, Peter Debye and Hans Bethe?
Can you name the scientist with whom three future nobel -prize
winners --Linus Pauling, I I Rabi and Max von Laue did post-
doctoral work?
If you answered 'Arnold Sommerfeld' for all the three
questions ,you are right!.
Sommerfeld was not only a great physicist, but also had the knack
of teaching and training students with lot of social interaction
that they grew into great scientists.
Sommerfeld also wrote the classic 6 volume work on " Atomic
Strucutre and Spectral Lines" which became a standard text for
several decades.
Albert Einstein told Sommerfeld: "What I admire about you is that
you have,as it were, pounded out of the soil such a large number
of young talents."
Sommerfeld is best known for his work on the structure
of hydrogen atom along with Neils Bohr---called "Bohr-
Sommerfeld theory." While Bohr developed the circular
orbits of electrons around the hydrogen
nucleus,Sommerfeld worked out the elliptical orbits and
introduced the three quantum numbers in addition to
principal quantum number.He also introduced fine
structure constant [ alpha = e2 /hc = 1/137, a
dimensionless number] to explain the atomic spectra.
Sommerfeld was born in Koenisberg in 1868 and studied at
Albertina University. He studied math from Adolf Hurwitz and
David Hilbert. He received Ph D at the age of 23.
The important shift came when he went to Gottingen University
and learned mathematical physics under Felix Klein. He taught at
Gottingen for many years and wrote text books as well.
In 1900, he became a professor at Aachen and worked on theory of
hydrodynamics. It was at this time, 1905, Albert Einstein
had formulated his special theory of Relativity. Sommerfeld was
an early supporter of this theory which was not fully accepted
then;he gave the mathematical framework for using the relativity
theory.
From 1906, he was the professor of theoretical physics at Univ of
Munich. His close colloborator was Max Born. These two
professors, Sommerfeld at Munich and Born at Gottingen nurtured
a generation of great theoretical physicists.
In 1935, he went on a world tour for a year--visiting
India,China, Japan and the US.
When he returned to Germany, the turbulent years-- 1935-1940--
lay ahead.Sommerfeld was pained by the development of anti-
semiticism, which was always prevalent in Germany but then became
virulent---many of his friends were leaving the country including
Alber Einstein. Meanwhile he helped many refugee scientists find
positions in other countries.
He continued to teach till 1947. In 1951 he met with an
accident---a passing truck hit him while he was taking a walk
with his grandchildren.He died two months later.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------
Marguerite Catherine Perey
Marguerite Perey was a radioactivity researcher without any
formal science education.She had the intelligence to study radio-
active substances and developed matchless skills in separating
radio-active elements and isotopes ,only equalling that of Marie
Curie and Otto Hahn.
She is credited with the discovery of Francium, an alkali metal
that was elusive for nearly 50 years after a suggestion from T W
Richards about its existence. The reason---this element is highly
unstable in elemental form..it is highly radioactive, decays into
lower atomic numbers in about two hours [half-life is only 2.34
hours] and is found in very small quantities in ores like Pitch
blende.
I am getting a little ahead of the story ---to illustrate how
tough it is to separate such elements.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Mendelyev's Periodic Table
[PT] was incomplete ,with several gaping holes for elements not
discovered then, but preumably existed in Nature. These elements
bore the name eka-X ,the word eka means in Sanskrit, "one
before"--a term used by Mendelyev for undientifed elements.
{Sanskrit ,the classical Indo-european language used in India is
close to Russian and hence the use of this word by Mendelyev.]
You recall the alkali metals in the first column of PT,the first
group of elements: Lithium,sodium,potassium, cesium; What comes
after cesium--we would call it eka-cesium.It would be assigned an
atomic number z= 83. Note that ,at that time, atomic numbners
were unknown;chemists searched for elements based on atomic
weights only. Theodore William Richards, an American chemist who
got Nobel prize for his work , was the authority on atomic
weights of elements; he surmised that eka-cesium ,if it exists,
would be highly unstable in a chemical sense and would be present
in small quantities in minerals.
