Download or read book Surprises in Theoretical Physics written by Rudolf Peierls and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Problems in theoretical physics often lead to paradoxical answers; yet closer reasoning and a more complete analysis invariably lead to the resolution of the paradox and to a deeper understanding of the physics involved. Drawing primarily from his own experience and that of his collaborators, Sir Rudolf Peierls selects examples of such "surprises" from a wide range of physical theory, from quantum mechanical scattering theory to the theory of relativity, from irreversibility in statistical mechanics to the behavior of electrons in solids. By studying such surprises and learning what kind of possibilities to look for, he suggests, scientists may be able to avoid errors in future problems. In some cases the surprise is that the outcome of a calculation is contrary to what physical intuition seems to demand. In other instances an approximation that looks convincing turns out to be unjustified, or one that looks unreasonable turns out to be adequate. Professor Peierls does not suggest, however, that theoretical physics is a hazardous game in which one can never foresee the surprises a detailed calculation might reveal. Rather, he contends, all the surprises discussed have rational explanations, most of which are very simple, at least in principle. This book is based on the author's lectures at the University of Washington in the spring of 1977 and at the Institut de Physique Nucleaire, University de Paris-Sud, Orsay, during the winter of 1977-1978.
Download or read book Surprises in Theoretical Physics written by Rudolf Ernst Peierls and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1979-11-21 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Problems in theoretical physics often lead to paradoxical answers; yet closer reasoning and a more complete analysis invariably lead to the resolution of the paradox and to a deeper understanding of the physics involved. Drawing primarily from his own experience and that of his collaborators, Sir Rudolf Peierls selects examples of such "surprises" from a wide range of physical theory, from quantum mechanical scattering theory to the theory of relativity, from irreversibility in statistical mechanics to the behavior of electrons in solids. By studying such surprises and learning what kind of possibilities to look for, he suggests, scientists may be able to avoid errors in future problems. In some cases the surprise is that the outcome of a calculation is contrary to what physical intuition seems to demand. In other instances an approximation that looks convincing turns out to be unjustified, or one that looks unreasonable turns out to be adequate. Professor Peierls does not suggest, however, that theoretical physics is a hazardous game in which one can never foresee the surprises a detailed calculation might reveal. Rather, he contends, all the surprises discussed have rational explanations, most of which are very simple, at least in principle. This book is based on the author's lectures at the University of Washington in the spring of 1977 and at the Institut de Physique Nucleaire, University de Paris-Sud, Orsay, during the winter of 1977-1978.
Download or read book Sir Rudolf Peierls written by Rudolf Ernst Peierls and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2007 with total page 889 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noncommutative differential geometry is a novel approach to geometry that is paving the way for exciting new directions in the development of mathematics and physics. The contributions in this volume are based on papers presented at a workshop dedicated to enhancing international cooperation between mathematicians and physicists in various aspects of frontier research on noncommutative differential geometry. The active contributors present both the latest results and comprehensive reviews of topics in the area. The book is accessible to researchers and graduate students interested in a variety of mathematical areas related to noncommutative geometry and its interface with modern theoretical physics.
