Radioactivity

Topics discussed include: Bruno Rossi, Gilberto Bernardini, Ettore Majorana, radioactivity, Antonio Lo Surdo, Antonio Garbasso, Lise Meitner, Ernest Rutherford, C. T. R. Wilson, John Cockcroft, P. M. S. Blackett, Gleb Wataghin, Gian Carlo Wick, Franco Rasetti, Enrico Persico, Dirac's theory, nuclear physics, Emilio Segre, cosmic rays, James Chadwick, Cambridge University, Shimizu, George Gamow, Frederic Joliot, Cavendish laboratory, P. L. Kapitsa, Hans Geiger, Maurice Goldhaber, Victor Weisskopf, David Frisch, Ehrenburg, Carl Anderson, Guglielmo Marconi, Louis de Broglie, P. A. M. Dirac, fellowship from National Council of Research, Arthur Holly Compton, Surgio de Benedetti, Giulio Racah, Sergei Vavilov, University at Sao Paolo, William Bragg, Cecil Powell, sigma star, and pi-meson decay.

Topics discussed include: Bruno Rossi, Gilberto Bernardini, Ettore Majorana, radioactivity, Antonio Lo Surdo, Antonio Garbasso, Lise Meitner, Ernest Rutherford, C. T. R. Wilson, John Cockcroft, P. M. S. Blackett, Gleb Wataghin, Gian Carlo Wick, Franco Rasetti, Enrico Persico, Dirac's theory, nuclear physics, Emilio Segre, cosmic rays, James Chadwick, Cambridge University, Shimizu, George Gamow, Frederic Joliot, Cavendish laboratory, P. L. Kapitsa, Hans Geiger, Maurice Goldhaber, Victor Weisskopf, David Frisch, Ehrenburg, Carl Anderson, Guglielmo Marconi, Louis de Broglie, P. A. M. Dirac, fellowship from National Council of Research, Arthur Holly Compton, Surgio de Benedetti, Giulio Racah, Sergei Vavilov, University at Sao Paolo, William Bragg, Cecil Powell, sigma star, and pi-meson decay.

Topics discussed include: Bruno Rossi, Gilberto Bernardini, Ettore Majorana, radioactivity, Antonio Lo Surdo, Antonio Garbasso, Lise Meitner, Ernest Rutherford, C. T. R. Wilson, John Cockcroft, P. M. S. Blackett, Gleb Wataghin, Gian Carlo Wick, Franco Rasetti, Enrico Persico, Dirac's theory, nuclear physics, Emilio Segre, cosmic rays, James Chadwick, Cambridge University, Shimizu, George Gamow, Frederic Joliot, Cavendish laboratory, P. L. Kapitsa, Hans Geiger, Maurice Goldhaber, Victor Weisskopf, David Frisch, Ehrenburg, Carl Anderson, Guglielmo Marconi, Louis de Broglie, P. A. M. Dirac, fellowship from National Council of Research, Arthur Holly Compton, Surgio de Benedetti, Giulio Racah, Sergei Vavilov, University at Sao Paolo, William Bragg, Cecil Powell, sigma star, and pi-meson decay.

Topics discussed include: Bruno Rossi, Gilberto Bernardini, Ettore Majorana, radioactivity, Antonio Lo Surdo, Antonio Garbasso, Lise Meitner, Ernest Rutherford, C. T. R. Wilson, John Cockcroft, P. M. S. Blackett, Gleb Wataghin, Gian Carlo Wick, Franco Rasetti, Enrico Persico, Dirac's theory, nuclear physics, Emilio Segre, cosmic rays, James Chadwick, Cambridge University, Shimizu, George Gamow, Frederic Joliot, Cavendish laboratory, P. L. Kapitsa, Hans Geiger, Maurice Goldhaber, Victor Weisskopf, David Frisch, Ehrenburg, Carl Anderson, Guglielmo Marconi, Louis de Broglie, P. A. M. Dirac, fellowship from National Council of Research, Arthur Holly Compton, Surgio de Benedetti, Giulio Racah, Sergei Vavilov, University at Sao Paolo, William Bragg, Cecil Powell, sigma star, and pi-meson decay.

Topics discussed include: Bruno Rossi, Gilberto Bernardini, Ettore Majorana, radioactivity, Antonio Lo Surdo, Antonio Garbasso, Lise Meitner, Ernest Rutherford, C. T. R. Wilson, John Cockcroft, P. M. S. Blackett, Gleb Wataghin, Gian Carlo Wick, Franco Rasetti, Enrico Persico, Dirac's theory, nuclear physics, Emilio Segre, cosmic rays, James Chadwick, Cambridge University, Shimizu, George Gamow, Frederic Joliot, Cavendish laboratory, P. L. Kapitsa, Hans Geiger, Maurice Goldhaber, Victor Weisskopf, David Frisch, Ehrenburg, Carl Anderson, Guglielmo Marconi, Louis de Broglie, P. A. M. Dirac, fellowship from National Council of Research, Arthur Holly Compton, Surgio de Benedetti, Giulio Racah, Sergei Vavilov, University at Sao Paolo, William Bragg, Cecil Powell, sigma star, and pi-meson decay.

Arrival in the U.S. in 1930; comparison of social, scientific, general intellectual climates in U.S and Europe; early interest in nuclear physics, relationship with graduate students; beta decay, compound nucleus model, Breit-Wigner formula, early shell model; review articles by Bethe; relation of early meson theory to nuclear physics; nuclear forces; charge independence; journal literature of physics ca. 1937; effectiveness of group-theoretic models in nuclear physics; effectiveness of quantum mechanics for nuclear physics; significant early experimental discoveries in nuclear physics: neutron, deutron, artificial radioactivity; fission, shell model of Mayer and Jensen; rotational levels in nuclei; the specialization of physics; effect of World War II on nuclear physics research; work at Chicago; conferences after the war; branching off of high-energy physics from nuclear physics; work personally regarded as interesting.

