The Well-Read Physicist
March is National Reading Month here in the United States, when educators and librarians promote literacy around the country through reading. Whether you’re into nonfiction, journals, romance novels, or science fiction, I encourage you to be inspired by this month’s selected historic physicists and pick up a book or article this month that will broaden your literary horizons, entertain you, or challenge you intellectually. Our Assistant Director of Special Collections, Allison Rein, recommends these recently acquired books from the Niels Bohr Library:
- Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of all Kinds (Edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert)
- David N. Schwartz’s The Last Man Who Knew Everything: The Life and Times of Enrico Fermi, Father of the Nuclear Age
- Melinda Baldwin’s Making Nature: The History of a Scientific Journal
This month, you will see images of physicists such as Ben Mottelson, Karl Darrow, and Virginia Trimble enjoying some time with their reading materials of choice.
Further reading by this month’s featured physicists:
- Ben Mottelson’s Topics in nuclear structure theory
- Virginia Trimble’s Visit to a small universe
- Karl Darrow’s Introduction to contemporary physics
Physical Review Letters published by the American Physical Society
Val Fitch stands in a library behind several stacks of books that illustrate the growth of the yearly bound volumes of “Physical Review” and “Physical Review Letters” from 1918 to 1978.
Robert P. Matthews, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Physics Today Collection. Fitch Val B5.
Nancy Roman grabbing a book from the shelves at NASA’s Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Roman Collection. Roman Nancy B11.
Virginia Trimble in her office surrounded by both reprints of her own papers and books by her astronomy colleagues on their research in the field, circa 1975.
American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives. Trimble Virginia B5.
Georges Temmer and Ben Mottelson relax, eat and read in a ryokan (a traditional Japanese inn) at the 1967 Tokyo International Conference on Nuclear Physics.
AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives. Temmer Georges C3.
Hedwig Kohn reading in her office at Wellesley College, circa 1947.
AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, gift of Dr. Wilhelm Tappe, Kohn Photo Collection. Kohn Hedwig A5.
Karl Darrow, as a child, sits in a chair reading a book with his mother Helen Kelchner.
AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Darrow Collection. Darrow Karl G2.
