Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors.
Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker.
Hans Bethe
Hans Bethe | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Hans Albrecht Bethe July 2, 1906 |
| Died | March 6, 2005 (aged 98) Ithaca, New York, U.S. |
| Citizenship | Germany United States (1941–2005) |
| Alma mater | University of Frankfurt University of Munich (PhD) |
| Known for | |
| Spouse |
Rose Ewald (m. 1939) |
| Awards |
|
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Nuclear physics Theoretical physics |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | Theorie der Beugung von Elektronen an Kristallen (1928) |
| Doctoral advisor | Arnold Sommerfeld |
| Doctoral students | |
| Other notable students | Freeman Dyson |
| Signature | |
.jpg){kind=small} | |
Hans Albrecht Bethe (/ˈbɛθə/; German: [ˈhans ˈbeːtə] ⓘ; July 2, 1906 – March 6, 2005) was a German-American physicist who made major contributions to nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum electrodynamics and solid-state physics, and received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1967 for his work on the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis.[1][2][3][4] For most of his career, Bethe was a professor at Cornell University.[5]
In 1939, Bethe published a paper which established the CNO cycle as the primary energy source for heavier stars in the main sequence classification of stars, which earned him a Nobel Prize in 1967.[6] During World War II, Bethe was head of the Theoretical Division at the secret Los Alamos National Laboratory that developed the first atomic bombs. There he played a key role in calculating the critical mass of the weapons and developing the theory behind the implosion method used in both the Trinity test and the "Fat Man" weapon dropped on Nagasaki in August 1945.
After the war, Bethe played an important role in the development of the hydrogen bomb, as he also served as the head of the theoretical division for the project, although he had originally joined the project with the hope of proving it could not be made.[7] He later campaigned with Albert Einstein and the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists against nuclear testing and the nuclear arms race. He helped persuade the Kennedy and Nixon administrations to sign, respectively, the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (SALT I). In 1947, he wrote an important paper which provided the calculation of the Lamb shift, which is credited with revolutionizing quantum electrodynamics and further "opened the way to the modern era of particle physics".[8][9][10] He contributed to the understanding of neutrinos,[11] and was key in the solving of the solar neutrino problem.[12] He contributed to the understanding of supernovas and their processes.[13]
His scientific research never ceased and he was publishing papers well into his nineties, making him one of the few scientists to have published at least one major paper in his field during every decade of his career, which in Bethe's case spanned nearly seventy years. Physicist Freeman Dyson, once his doctoral student, called him "the supreme problem-solver of the 20th century",[14] and cosmologist Edward Kolb called him "the last of the old masters" of physics.[15]
- ^ a b Lee, S.; Brown, G. E. (2007). "Hans Albrecht Bethe. 2 July 1906 -- 6 March 2005: Elected ForMemRS 1957". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 53: 1. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2007.0018.
- ^ Horgan, John (1992). "Illuminator of the Stars". Scientific American. 267 (4): 32–40. Bibcode:1992SciAm.267d..32H. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1092-32.
- ^ Mermin, N. David; Ashcroft, Neil W. (2006), "Hans Bethe's Contributions to Solid-State Physics", Hans Bethe and His Physics, WORLD SCIENTIFIC, pp. 189–200, Bibcode:2006hbhp.book..189M, doi:10.1142/9789812774507_0013, ISBN 978-981-256-609-6, retrieved January 1, 2025
- ^ "Hans Bethe". Physics Today. 2019 (7): 4553. July 2, 2019. Bibcode:2019PhT..2019g4553.. doi:10.1063/pt.6.6.20190702a.
- ^ Available at www.JamesKeckCollectedWorks.org [1] Archived May 9, 2019, at the Wayback Machine are the class notes taken by one of his students at Cornell from the graduate courses on Nuclear Physics and on Applications of Quantum Mechanics he taught in the spring of 1947.
- ^ Mazumdar, Indranil (2005). "Nucleosynthesis and energy production in stars: Bethe's crowning achievement". Resonance. 10 (10): 67–77. doi:10.1007/BF02867168. ISSN 0971-8044.
- ^ Garwin, Richard L.; Gottfried, Kurt (October 1, 2005). "Hans in War and Peace". Physics Today. 58 (10): 52–57. doi:10.1063/1.2138421. ISSN 0031-9228.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Bethe 1947was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Brown & Lee 2006, pp. 118, 161.
- ^ Maclay, G. Jordan (April 13, 2020). "History and Some Aspects of the Lamb Shift". Physics. 2 (2): 105–149. Bibcode:2020Physi...2..105M. doi:10.3390/physics2020008. ISSN 2624-8174.
- ^ Bethe, H.; Peierls, R. (1934). "The "Neutrino"". Nature. 133 (3362): 532. Bibcode:1934Natur.133..532B. doi:10.1038/133532a0. ISSN 0028-0836.
- ^ Bahcall, John N.; Salpeter, Edwin E. (October 1, 2005). "Stellar Energy Generation and Solar Neutrinos". Physics Today. 58 (10): 44–47. Bibcode:2005PhT....58j..44B. doi:10.1063/1.2138419. ISSN 0031-9228.
- ^ Woosley, S; Heger, A (2007). "Nucleosynthesis and remnants in massive stars of solar metallicity". Physics Reports. 442 (1–6): 269–283. arXiv:astro-ph/0702176. Bibcode:2007PhR...442..269W. doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2007.02.009.
- ^ Wark, David (January 11, 2007). "The Supreme Problem Solver". Nature. 445 (7124): 149–150. Bibcode:2007Natur.445..149W. doi:10.1038/445149a.
- ^ Maugh II, Thomas H.; Cole, K.C. (March 8, 2005). "'The Last of the Old Masters' of Physics". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 1, 2025.
Previous Page Next Page