Download or read book Progress in Nuclear Physics written by Ian J. Aitchison and published by Pergamon. This book was released on 1977-02 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book More Surprises in Theoretical Physics written by Rudolf Peierls and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1991-09 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like its predecessor, this book by the renowned physicist Sir Rudolf Peierls draws from many diverse fields of theoretical physics to present problems in which the answer differs from what our intuition had led us to expect. In some cases an apparently convincing approximation turns out to be misleading; in others a seemingly unmanageable problem turns out to have a simple answer. Peierls's intention, however, is not to treat theoretical physics as an unpredictable game in which such surprises happen at random. Instead he shows how in each case careful thought could have prepared us for the outcome. Peierls has chosen mainly problems from his own experience or that of his collaborators, often showing how classic problems can lend themselves to new insights. His book is aimed at both graduate students and their teachers. Praise for Surprises in Theoretical Physics: "A beautiful piece of stimulating scholarship and a delight to read. Physicists of all kinds will learn a great deal from it."--R. J. Blin-Stoyle, Contemporary Physics
Download or read book Bird of Passage written by Rudolf Peierls and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is the intensely personal and often humorous autobiography of one of the most distinguished theoretical physicists of his generation, Sir Rudolf Peierls. Born in Germany in 1907, Peierls was indeed a bird of passage," whose career of fifty-five years took him to leading centers of physics--including Munich, Leipzig, Zurich, Copenhagen, Cambridge, Manchester, Oxford, and J. Robert Oppenheimer's Los Alamos. Peierls was a major participant in the revolutionary development of quantum mechanics in the 1920s and 1930s, working with some of the pioneers and, as he puts it, "some of the great characters" in this field. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Sir Rudolf Peierls written by Sabine Lee and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2009 with total page 1137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edition of the private and scientific correspondence of Sir Rudolf Peierls gives a unique insight into the life and work of one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the 20th century. Rudolf Peierls'' scientific work contributed to the early developments in quantum mechanics, and he is well known and much appreciated for his contributions to various disciplines, including solid state physics, nuclear physics, and particle physics. As an enthusiastic and devoted teacher, he passed on his knowledge and understanding and inspired the work of collaborators and students alike. As an effective administrator he was responsible, almost single-handedly, for the establishment of an outstanding successful centre of theoretical physics in Birmingham, and later contributed much to theoretical physics in Oxford.
Download or read book Selected Scientific Papers of Sir Rudolf Peierls written by Rudolf Ernst Peierls and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 1997 with total page 836 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of the major scientific papers of Sir Rudolf Peierls (1907-95), including the Peierls-Frisch Memoranda of 1940 on the feasibility, and the predicted human effects, of an atomic bomb made of uranium-235. His papers range widely in topic. They include much on the fundamentals of solid state physics, the thermal and electric conductivity of materials as a function of temperature T (especially T→0), the interpretation of the de Haas-van Alphen effect observed for a metal in a magnetic field, and the basics of transport theory. Many are on problems in statistical mechanics, including his constructive paper demonstrating the existence of a phase transition for Ising's model for a two-dimensional ferromagnet. In nuclear physics, they include the first calculations (with Bethe) on the photo-disintegration of the deuteron (made in response to a challenge by Chadwick), the Kapur-Peierls theory of resonance phenomena in nuclear reactions, the Bohr-Peierls-Placzek continuum model for complex nuclei (which first explained the narrow resonances observed for low energy neutrons incident on very heavy nuclei), and the Peierls-Thouless variational approach to collective phenomena in nuclei. Several of Peierls's wartime papers, now declassified, are here published for the first time.Brief commentaries on most of the papers in this book were added by Peierls, to indicate subsequent developments and their relationship with other work, or to correct errors found later on. A complete bibliography of his writings is given as an appendix.
Download or read book Sir Rudolf Peierls Selected Private And Scientific Correspondence Volume 2 written by Sabine Lee and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2009-05-12 with total page 1137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edition of the private and scientific correspondence of Sir Rudolf Peierls gives a unique insight into the life and work of one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the 20th century. Rudolf Peierls' scientific work contributed to the early developments in quantum mechanics, and he is well known and much appreciated for his contributions to various disciplines, including solid state physics, nuclear physics, and particle physics. As an enthusiastic and devoted teacher, he passed on his knowledge and understanding and inspired the work of collaborators and students alike. As an effective administrator he was responsible, almost single-handedly, for the establishment of an outstanding successful centre of theoretical physics in Birmingham, and later contributed much to theoretical physics in Oxford.A meticulous collector of correspondence, Sir Rudolf left a fascinating collection of letters, in some cases spanning more than seven decades. This collection includes correspondence with his parents, his wife, the Russian-born physicist Genia Kannegieser, life-long friends such as Hans Bethe, and many great physicists, including Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Lev Landau, and George Placzek, to name but a few.The second volume, which covers the years 1945 to 1995, contains fascinating documents from the early postwar period, when Peierls, like many of his colleagues elsewhere, attempted to rebuild academic life in the aftermath of the Second World War. Materials from the 1950s provide evidence for the significance of the research undertaken by Peierls' group at Birmingham, and for the positive impact of his determined implementation of international exchange on the development of theoretical physics. Later documents illustrate the role played by Peierls in nuclear disarmament, and as a link between East and West through his own personal contacts and within international organisations such as the Pugwash Movement. The extensive apparatus provides an invaluable background which allows the reader to put the documents into their multi-faceted social, political and scientific context.
