Download or read book Matvei Petrovich Bronstein and Soviet Theoretical Physics in the Thirties written by Gennady E. Gorelik and published by Birkhäuser. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true history of physics can only be read in the life stories of those who made its progress possible. Matvei Bronstein was one of those for whom the vast territory of theoretical physics was as familiar as his own home: he worked in cosmology, nuclear physics, gravitation, semiconductors, atmospheric physics, quantum electrodynamics, astro physics and the relativistic quantum theory. Everyone who knew him was struck by his wide knowledge, far beyond the limits of his trade. This partly explains why his life was closely intertwined with the social, historical and scientific context of his time. One might doubt that during his short life Bronstein could have made truly weighty contributions to science and have become, in a sense, a symbol ofhis time. Unlike mathematicians and poets, physicists reach the peak oftheir careers after the age of thirty. His thirty years of life, however, proved enough to secure him a place in theGreaterSovietEncyclopedia. In 1967, in describing the first generation of physicists educated after the 1917 revolution, Igor Tamm referred to Bronstein as "an exceptionally brilliant and promising" theoretician [268].
Download or read book Matvei Petrovich Bronstein and Soviet Theoretical Physics in the Thirties written by Gennady Gorelik and published by Birkhäuser. This book was released on with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true history of physics can only be read in the life stories of those who made its progress possible. Matvei Bronstein was one of those for whom the vast territory of theoretical physics was as familiar as his own home: he worked in cosmology, nuclear physics, gravitation, semiconductors, atmospheric physics, quantum electrodynamics, astro physics and the relativistic quantum theory. Everyone who knew him was struck by his wide knowledge, far beyond the limits of his trade. This partly explains why his life was closely intertwined with the social, historical and scientific context of his time. One might doubt that during his short life Bronstein could have made truly weighty contributions to science and have become, in a sense, a symbol ofhis time. Unlike mathematicians and poets, physicists reach the peak oftheir careers after the age of thirty. His thirty years of life, however, proved enough to secure him a place in theGreaterSovietEncyclopedia. In 1967, in describing the first generation of physicists educated after the 1917 revolution, Igor Tamm referred to Bronstein as "an exceptionally brilliant and promising" theoretician [268].
Download or read book Matvei Petrovich Bronstein and Soviet Theoretical Physics in the Thirties written by Геннадий Ефимович Горелик and published by Birkhauser. This book was released on 1994 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The short life and tragic death of Matvei Petrovich Bronstein (1906-1938) may be seen as a symbol of the man's time and his country. One of the most remarkable features of Soviet history was the impressive advance of its physical sciences against the brutal and violent background of totalitarianism. Soviet advances in nuclear and space technology form an important part of world history. These achievements had their roots in the 30s, when Bronstein's generation entered science. Among his friends were the famous physicists Lev Landau and George Gamow. Bronstein worked in the vast field of theoretical physics, ranging from nuclear physics to astrophysics and from relativistic quantum theory to cosmology. His pioneering work on quantizing gravitation goes beyond the history of physics, because today the quantum theory of gravitation occupies a special place in fundamental physics. Bronstein was also a master of scientific explanation thanks to his profound knowledge, enthusiasm as a teacher and a gift for literature. This enabled him to write popular science for children, the widest and most responsive group of readers. He became a writer with the help of his wife Lidiya Chukovskaya, known now as an outstanding writer and fighter for human rights. Bronstein's life was closely intertwined with the social, historical and scientific context of one of the most tragic and intriguing periods of Russian history.
Download or read book Covariant Loop Quantum Gravity written by Carlo Rovelli and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensible introduction to the most fascinating research in theoretical physics: advanced quantum gravity. Ideal for researchers and graduate students.
Download or read book Quantum Gravity written by Carlo Rovelli and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-11-29 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quantum gravity is perhaps the most important open problem in fundamental physics. It is the problem of merging quantum mechanics and general relativity, the two great conceptual revolutions in the physics of the twentieth century. The loop and spinfoam approach, presented in this 2004 book, is one of the leading research programs in the field. The first part of the book discusses the reformulation of the basis of classical and quantum Hamiltonian physics required by general relativity. The second part covers the basic technical research directions. Appendices include a detailed history of the subject of quantum gravity, hard-to-find mathematical material, and a discussion of some philosophical issues raised by the subject. This fascinating text is ideal for graduate students entering the field, as well as researchers already working in quantum gravity. It will also appeal to philosophers and other scholars interested in the nature of space and time.