To understand the story of eka-cesium, we have to dwell into the
work on actinium---another radioactive element with atomic number
z= 89. Now it is easy to 'imagine' that the element actinium
would give out an alpha particle [helium nucleus] and become z=
87 or eka-cesium. Back then ,this was not understood that
easily--that is before the study of radioactive disintegration.
You recall the work of Marie Curie, who treated large
quantities, nearly a ton, of pitch blende ore and isolated a few
grams of Polonium and Radium...well the same ore was used by
Andre Debierne to discover Actinium [z=89] in 1899.It is very
difficult to handle Ac and therefore very little was known since
that time.
Let us return to the early life of Marguerite Perey.
Marguerite Perey was born in 1909 in a little village near Paris.
His father ran a fluor mill.Stock-market crash and death of her
father followed. At the age of five, this girl in a middle class
Protestant family was left without any menas for a school
education.
Working hard Perey entered a private school which gave a diploma
in science---in chemistry--meant for girls. She graduated with
this diploma in 1929--at the age of 20 years. The diploma would
be helpful in getting a teaching job in a school.Fortunately for
her, in October 1929, she got a job of an assistant at the Radium
Insititute of Marie Curie. Her skills, eagerness to learn and
intelligence caught the attention of the Director, Marie Curie.
Perey became the personal lab assistant of Marie Curie and later
her confidante as well.
Under Marie Curie's tutelage and mentoring, Perey learnt the
techniques of radio-chemistry and would devote many years in
studying the difficult element Actinium [Z= 89].
The first work assigned to Perey by Curie was to enrich actinium
in a sample so that atomic spectrum work can be done to identify
its spectral lines. In those days,spectral lines of an element
served as finger-printing an element. Perey successfully prepared
a sample containing Ac ---the sample was sent to Zeeman's lab in
Amsterdam for spectral lines identification.
She continued her work with actinium , purifying the substance
and studying its radioactive constituents. After Madame Curie's
death in 1934, Perey was guided by Andre Debierne and Curie's
daughter ,Irene Joliot-Curie. The elusive element eka-cesium is a
beta emitter and therefore difficult to detect. Further its
occurrence is small in nature:its content in earth's crust is
only several hundred grams.It is highly unstable and decays with
a half-life of 120 minutes.!
In 1938, Perey found that a freshly purified actinium sample
exhibited penetrating beta rays with intensity increasing in
about 20 minutes and then stayed steady for two hours.This
corresponds to the formation of eka-cesium from actinium.In Jan
1939, after several critical tests, Perey found that part of
Ac237 decays into the new element--eka-cesium with properties of
an alkali metal.Thus eka-cesium was discovered--an element with
Z=87 and A= 237.
It is the custom that the discoverer of an element is previleged
to name the element. Thus Curie named the new element
discovered by her after her native Poland--POLONIUM. Likewise,
Perey named the new element eka-cesium after her nativeland
France---thus FRANCIUM, WITH THE SYMBOL Fr was named. [The
naturally occurring Francium is with the atomic mass 223.There
are 31 known isotopes of this element Fr.] Thus a modest 29 year-
old girl without an university degree,could discover an element
with rare skills,preseverance and ,of course, with mentoring of
Marie Curie.
She did university studies later, at the Sorbonne during the war
years and got her doctorate in 1946. In 1949, she was appointed
as Chairperson of the nuclear research centre ,CNRS, and also
headed the department of nuclear chemistry at the University of
Strasbourg.
In 1958, she co-founded the Department of Nuclear Chemistry in
the Institute for Nuclear Research.
She never married and devoted all her time to nuclear studies and
her students and colleagues.
In 1946, some form of cancer was detected in her left hand--
possibly due to many hours of working with strong radio-active
susbtances whose radition effects were little understood in the
early days. She taught other scientists how to handle these 'hot'
substances carefully in nuclear laboratories.
In 1967, she attended the centenary celebrations of Marie Curie's
birthday in Warsaw. Here she met other famous scientists
including Lise Meitner.Her latent cancer became virulent in 1973
and she died on May 13th, 1975 at the age of 65.
-----------------------------------------
Lise Meitner
I include Lise Meitner among the less known atomic physicists.
This is partly correct because she is not that well known like
the famous Marie Curie of France, though there work ran parallel
in the field of radio activity .But she was well known in Germany
and Austria where she was born, and famous among almost all
scientists.