Download or read book More Surprises in Theoretical Physics written by Rudolf Peierls and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like its predecessor, this book by the renowned physicist Sir Rudolf Peierls draws from many diverse fields of theoretical physics to present problems in which the answer differs from what our intuition had led us to expect. In some cases an apparently convincing approximation turns out to be misleading; in others a seemingly unmanageable problem turns out to have a simple answer. Peierls's intention, however, is not to treat theoretical physics as an unpredictable game in which such surprises happen at random. Instead he shows how in each case careful thought could have prepared us for the outcome. Peierls has chosen mainly problems from his own experience or that of his collaborators, often showing how classic problems can lend themselves to new insights. His book is aimed at both graduate students and their teachers. Praise for Surprises in Theoretical Physics: "A beautiful piece of stimulating scholarship and a delight to read. Physicists of all kinds will learn a great deal from it."--R. J. Blin-Stoyle, Contemporary Physics
Download or read book Sir Rudolf Peierls Selected Private And Scientific Correspondence Volume 1 written by Sabine Lee and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2007-11-12 with total page 889 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edition of the private and scientific correspondence of Sir Rudolf Peierls gives a unique insight into the life and work of one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the 20th century. Rudolf Peierls' scientific work contributed to the early developments in quantum mechanics, and he is well known and much appreciated for his contributions to various disciplines, including solid state physics, nuclear physics, and particle physics. As an enthusiastic and devoted teacher, he passed on his knowledge and understanding and inspired the work of collaborators and students alike. As an effective administrator he was responsible, almost single-handedly, for the establishment of an outstanding successful centre of theoretical physics in Birmingham, and later contributed much to theoretical physics in Oxford.A meticulous collector of correspondence, Sir Rudolf left a fascinating collection of letters, in some cases spanning more than seven decades. This collection includes correspondence with his parents, his wife, the Russian-born physicist Genia Kannegieser, life-long friends such as Hans Bethe, and many great physicists, including Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Lev Landau, and George Placzek, to name but a few.This first volume, which covers the years 1922 to 1945, contains much of the early family correspondence, letters exchanged between Rudolf and Genia Peierls before and after their marriage in 1931, correspondence relating to early developments in quantum physics, and interesting material relating to the development of nuclear weapons. The extensive apparatus provides an invaluable background which allows the reader to put the presented documents into their multi-faceted social, political and scientific context.
Download or read book Selected Scientific Papers Of Sir Rudolf Peierls With Commentary By The Author written by Richard H Dalitz and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 1997-04-11 with total page 831 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of the major scientific papers of Sir Rudolf Peierls (1907-95), including the Peierls-Frisch Memoranda of 1940 on the feasibility, and the predicted human effects, of an atomic bomb made of uranium-235. His papers range widely in topic. They include much on the fundamentals of solid state physics, the thermal and electric conductivity of materials as a function of temperature T (especially T→0), the interpretation of the de Haas-van Alphen effect observed for a metal in a magnetic field, and the basics of transport theory. Many are on problems in statistical mechanics, including his constructive paper demonstrating the existence of a phase transition for Ising's model for a two-dimensional ferromagnet. In nuclear physics, they include the first calculations (with Bethe) on the photo-disintegration of the deuteron (made in response to a challenge by Chadwick), the Kapur-Peierls theory of resonance phenomena in nuclear reactions, the Bohr-Peierls-Placzek continuum model for complex nuclei (which first explained the narrow resonances observed for low energy neutrons incident on very heavy nuclei), and the Peierls-Thouless variational approach to collective phenomena in nuclei. Several of Peierls's wartime papers, now declassified, are here published for the first time.Brief commentaries on most of the papers in this book were added by Peierls, to indicate subsequent developments and their relationship with other work, or to correct errors found later on. A complete bibliography of his writings is given as an appendix.
