Nobel physicist

The generally accepted notion of wave-particle duality, which predates Heisenberg and Bohr, could be reconciled with the probability interpretation, but the fuzziness associated with waves remained unexplained in the orthodox tradition. The proclamation of the quantum-mechanical uncertainty principle was intended to take care of the oversight. A more serious indictment of the orthodox tradition is hard to imagine, short of the blunt statement by Nobel physicist, Murray Gell-Mann [28] ... 

Refs. [i] Born M (1920) Z Phys 1 45 [ii] Born M, Oppenheimer JR (1927) Ann Phys 84 457 [in] Born M (1954) The statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics. Nobel Lecture [iv] http //nobelprize.org/index.html [vi] Thorndike Greenspan N (2005) The end of the certain world. The life and science of Max Born. The Nobel physicist who ignited the quantum revolution. Basic Boohs (German translation Thorndike Greenspan N (2006) Max Born -Baumeister der Quantenwelt. Elsevier, Munchen)... 

The development of the structural theory of the atom was the result of advances made by physics. In the 1920s, the physical chemist Langmuir (Nobel Prize in chemistry 1932) wrote, The problem of the structure of atoms has been attacked mainly by physicists who have given little consideration to the chemical properties which must be explained by a theory of atomic structure. The vast store of knowledge of chemical properties and relationship, such as summarized by the Periodic Table, should serve as a better foundation for a theory of atomic structure than the relativity meager experimental data along purely physical lines. ... 

We also received a solid edncation in mathematics, as well as some physics and chemistry. Although, among others, the physicist Lorand Eotvos and the chemist George Flevesy (Nobel Prize in 1943) attended the same Piarist school in earlier years, I learned about this only years later and cannot remember that anybody mentioned them as role-models during my school years. Classes were from 8 AM to 1 PM six days a week, with extensive homework for the rest of the day. I did... 

Intensive, critical studies of a controversial topic also help to eliminate the possibility of errors. One of my favorite quotations is by George von Bekesy, a fellow Hungarian-born physicist who studied fundamental questions of the inner ear and hearing (Nobel Prize in medicine, 1961) ... 

Ionic bonding was proposed by the German physicist Walther Kossel in 1916 in or der to explain the ability of substances such as molten sodium chloride to conduct an electric current He was the son of Albrecht Kossel winner of the 1910 Nobel Prize in physiology or medi cine for early studies in nu cleic acids... 

Arrhenius, insofar as his profession could be defined at all, began as a physicist. He worked with a physics professor in Stockholm and presented a thesis on the electrical conductivities of aqueous solutions of salts. A recent biography (Crawford 1996) presents in detail the humiliating treatment of Arrhenius by his sceptical examiners in 1884, which nearly put an end to his scientific career he was not adjudged fit for a university career. He was not the last innovator to have trouble with examiners. Yet, a bare 19 years later, in 1903, he received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. It shows the unusual attitude of this founder of physical chemistry that he was distinctly surprised not to receive the Physics Prize, because he thought of himself as a physicist. 

When Max Planck wrote his remarkable paper of 1901, and introduced what Stehle (1994) calls his time bomb of an equation, e = / v , it took a number of years before anyone seriously paid attention to the revolutionary concept of the quantisation of energy the response was as sluggish as that, a few years later, whieh greeted X-ray diffraction from crystals. It was not until Einstein, in 1905, used Planck s concepts to interpret the photoelectric effect (the work for which Einstein was actually awarded his Nobel Prize) that physicists began to sit up and take notice. Niels Bohr s thesis of 1911 which introduced the concept of the quantisation of electronic energy levels in the free atom, though in a purely empirical manner, did not consider the behaviour of atoms assembled in solids. 

The aristocrats who determine crystal structures have garnered a remarkable number of Nobel Prizes no fewer than 26 have gone to scientists best described as crystallographers, some of them in physics, some in chemistry, latterly some in biochemistry. Crystallography is one of those fields where physics and chemistry have become intimately commingled. It has also evinced more than its fair share of quarrelsomeness, since many physicists regard it as a mere technique rather than a respectable science, while crystal structure analysts, as we have seen, were for years inclined to regard anyone who studied the many other aspects of crystals as second-class citizens. 

Raman spectrometry is another variant which has become important. To quote one expert (Purcell 1993), In 1928, the Indian physicist C.V. Raman (later the first Indian Nobel prizewinner) reported the discovery of frequency-shifted lines in the scattered light of transparent substances. The shifted lines, Raman announced, were independent of the exciting radiation and characteristic of the sample itself. It appears that Raman was motivated by a passion to understand the deep blue colour of the Mediterranean. The many uses of this technique include examination of polymers and of silicon for microcircuits (using an exciting wavelength to which silicon is transparent). 