Her life is one of poor recognition till late in Life. She was
persecuted because of her Jewish family though she had converted
to Protestant faith in early years and she was not religious in
a traditional sense. Further she had less previleges in education
and in jobs because of her gender. Her life is so melodramatic
that one should read a detailed biography to appreciate her
devotion to science and remarkable faith in humanity.{Read the
detailed biography " Lise Meitner-by Ruth Lewin Sime-- University
of California press, Berkeley,1996]
She is known for her discovery of nuclear fission in
Uranium ,along with Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann. She and Otto
Hahn worked in the same laboratory at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in
Berlin; Hahn, a year senior, was a radio-chemist; Meitner a
physicist. Hahn was good in separating various radio-active
substances; Meitner did all the physical measurements. There was
an excellent understanding and cooperation between them for
almost thirty years.
Meitner had to flee Germany: She almost lost her professorship at
the University;later she was about to lose her postion a the
Kaiser Wilhelm institute during the sweeping anti-semitic
activites of Nazi party ; Her passport became invalid and she
would not be issued a passport again.She cannot travel anywhere
outside Germany after the Nazis came to power.She would lose her
apartments and also other possessions ,clothes and
books,confiscated by the Nazi authorities. Yet she was reluctant
to leave Germany.
Her native Austria was already annexed by Hitler. She had a few
relatives still in Vienna, who could become the victims of
the holocaust.. She worried about the safety of them. Otto Hahn
was trying to help her but was limited by the pressure from Nazi
officials.
Fortunately for her and for science, she had the support of a
few top scientists---Neils Bohr, Max Planck [her mentor in
Germany] ,Max von Laue and Dirk Coster. It was Neils Bohr who
made serious attempts to secure a position for her outside
Germany and smuggle her out of Berlin. Albert Einstein in the USA
also made some effort to entice her to emigrate.
In Juky 1938, following Neils Bohr's intense efforts, Dirk Coster
[the discoverer of the element Hafnium] went to Berlin, convinced
her to leave Germany and escorted her in a night train across the
border to Groningen, Netherlands . Coster ,through his influence,
had informed the border police at the railway station across the
border about her escape. It was still a risky affair that the
German patrol might have arrested her. Lise Meitner and Dirk
Coster were nervous. But they could cross the border without any
incident.
Lise Meitner then went to Sweden to work as an
assistant ,without any title, at Seigbahn's lab in the Nobel
Institute. When she was there, she heard from Otto Hahn about the
fission of uranium atom and formation of some barium atoms in his
experiments. Hahn was doing a line of work suggested by her
earlier. She was having a Christmas vacation,when she discussed
this with her nephew Otto Frisch who was working at the Bohr
Institute in Copenhagen. Lise immediately interpreted correctly
the results of this work and sent her explanation to Otto
Hahn.She calculated in a snowy backyard during morning walk with
Frisch that the splitting of uranium atom had occurred and would
release incredible energy,almost 200 MeV per fission,and
explained this to Frisch.Otto Hahn had not yet published his
results...he would do so after two weeks. When the paper
appeared, the publication was in the name of Otto Hahn and
Strassmann... Lise Meitner's name did not appear. There could be
several reasons why her name was not included in this remarkable
work.It is true that Meitner had colloborated with Hahn
throughout.It is also ture that Hahn had consulted her a few
weeks before. Hahn acknowledged her contribution in numerous
letters between the two. But Meitner was not present during this
work in Berlin. Including her name would bring down the wrath of
Nazi officials---Hahn would be chastised and might even lose the
job. Meitner, being a Jew, could not be accepted as the author of
this work.
I am getting ahead of this fascinating story. Otto Frisch
informed Neils Bohr of this great result from Otto Hahn and
Meitner's calculations.It was Neils Bohr who carried the news to
USA and informed the scientists there,especially Einstein and
Fermi. I had written about this in another story in previous
pages.
As for Lise Meitner, she felt marginalised after this
situation. At Siegbahn's institute she had no formal position or
support for research though she started some experimental work
without any assistants. Her life became bitter and lonely.