Download or read book Sir Rudolf Peierls written by Rudolf Ernst Peierls and published by World Scientific Publishing Company Incorporated. This book was released on 2007 with total page 1120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edition of the private and scientific correspondence of Sir Rudolf Peierls gives a unique insight into the life and work of one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the 20th century. Rudolf Peierls' scientific work contributed to the early developments in quantum mechanics, and he is well known and much appreciated for his contributions to various disciplines, including solid state physics, nuclear physics, and particle physics. As an enthusiastic and devoted teacher, he passed on his knowledge and understanding and inspired the work of collaborators and students alike. As an effective administrator he was responsible, almost single-handedly, for the establishment of an outstanding successful centre of theoretical physics in Birmingham, and later contributed much to theoretical physics in Oxford.A meticulous collector of correspondence, Sir Rudolf left a fascinating collection of letters, in some cases spanning more than seven decades. This collection includes correspondence with his parents, his wife, the Russian-born physicist Genia Kannegieser, life-long friends such as Hans Bethe, and many great physicists, including Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Lev Landau, and George Placzek, to name but a few.This first volume, which covers the years 1922 to 1945, contains much of the early family correspondence, letters exchanged between Rudolf and Genia Peierls before and after their marriage in 1931, correspondence relating to early developments in quantum physics, and interesting material relating to the development of nuclear weapons. The extensive apparatus provides an invaluable background which allows the reader to put the presented documents into their multi-faceted social, political and scientific context.This book is also available as a set with Sir Rudolf Peierls: Selected Private and Scientific Correspondence Volume 2.
Download or read book The Physics of Quantum Mechanics written by James Binney and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-12 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title gives students a good understanding of how quantum mechanics describes the material world. The text stresses the continuity between the quantum world and the classical world, which is merely an approximation to the quantum world.
Download or read book Classical and Quantum Black Holes written by P Fre and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 1999-09-01 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black holes are becoming increasingly important in contemporary research in astrophysics, cosmology, theoretical physics, and mathematics. Indeed, they provoke some of the most fascinating questions in fundamental physics, which may lead to revolutions in scientific thought. Written by distinguished scientists, Classical and Quantum Black Holes provides a comprehensive panorama of black hole physics and mathematics from a modern point of view. The book begins with a general introduction, followed by five parts that cover several modern aspects of the subject, ranging from the observational and the experimental to the more theoretical and mathematical issues. The material is written at a level suitable for postgraduate students entering the field.
Download or read book RUDOLF PEIERLS AND THEORETICAL PHYSICS PROCEEDINGS OF THE SYMPOSIUM TO MARK THE OCCASION OF THE RETIREMENT OF SIR RUDOLPH E PEIERLS written by and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Love and Physics written by Mikhail A. Shifman and published by World Scientific Publishing Company. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This special book is a compilation of essays on a remarkable but little-known story that lasted over half a century of world-renown physicist, the late Sir Rudolf Peierls and his wife Genia Kannegiser. Peierls collected a lot of prestigious awards in his lifetime, and in the beginning of WW2, he and Otto Frisch were responsible for the inception of the Anglo-American nuclear program (1940). He was also one of the key contributors in the research at Los Alamos during those turbulent times. Most previous books on Peierls have focused on his scientific research, while the contents for this volume sheds light on his private life in dramatic circumstances. The extensive contributions were not only gathered from the relatives of Genia, the couple's daughters, Landau's students, and from Russian and English archives, but they also include the unique perspectives of the author who is a professional theoretical physicist and is also fluent in Russian, his native language. So, this fascinating story of love, friendship and physics between Rudolf and Genia is being told for the first time from a surprisingly new angle through correspondence between Genia and Rudolf, memoirs and other documents, interesting and informal excerpts from Peierls' private "diary" covering the years 1979-1994 that will take the reader on a journey through communism, world war, the trials and tribulations of the loving couple with distinctly very different personalities.