Founding of the school of physics, Università di Roma, role of Orso Mario Corbino and others in recruiting young physicists; the decision to work on nuclear physics; financial support for and public knowledge of work at the university; contacts with other laboratories in Europe and the U.S.; available technology in Rome, ca. 1930; journal literature; visitors to Rome; circumstances of move to Università di Palermo, 1936; work and facilities in Palermo; early failures of physicists to recognize fission; early uses of cyclotron; mathematics and nuclear physics in 1930s; models of the nucleus and experimental work; circumstances of move to University of California at Berkeley, 1938; experiment and theory in nuclear physics at Berkeley; work on radiochemistry; alteration of half-lives of beta-radioactive substances; detection equipment; effect of work at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory on nuclear physics; significance of nucleon-nucleon scattering experiments; entry into nuclear physics of students trained in technology during World War II; beginnings of high-energy physics; experimental physics and particle accelerators; fashions in physics; discovery of the antiproton; work considered personally satisfying. Also prominently mentioned are: Edoardo Amaldi, Felix Bloch, Niels Henrik David Bohr, Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, Michael Faraday, Otto Robert Frisch, Guglielmo, Georg von Hevesy, Ernest Orlando Lawrence, Tullio Levi-Cività, Lo Surdo, Ettore Majorana, Lise Meitner, Ida Noddack, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Carlo Perrier, Franco D. Rasetti, Ernest Rutherford, Glenn Seaborg, Elfriede Segrè, V. Volterra, Chien-Shiung Wu, Hideki Yukawa; Columbia University, and Purdue University.

Childhood influences of father and teacher on career decision; childhood experiences as radio amateur. First studies in physics at Collegio Borromeo, Pavia; influences of Adolfo Campetti and Prof. Brunetti in radioactivity. Spectroscopy work with Campetti and later experimentation with Raman spectroscopy of calcite. Graduation, 1933; meeting future wife. Move to Switzerland during World War II; repatriation and resumption of lab work at Università di Pavia. Abortive work toward lamb shift in hydrogen spectrum. Postwar instrumentation and funding problems. Move to nuclear magnetic resonance; reproduction of Felix Bloch and Edward Purcell experiment; work on "negative temperature." Foreign influences brought by Fausto Fumi from Frederick Seitz, Nevill Mott; work with students in solid state. Views about the state of Italian physics, particularly on Edoardo Amaldi and the funding priority given to high energy physics.

Early education; studies biophysics at Universität Frankfurt and Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut (Friedrich Dessauer, Rievsky); physics training (Erwin Madelung, Meissner); Dessauer's political troubles. Fellowship to Institut Radium (Marie Curie), 1933; building geiger counters (Frédéric Joliot-Curie); life and staff at Institut (Irene Joliot-Curie, Jean Perrin, Hans von Halban, Peter Preiswerk, Lew Kowarski, Rosenblum); Institut's role in development of nuclear physics (P.M.S. Blackett, Giuseppe Occhialini); first nuclear physics conference in Zurich (Paul Scherrer), 1933; London Conference of 1934 (Max Born, Maurice Goldhaber); F. Joliot-Curie thinking about accelerators and about building a cyclotron (Pierre Weiss); Gentner continues gamma ray work (Lise Meitner). Gentner leaves Institut after Curie's death; fellowship at Institute for Medical Research, Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut, Heidelberg (Walther Bothe), 1935-1938; also lectures at Frankfurt on radioactivity, gamma rays, x-rays, and cosmic rays; builds the first Van der Graaf machine in Germany, 1936; first to use gamma rays to look for nuclear photo effect (Fowler, Lauritsen). Travels to United States to study cyclotrons (James Fisk), 1938; spends several months at University of California, Berkeley (E. O. Lawrence, Donald Cooksey); the fission story (Niels Bohr, J. R. Oppenheimer); calibrating ionization chamber and experimental work in fission; life and pre-war politics at Berkeley and Stanford University (Felix Bloch); visits California Institute of Technology (Fowler, Lauritsen, Max Delbrück); travels to Washington, DC (George Gamow, Edward Teller, Fleming, Merle Tuve); and ends tour in New York City (John R. Dunning, Lawrence, Bohr). Returns to Europe; visits John Cockcroft at University of Cambridge. Returns with wife to Germany in April, 1938; plans for Siemens to build cyclotron in Heidelberg canceled. Sent to Paris to interview F. Joliot-Curie on whereabouts of heavy water, July 1940; private meeting afterwards; works in Paris with F. Joliot-Curie on cyclotron, 1940-1942; returns to Heidelberg to build own cyclotron, 1942-1944. Difficulties of re-establishing nuclear physics in Germany after World War II (Cockcroft, Konrad Adenauer); building up new laboratories; CERN, DESY.

Undergraduate atmosphere at University of Cambridge: course work, lecturers, extra-curricular groups, training experiments in radioactivity and scintillation-counting; obtains old radon tubes for neutron experiments while doing radioactivity work with Robert W. Woods at Johns Hopkins University in 1929; discussions with James Chadwick of Joliot papers, 1932; move with Chadwick to University of Liverpool, 1935; return to University of Cambridge 1936; reaction to selection of William Bragg as Ernest Rutherford's successor; shift in Cavendish Laboratory's world role in nuclear physics; World War II service at Cambridge: administration, teaching, measurement of fission cross-sections; move to University of Edinburgh to replace Charles D. Barkla, 1945.