In 1940, Otto Hahn received the Nobel prize but Meitner was left
out. Otto Hahn did not even mention her name in his Nobel
lecture. Mietner continued ,however, her friendship with
Hahn. Meitner was nominated twice by Einstein and by others for
Nobel prize, but od not receive it.
Early life and work
Lise Meitner was born in Vienna in 1878--in an intellectual
Jewish family , typical middle class background, given to studies
and music. In those days, even school education was scanty for
girls and often girls were trained for a teaching position or
nursing profession. Meitner would become a teacher. Formal
admission to universities for women did not obtain.Yet, Mietner
got an opportunity to study with Ludwig Boltzmann at the
University in Vienna. Boltzmann was her first mentor.His
remarkable lectures with clarity and concern for students were
legendary. Meitner got the full benefit of his mentoring. She
excelled in mathematics and physics,especially his work on
thermodynamics and statistical mechanics.
Meitner became fascinated by the studies on radio-activity by
Henri Becquerel and others and started experimental work at
Boltzmann's department.The classical work was done using a gold-
leaf electroscope. Meitner would investigate absorption of beta
and gamma rays by various metal foils.She also obtained her
doctorate. Unfortunately for her, Boltzmann died by commiting
suicide in 1906.
Meitner then decided to move to Berlin to study and work in
Physics in 1907.. She already had her doctoral degree and
had published a few papers; but prejudices against women were
high. Academic positions were usually denied for women. Meitner
joined Max Planck in Berlin as unpaid assistant.It was here that
her definitive interests in theoretical physics developed. Planck
became her second mentor---a father figure in Berlin for all
young physicists. Meitner could prove her worth as a first rate
scientist. Soon she was isolating various isotopes and decay
products in what we now call "radium series" and actinium
series"...these are tough experiements since several radio active
products or isotopes would form with different half
lives. Meitner also built cloud chambers for studying nucleur
reactions.
Her experimental work paralleled that of Irene Curie in Paris and
Ernest Rutherford in Cavendish lab in Cambridge.But Meitner had
her own series of experiments to isoalte and study the decay of
these elements.
The exciting work of Fermi in Rome on absorption of slow neutrons
by various elements across the periodic Table excited the group
in Berlin. Meanwhile Meitner and Otto Hahn became friends and
collobrators in a small laboratory of Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.
[KWI] under the guidance of Max Planck. Hahn headed the chemistry
division while Meitner was in charge of physics section.[Later
KWI would become the Max Planck Insititute after the war.] The
close interaction and mutual admiration between Meitner and Hahn
continued for nearly thirty years. Till the end of her life Lise
Meitner was always appreciative of Hahn and held her own work as
a support to his work. Nevertheless, on many specific issues
Meitner was assertive. For a long time , Meitner held that
transuranic elements have been formed by neutron absorption of
uranium atoms while fission had actually taken place.But towards
the end she wanted Hahn to look for fission fragments in the
uranium pieces,especially barium,which led to the discovery of
nuclear fission by them ...As political climate had changed, Lise
Meitner had to leave Berlin for Sweden.
The world war II years were diffiuclt for her. But she continued
in Sweden ,with some support from Neils Bohr. During this period,
Heisneberg and Hahn and others were pressed to work for a German
atomic weapon which they could not succeed. Later the allies
arrested many of them,including Otto Hahn, and were kept under
house arrest in London. In 1940, they were released. By this time
Otto Hahn took almost all the credit for the discovery of nuclear
fission, ignoring Lise Meitner except in private letters. The
friendship between Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn,howevern continued.
It should be noted that Hahn did help her to flee Germany and
remained with her till last train journey to Groningen.Lise
Meitner had fondness for Hahn's family too.
Lise Meitner, after the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
became famous as the one who gave the foundation for nuclear
weapons. She was under the public glare for many years.She made a
trip to the USA for a year.
In 1960, she moved to Cambridge and later,in 1968, passed on, a
few days before her 90th birthday.
The transuranic element ,with atomic number 109, Meitnerium [Mt}
is named after Lise Meitner.
