Peierls, Rudolf

Peierls, Rudolf E. (1959). Wolfgang Ernst Pauli. In Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, Vol. 5, pp. 175-192. London Royal Society. 

Peierls, Rudolf. 1939. Critical conditions in neutron multiplication. Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. 35 610. 

Trans-polyacetylene, tra 5-(CH) was the first highly conducting organic polymer [1,2]. The simple chemical structure, -CH- units repeated (see Fig. IVB-la), would imply that each carbon contributes a single p electron to the tr-band. As a result, the rr-band would be half-filled. Thus, based upon this stmcture, an individual chain of neutral polyacetylene would be a metal since the electrons in this idealized metal could move only along the chain, polyacetylene would be a one-dimensional (Id) metal. However, experimental studies show clearly that neutral polyacetylene is a semiconductor with an energy gap greater than 1.5 eV. Rudolf Peierls [86] showed many years ago that Id metals are... 

Roosevelt that weapons could be created using a nuclear chain reaction in uranium and that it was very hkely that Germany had started working on a uranium bomb. This letter led to the formation of the Advisory Committee on Uranium. The committee did litde, however, until Rudolf Peierls and Frisch, working in England, made detailed calculations about the feasibility of nuclear weapons and proposed some possible approaches to making an atomic bomb. 

Peierls, Sir Rudolf Ernst (1907-1995) helped a colleague (Orowan) solve some simple math. The result is the Peierls valley and the Peierls-Naharro force. Peierls was also part of the British contingent of the Manhattan Project. 

Physicists use a convenient measurement they call a cross section to indicate the probability that a particular nuclear reaction will or will not happen. The theoretical physicist Rudolf Peierls once explained the measurement with this analogy ... 

A letter from Oppenheimer to Groves on May 1, 1944, seeking to replace Teller with Rudolf Peierls, corroborates Bethe s account These calculations, it says in part, were originally under the supervision of Teller who is, in my opinion and Bethe s, quite unsuited for this responsibility. Bethe feels that he needs a man under him to handle the implosion program. It was, Oppenheimer notes, a question of the greatest urgency. ... 

Paton, eds., Rudolf Peierls and Theoretical Physics. Pergamon Press. 

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory 41. Picture People 42. Rudolf Peierls 43. Smithsonian Institution Science Service Collection, AIP Niels Bohr Library 44. UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos 45. UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos 46. Alfred O. C. Nier 47. Photo by P. Ehrenfest, Weisskopf Collection, AIP Niels Bohr Library 48. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratoiy 49. Picture People 50. UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos 51. Picture People 52. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory 53. Argonne National Laboratory 54/55. Martin Marietta 56. Philip Abelson 57-61. National Archives 62/63. Norsk Hydro 64-67. Los Alamos National Laboratory 68. Luis W. Alvarez 69. Niels Bohr Institute 70. Fran9oise Ulam 71/72. Los Alamos National Laboratory 73. Oppenheimer Memorial Committee 74. Emilio Segr6 75. Picture People 76. Picture People 77. Mrs. George Kistiakowsky 78-83. Los Alamos National Laboratory 84. AIP Niels Bohr Library 85-96. Los Alamos National Laboratory... 

Genia and Rudolf Peierls. While American efforts stalled, Peierls and Otto Frisch in England in 1940 worked out the essential theory of a fast-fission uranium bomb fueled with U235 and convinced his British colleagues that it was feasible. 

Two BBC journalists interviewed eight outstanding physicists Alain Aspect (photon experiments). John Bell (BeU inequahties), John Wheeler (Fejfnman s Ph.D. supervisor), Rudolf Peierls ( Peierls metal-semiconductor transition ), John Taylor ( black holes ), David Bohm ( hidden parameters ), and Basil Urley ( mathematical foundations of quantum physics ). It is most striking that all these physicists give very different theoretical interpretations of quantum mechanics (summarized in Chapter 1). 

Several days later he and Conant received a copy of a draft report forwarded from the National Defense Research Committee liaison office in London. The report, prepared by a group codenamed the UD Committee and set up by the British in spring 1940 to study the possibility of developing a nuclear weapon, maintained ftat a sufficiently purified critical mass of uranium-23S could fission even with fast neutrons. Building upon theoretical work on atomic bombs performed by refugee physidsts Rudolf Peierls and Otto Frisch in 1940 and 1941, the MAUD report estimated that a critical mass of... 

Bond alternation in polyenes is an example of a more general theorem for one-dimensional crystals called Peierls theorem. This theorem applies to systems like polyenes, where there is one orbital and one electron per atom, that is, a half-filled band. The theorem was first stated in 1955 by Rudolf Peierls. In the case of one-dimensional systems and half-filled bands, we use a proof by Lionel Salem. The Hamiltonian is expanded in a Taylor series for a geometry with equal bond lengths ... 

Life at the Department of Mathematics did not leave Hartree much spare time. The department was small, with two professors, four lecturers, and two assistant lecturers Oefheys 1987, 195). Nevertheless, he did interact professionally with people from the Department of Physics— namely with W. L. Bragg, Mott (who was visiting in 1929-1930), and ffans Bethe and Rudolf Peierls (who were appointed in 1933). This interaction helped to orient him to applications of quantum mechanics. He also was on close and friendly terms with P. M. S. Blackett and had a great admiration for C. T. R. Wilson and Coulson. His scientific life was devoted to applied mathematical work, and he showed an impressive lack of interest in "pure mathematics. Hardy and others. ... 

The Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, 1 Keble Road, Oxford 0X1 3NP, UK e-mail b.mognetti physics.ox.ac.uk... 

Before the second half of the twentieth century, semiconductors such as Ge and Si were considered more or less as useless curiosities. While Wilson [1,2] published in 1931 a theory on semiconductors, the famous Wolfgang PauH discounted, in the same year, in a letter to Rudolf. Peierls, the physics of semiconductors as follows ... 

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