- Person
- Hans Bethe
- Lived
- 1906–2005
- Field
- Theoretical physics
- From
- German-born American
The story
Hans Bethe arrived in the United States in February 1935 to join the physics department at Cornell University, on a salary of $3,000 a year. He had been dismissed from his post in Tübingen after the Nazis came to power because of his Jewish background, and had spent time in England, where his friend Rudolf Peierls had kindled his interest in the atomic nucleus. Nuclear physics was still a young field, and its results were scattered across many papers.
Bethe's appointment was part of a deliberate plan by the head of Cornell's physics department, Roswell Clifton Gibbs, to move into nuclear physics. Gibbs had hired Stanley Livingston, who had worked with Ernest Lawrence, to build a cyclotron, and on the advice of Bethe and Livingston the department also recruited the experimentalist Robert Bacher. Bethe himself was studying the theory of nuclear reactions, calculating the likelihood of many reactions and putting Niels Bohr's theory of the compound nucleus on a more quantitative footing.
Together, the three men produced a series of three long articles in Reviews of Modern Physics in 1936 and 1937, running to more than 450 pages. The first was written with Bacher, the second by Bethe alone and the third with Livingston. They summarised most of what was then known about nuclear physics and, where the older literature left gaps, Bethe filled them with new theory of his own.
Physicists nicknamed the series Bethe's Bible. According to the Nobel Foundation, the articles served for many years as a textbook for nuclear physicists, and they remained the standard work on the subject for years after they appeared. Bethe's standing rose quickly: when the University of Illinois offered him a full professorship, Cornell matched the offer, and he became a full professor in 1937.
The work fed directly into Bethe's greatest discovery. His detailed knowledge of nuclear reactions led him, in 1938 and 1939, to the processes that supply the energy of the stars, for which he received the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physics. He remained at Cornell for the rest of his career.
Why it matters
By gathering the whole of nuclear physics in one place, the reviews trained the generation of scientists who went on to develop nuclear medicine, nuclear power and modern particle physics.
About Hans Bethe
Refugee physicist who explained how the stars shine, led theory at Los Alamos, cracked the Lamb shift and spent half a century campaigning against the nuclear arms race; Nobel Prize 1967.
More about Hans Bethe
- Hans Bethe championed peaceful nuclear energyThroughout the 1980s and 1990s Hans Bethe campaigned for the peaceful use of nuclear energy, calling nuclear electricity 'a necessity, not merely an option'.
- Hans Bethe's 1931 method still solves quantum puzzlesWhile working with Enrico Fermi in Rome in 1931, Hans Bethe devised the Bethe ansatz, a method for exactly solving certain quantum many-body problems.
- Hans Bethe explained how the stars shineIn 1938–39 Hans Bethe worked out the nuclear reactions that power the Sun and stars, work that won him the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physics.
- The Bethe formula tracks radiation through matterIn 1930 Hans Bethe derived a formula for how fast charged particles lose energy passing through matter, still used across physics today.
- Bethe showed missile defence could be fooled by decoysIn 1968 Hans Bethe and Richard Garwin argued that missile defences could be defeated by simple decoys, an argument that helped lead to the 1972 ABM Treaty.
- Hans Bethe helped secure the 1963 Test Ban TreatyHans Bethe served on the President's Science Advisory Committee from 1956 to 1964 and helped bring about the 1963 treaty banning atmospheric nuclear tests.
- Hans Bethe cracked the Lamb shift on a trainIn 1947, on a train to Schenectady, Hans Bethe calculated the Lamb shift, showing quantum electrodynamics could work and opening modern particle physics.
- At 85, Hans Bethe helped solve the solar neutrino puzzleAt the age of 85, Hans Bethe wrote an important paper on the solar neutrino problem, helping establish that neutrinos change type on their way from the Sun.
Sources
- Hans Bethe Wikipedia
- Hans Bethe – Biographical NobelPrize.org
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.