Satyendranath Bose
The word "boson" has become a common word--the name for certain
particles following a kind of statistical behaviour in atomic
physics. Photons or light-particles introduced by Max Planck is a
boson. One may wonder from where this name is derived.The word is
derived from the name of Satyendranath Bose---a little-
known theoretical physicist from University of Calcutta,
India.The story of his "colloboration" with Albert Einstein is a
story of 'Guru- disciple relationship' in traditional Hindu
style---a guru he had not met but mentally accepted and
communicated with through letters.
Satyendranath Bose was born in Calcutta in the year 1894. His
father was an engineer in the local Railroad company in British
India. Bose was a top-notch student in his class in Presidency
College,,especially in math and languages and stood first in
Science honours [tripos] course at Calcutta University. { The
second place went to his friend and colleague Meghnad Saha,
another physicist who interacted with Fermi on ionisation of
atoms in stars in the early stages of astro-physics.!]
While a student, Satyen Bose drew his scientific inspiration from
two giants at the University: Jagadish Chandra Bose ,a physicist
and biologist who had studied in England , and Prafulla Chandra
Roy, a noted Indian chemist who was a nationalist in spirit. [It
may be noted that C V Raman , of Raman effect, a noted physicist
and Nobel prize winner in 1930, was also a faculty member in
Calcutta University at that time.]
Satyen Bose joined as lecturer in the physics department of
Calcutta University in 1916.His early interest in quantum theory
and relativity led him to do pioneering work. He translated
Einstein's papers in relativity for the first time into English,
after getting permission from Einstein to do the translation.
This was his first interaction with Einstein.
He wrote a seminal paper in 1924 deriving Planck's law based on
particle statistics of identical particles [with integral spin] ;
in this paper, Bose introduced an important concept of volume in
phase space as h3
where 'h' is the Planck's constant. He had difficulty in publishing
the paper.Bose decided to send the paper to Einstein
himself ,requesting him to translate this into German if he
[Einstein] thought it fit and send to 'Zietschrit fur Physik' for
publication. The letter, written in utter humility shows his
reverence for Einstein as his 'virtual guru', though he had not met
Einstein in person. He wrote:" Though a complete stranger to you, I
do not feel any hesitation in making such a request.Because we are
all your pupils though profiting only through your writings." He
also mentioned his earlier correspondence seeking permission to
translate Einstein's papers into English.
Einstein recognised the novel approach in that paper and
translated it himself; it was published in Bose's name in
Zietschrift fur Physik in 1924: "Planck's law and Hypothesis of
Light Quanta.".[This was like the return favour by Einstein for
translating his papers from German to English!] The new statistics,
henceforth called 'Bose-Einstein statistics ' for particles with
integral spin became part of quantum mechanics. The other
statistics is Fermi-Dirac statistics for particles with half spin,
[+1/2 or -1/2] such as electrons. These particles are
called "fermions'. Thus Bosons and Fermions became common words in
Atomic physics.
Later Einstein extended this statistics to atoms and showed that
certain particles would condense ---a dense collection of bosons--
called Bose-Einstein condensate. This condensate was experimentally
shown in 1995 by Eric Cornell and Carl Weimar using Rubidium-87
atoms and later by Wolfgang Ketterlee with sodium-23 atoms at
temperatures close to absolute zero; the three scientists received
the Nobel prize for this work in 2001.
Satyen Bose ,however, did not recieve the Nobel prize.
Later Life
In 1921, Bose took a Reader's position in the newly created
University of Dhaka, which is in Bangladesh now. He mainly
concentrated on building the new facilties for physics at the
University. Follwing his publication of the noted paper, Bose had
an invitation from the Curie Institute in Paris. Bose spent two
years in Paris --with Louis de Broglie, Marie Curie and other
scientists and also met Einstein in Germany.
In 1926 he became the head of the physics department at Dhaka. He
did much work on x-ray crystallography,thermo-luminescence ,
electromagnetic properties of ionosphere and Einstein's unified
field theory. He also did applied work--extracting helium from
hot springs in Bakreshwar.
After independence, Dhaka became part of East Pakistan. So, Bose
moved back to Calcutta and became a professor at his Alma Mater.