A new chapter in the uses of semiconductors arrived with a theoretical paper by two physicists working at IBM s research laboratory in New York State, L. Esaki (a Japanese immigrant who has since returned to Japan) and R. Tsu (Esaki and Tsu 1970). They predicted that in a fine multilayer structure of two distinct semiconductors (or of a semiconductor and an insulator) tunnelling between quantum wells becomes important and a superlattice with minibands and mini (energy) gaps is formed. Three years later, Esaki and Tsu proved their concept experimentally. Another name used for such a superlattice is confined heterostructure . This concept was to prove so fruitful in the emerging field of optoelectronics (the merging of optics with electronics) that a Nobel Prize followed in due course. The central application of these superlattices eventually turned out to be a tunable laser. 

C = 12 internationally adopted as the unified atomic weight standard by both chemi.sts and physicists. 6-coordinate carbon established in various carboranes by W. N. Lipscomb and others. (Nobel Prize 1976 for structure and bonding of boranes). 

Edmond Becquerel was one of a family of scientists. His father, Antoine-Cesar, was professor of physics at the Museum d Histoire Naturelle, and his son, [Antoine-] Henri Becquerel, also a physicist, discovered the phenomenon of radioactivity (for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1903). 

Based on the strong recommendations of her German physics colleagues, Meitner received a research position in the Stockholm laboratory of Manne Siegbahn, the Swedish physicist who had received the 1924 Nobel Prize in Physics for his precision measurements on X-ray spectra. Siegbahn provided laboratory space for Meitner, but no suitable equipment for her to continue the research she had started in Berlin, and little encouragement for her work. 

Lars Onsager was a Noiwegian-Americaii chemist and physicist who received the 1968 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of the reciprocal relations bearing his name which are fundamental for the thermodynamics of irreversible processes. ... 

Andrei Sakliarov was a Soviet physicist who became, in the words of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, a spokesman for the conscience of mankind. He made many important contributions to our understanding of plasma physics, particle physics, and cosmology. He also designed nuclear weapons for two decades, becoming the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb in the Ih.SOs. After recognizing the dangers of nuclear weapons tests, he championed the 1963 U.S.-Soviet test ban treaty and other antinuclear initiatives. 

Francis Harry Compton Crick (1916-2004) was born in Northampton, England, and began his scientific career as a physicist Following an interrup- I tion in his studies caused by World War . he switched to biology and received his Ph.D. in 1954 at Cambridge University. He then remained at Cambridge University as pro essor. He shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in medicine. 

The hydrogen atom, containing a single electron, has played a major role in the development of models of electronic structure. In 1913 Niels Bohr (1885-1962), a Danish physicist, offered a theoretical explanation of the atomic spectrum of hydrogen. His model was based largely on classical mechanics. In 1922 this model earned him the Nobel Prize in physics. By that time, Bohr had become director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at Copenhagen. There he helped develop the new discipline of quantum mechanics, used by other scientists to construct a more sophisticated model for the hydrogen atom. 

The new delightful book by Greenstein and Zajonc(9) contains several examples where the outcome of experiments was not what physicists expected. Careful analysis of the Schrddinger equation revealed what the intuitive argument had overlooked and showed that QM is correct. In Chapter 2, Photons , they tell the story that Einstein got the Nobel Prize in 1922 for the explaining the photoelectric effect with the concept of particle-like photons. In 1969 Crisp and Jaynes(IO) and Lamb and Scullyfl I) showed that the quantum nature of the photoelectric effect can be explained with a classical radiation field and a quantum description for the atom. Photons do exist, but they only show up when the EM field is in a state that is an eigenstate of the number operator, and they do not reveal themselves in the photoelectric effect. 

Nieb Bohr (1885-1962) was a Danish physicist whose discovery of the quantization of atomic energy levels won him a Nobel Prize in 1922. Bohr headed a world-renowned institute for atomic studies in Copenhagen in the 1920s and 1930s. 

Low-temperature research requires hard work and imagination, but successful advances are richly rewarded. Seven Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry have been awarded for low-temperature research. The first, in 1913, went to the Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, who discovered how to cool He gas to 4.2 K and convert it into a liquid. The American William Giauque received the 1949 prize in chemistry and the Russian Pyotr Kapitsa won the 1978 prize in physics. Each was honored for a variety of discoveries resulting from low-temperature research, and each developed a new technique for achieving low temperature. 

The existence of superatoms was first predicted in 1924 by an Indian physicist, S. N. Bose, and elaborated further by Albert Einstein. Over 70 years later, studies at ultralow temperature confirmed the predictions. Physicists and chemists continue to work at the limits of low temperature to test some of the most fundamental predictions of quantum mechanics. Undoubtedly, additional Nobel Prizes will reward such research. 

Numerous measurements of the conductivity of aqueous solutions performed by the school of Friedrich Kohhansch (1840-1910) and the investigations of Jacobns van t Hoff (1852-1911 Nobel prize, 1901) on the osmotic pressure of solutions led the young Swedish physicist Svante August Arrhenius (1859-1927 Nobel prize, 1903) to establish in 1884 in his thesis the main ideas of his famous theory of electrolytic dissociation of acids, alkalis, and salts in solutions. Despite the sceptitism of some chemists, this theory was generally accepted toward the end of the centnry. 

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