A Century of Physics
In this amazing tour d'horizon, D. Allan Bromley uses the occasion of the centenary of the American Physical Society to reflect upon the growth of physics over the past 100 years, its fragmentation into numerous subdisciplines, the impact physics has had
- PDF / 62,139,047 Bytes
- 123 Pages / 504.567 x 720 pts Page_size
- 71 Downloads / 252 Views
rv 01 hvsics
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
"' vses D. Allan Bromley Sterling Professor of the Sciences and Dean of Engineering Yale University New Haven, Connecticut
Springer
D. Allan Bromley Yale University P.O. Box 208124 New Haven, CT 06520 USA
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bromley, D. Allan (David Allan), 1926A century of physics / D. Allan Bromley. p. cm. ISBN 978-1·4757-3691-5 ISBN 978-1-4757-3689-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4757-3689-2 l. Physics-History-20th century. I. Title. QC7 .B68 2001 530' .09'04-dc21 2001018410 Printed on acid-free paper. A substantially abbreviated version of this book was presented at the opening of the American Physical Society Centennial Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 21, 1999. © 2002 Springer Science+Business Media New York Originally published by Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. in 2002 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2002
All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written pennission ofthe publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, etc., in this publication, even if the former are not especially identified, is not to be taken as a sign that such names, as understood by the Trade Marks and Merchandise Marks Act, may accordingly be used freely by anyone. Production managed by A. Orrantia; manufacturing supervised by Jacqui Ashri. Photocomposed pages prepared by Matrix Publishing Services, Inc., York, PA.
987654321 ISBN 978-1-4757-3691-5 SPIN 10794156
To Vickie
Preface When I was invited to deliver the opening plenary talk at the Centennial Meeting of the American Physical Society, scheduled for Atlanta in March 1999, the meeting was two years in the future and in classic ancient Samoan fashion (counting one, two, three, infinity) I felt that I had an almost infinite time to prepare. How short those two years actually were! In September of 1998 I wrote to a large number of my friends asking for their input and assistance and both were given generously. So also were historically significant photographs, and I am especially grateful to Spencer Weart of the AlP Center for the History of Physics for giving me access to its Emilio Segre Visual Archives. Fortunately, too, I have been collecting such photographs myself over the years and so I had on hand many of those included here. Particularly in view of the availability of these photographs, I have chosen to treat the first half of our century in physics from an historical point of view, focusing on the major discoveries that provided the foundation for the explosive growth of physics-and indeed all of science-in the second half of our century. The fragmentation that accompanied this g