He taught till his retirement in 1956. Later he became the Vice
Chancellor of Vishva Bharati University, founded by Rabindranath
Tagore[ a Nobel prize winner for literature from India.]Tagore
dedicated his only science book to Satyen Bose.
Bose continued with his interests not only in science,but in
literature and music. He died in the year 1974 in Calcutta.
A recent biography of this little-known Indian physicist is by
Kameshwar Wali, published by World Scientific Publishers in 2009.
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Epilogue
In researching for this article, I was overwhelmed by the
generosity and by the genuine love of science exhibited by the
great scientists like Neils Bohr,Max Planck and Max von Laue
among others.They would welcome many young scientists, both men
and women , in their early twenties to do research at their
institutes. Neils Bohr also helped many Jewish scientists and
their families to emigrate from Nazi Germany. He also, along with
Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, would try to find some position
for these migrating scientists in USA and in other countries.
We should also appreciate the educational system in
Europe ,especially in Germany, which permitted easy migration of
young students from one university or institute to another. Such
transfers enabled scientists in early twenties to learn and
interact with several masters in a span of 5 to 6 years--moving
from one 'hot spot' to another in atomic and nuclear physics--
Gottingen, Berlin,Copenhagen, Leiden,Cambridge, New York,
Chicago, Princeton and Rome. Several fellowships and stipends,
including Rockefeller fellowships enabled this smooth migration.
Oftentimes Russian students were admitted without valid visas or
passports. Such was the ferment of the growth of physics in that
period, roughly 1905 to 1945.[
There are three landmark years in this period: 1905 when Einstein
wrote the three famous papers on Special theory of relativity,
Brownian motion and Photo-electric effect.
1938 --When Hitler started the holocaust; and
1944 when the first atom bomb, the 'fat man' ,was exploded in
Alamogadro, New Mexico.
Things were not easy for women scientists in those days.Many
could not get excellent school education because they would
attend all-girls school or schools did not teach much of
mathematics or physics. Many women students would not be admitted
to the university courses as a matter of normal application.These
women invariably worked as unpaid assistants and could not get
regular positions except as junior research assistants. Only in
later years, they could secure university profesorships.
In USA, the anti-nepotism rules applied.So, if scientist-couple
worked in the same university or institute ,one spouse had to
lose the job. The subtle discrimination against women scientists
continued upto about 1945---the end of world war II.This subject
needs a careful study by historians of science.
Several studies have been made on the lives and works of women
scientists by recent science historians in the last two
decades.Though I have not included, Emmy Noether's biography
should be studied by any interested reader of this article.
Since astronomy and astrophysics could include a large number of
scientists, I have restricted my self to atomic scientists with
less contribution towards these fields. Some atomic physicists
did much work on astrophysics---for instance George Gamow and
Hans Bethe. Subramanyam Chandrasekhar did much work on
astrophysics and less on atomic physcis as such.
During the war years and later, many well known scientists were
accused of spy activities or communist leanings and subjected to
interrogation and indictments. A notable example is that of John
Oppenheimer. The other instances are that of E U Condon and James
Franck. Franck was accused for recruiting and bringing Klaus
Fuchs to Los Alamos since Fuchs turned a Soviet spy and defected
to the Soviet Union.
Suggested Reading List
In addition to the biographies or autobiographies of individual
scientists that are available, the following books may read for
much useful background for the period covered in this article:
1 George Gamow -- Thirty years that shook physics --Dover pub
2 Ruth Lewin Sime--- Lise Meitner--Univ of California press, 1995
3 Nina Byers and Gary Williams--Out of the shadows---cambridge
Univ press, 2006
4 Carl Sagan --- Cosmos-- Ballantine books, 1985.
5 Laura Fermi --- Atoms in the family....Univ of Chicago press,
1995
6 Richard Rhodes--- The amking of the atomic bomb---Simon and
Schuster, 1995
7 G Gamow---MY World line--an informal autobiography...Viking
Press,1970
The Author
The present author obtained his doctorate from School of
Engineering and Applied Sciences, Columbia University, New York
in 1972. His thesis advisor was Prof Arthur S Nowick, a physicist
who also obtained his Ph D from Columbia. The author worked on a
project sponsored by U S Atomic Energy Commission, on
fundamentals of diffusion.