Download or read book Historical Encyclopedia of Natural and Mathematical Sciences written by Ari Ben-Menahem and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-03-06 with total page 6070 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 5,800-page encyclopedia surveys 100 generations of great thinkers, offering more than 2,000 detailed biographies of scientists, engineers, explorers and inventors who left their mark on the history of science and technology. This six-volume masterwork also includes 380 articles summarizing the time-line of ideas in the leading fields of science, technology, mathematics and philosophy.
Download or read book Physics In A Mad World written by Misha Shifman and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2015-08-28 with total page 555 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells captivating stories of misadventures of two renowned theoretical physicists in the Soviet Union. The first part is devoted to Friedrich (Fritz) Houtermans, an outstanding Dutch-Austrian-German physicist who was the first to suggest that the source of stars' energy is thermonuclear fusion, and also made a number of other important contributions to cosmochemistry and geochemistry. In 1935, Houtermans, a German communist, in an attempt to save his life from Hilter's Gestapo, fled to the Soviet Union. He took up an appointment at the Kharkov Physico-Technical Institute, working there for two years with the Russian physicist Valentin P Fomin. In the Great Purge of 1937, Houtermans was arrested in December by the NKVD (Soviet Secret Police, KGB's predecessor). He was tortured, and confessed to being a Trotskyist plotter and German spy, out of fear of threats against his wife Charlotte. However, Charlotte had already escaped from the Soviet Union to Denmark, after which she went to England and finally the USA. As a result of the Hilter-Stalin Pact of 1939, Houtermans was turned over to the Gestapo in May 1940 and imprisoned in Berlin.The second part consists of two essays that narrate the life story of Yuri Golfand, one of the codiscoverers of supersymmetry, a major discovery in theoretical physics in the 20th century. In 1973, just two years after the publication of his seminal paper, he was fired from the Lebedev Physics Institute in Moscow. Because of his Jewish origin he could find no job. Under such circumstances, he applied for an exit visa to Israel, but his application was denied. Yuri Golfand became a refusnik and joined the Human rights movement, along with two other prominent physicists, Andrei Sakharov and Yuri Orlov. To earn his living, he had to do manual work, repeatedly being intimidated by KGB. Only 18 years later, shortly before the demise of the Soviet Union, did he obtain permission to leave the country, emigrating to Israel in 1990.These personal life stories of two outstanding theorists are interwined with the tragedies of the 20th century and make for compelling reading.
Download or read book The Trouble with Physics written by Lee Smolin and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2006 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sample Text
Download or read book Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Field Theory written by Tian Yu Cao and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-03-25 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Multi-author volume on the history and philosophy of physics.
Download or read book Discrete or Continuous written by Amit Hagar and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-05 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Novel conceptual analysis, fresh historical perspectives, and concrete physical examples illuminate one of the most thought-provoking topics in physics.
Download or read book Reality Is Not What It Seems written by Carlo Rovelli and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The man who makes physics sexy . . . the scientist they’re calling the next Stephen Hawking.” —The Times Magazine From the New York Times–bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, Helgoland, and Anaximander, a closer look at the mind-bending nature of the universe. What are the elementary ingredients of the world? Do time and space exist? And what exactly is reality? Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli has spent his life exploring these questions. He tells us how our understanding of reality has changed over the centuries and how physicists think about the structure of the universe today. In elegant and accessible prose, Rovelli takes us on a wondrous journey from Democritus to Albert Einstein, from Michael Faraday to gravitational waves, and from classical physics to his own work in quantum gravity. As he shows us how the idea of reality has evolved over time, Rovelli offers deeper explanations of the theories he introduced so concisely in Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. This book culminates in a lucid overview of quantum gravity, the field of research that explores the quantum nature of space and time, seeking to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity. Rovelli invites us to imagine a marvelous world where space breaks up into tiny grains, time disappears at the smallest scales, and black holes are waiting to explode—a vast universe still largely undiscovered.
Download or read book The World of Andrei Sakharov written by Gennady Gorelik and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-04-14 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did Andrei Sakharov, a theoretical physicist and the acknowledged father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, become a human rights activist and the first Russian to win the Nobel Peace Prize? In his later years, Sakharov noted in his diary that he was "simply a man with an unusual fate." To understand this deceptively straightforward statement by an extraordinary man, The World of Andrei Sakharov, the first authoritative study of Andrei Sakharov as a scientist as well as a public figure, relies on previously inaccessible documents, recently declassified archives, and personal accounts by Sakharov's friends and colleagues to examine the real context of Sakharov's life. In the course of doing so, Gennady Gorelik answers a fascinating question, whether the Soviet hydrogen bomb was really fathered by Sakharov, or whether it was based on stolen American secrets. Gorelik concludes that while espionage did initiate the Soviet effort, the Russian hydrogen bomb was invented independently. Gorelik also elucidates the reasons that brought about the seemingly sudden transformation of the top-secret physicist into a public figure in 1968, when Sakharov's famous essay "Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom" was distributed in samizdat in the USSR and smuggled out to the West. Recently declassified documents show that Sakharov's metamorphosis was caused by professional concerns, particularly regarding the development of an anti-ballistic missile defense. An insider's view of how the upper echelons of the Soviet regime functioned had led Sakharov to the conclusion that the goals of peace, progress, and human rights were inextricably linked. His free thinking and free feeling were manifested in his hope that scientific thought and religious perception would find a profound synthesis in the future.
Download or read book Type Ia Supernovae written by Jens C. Niemeyer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-05 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique and wide-ranging review of one of the most dramatic research results in astronomy in recent decades.
Download or read book Philosophy of Physics written by and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2006-11-26 with total page 1479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ambition of this volume is twofold: to provide a comprehensive overview of the field and to serve as an indispensable reference work for anyone who wants to work in it. For example, any philosopher who hopes to make a contribution to the topic of the classical-quantum correspondence will have to begin by consulting Klaas Landsman's chapter. The organization of this volume, as well as the choice of topics, is based on the conviction that the important problems in the philosophy of physics arise from studying the foundations of the fundamental theories of physics. It follows that there is no sharp line to be drawn between philosophy of physics and physics itself. Some of the best work in the philosophy of physics is being done by physicists, as witnessed by the fact that several of the contributors to the volume are theoretical physicists: viz., Ellis, Emch, Harvey, Landsman, Rovelli, 't Hooft, the last of whom is a Nobel laureate. Key features- Definitive discussions of the philosophical implications of modern physics - Masterly expositions of the fundamental theories of modern physics - Covers all three main pillars of modern physics: relativity theory, quantum theory, and thermal physics - Covers the new sciences grown from these theories: for example, cosmology from relativity theory; and quantum information and quantum computing, from quantum theory- Contains special Chapters that address crucial topics that arise in several different theories, such as symmetry and determinism- Written by very distinguished theoretical physicists, including a Nobel Laureate, as well as by philosophers - Definitive discussions of the philosophical implications of modern physics - Masterly expositions of the fundamental theories of modern physics - Covers all three main pillars of modern physics: relativity theory, quantum theory, and thermal physics - Covers the new sciences that have grown from these theories: for example, cosmology from relativity theory; and quantum information and quantum computing, from quantum theory- Contains special Chapters that address crucial topics that arise in several different theories, such as symmetry and determinism - Written by very distinguished theoretical physicists, including a Nobel Laureate, as well as by philosophers
Download or read book The Weight of the Vacuum written by Helge S. Kragh and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-05-21 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the discovery of cosmic acceleration due to dark energy, a discovery that is all the more perplexing as nobody knows what dark energy actually is. We put the modern concept of cosmological vacuum energy into historical context and show how it grew out of disparate roots in quantum mechanics (zero-point energy) and relativity theory (the cosmological constant, Einstein's “greatest blunder”). These two influences have remained strangely aloof and still co-exist in an uneasy alliance that is at the heart of the greatest crisis in theoretical physics, the cosmological-constant problem.
Download or read book A Chosen Calling written by Noah J. Efron and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2014-06 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rejecting the idea that Jews have done well in science because of uniquely Jewish traits, Jewish brains, and Jewish habits of mind, this book approaches the Jewish affinity for science through the geographic and cultural circumstances of Jews who were compelled to settle in new worlds in the early twentieth century.
Download or read book Leon Rosenfeld Physics Philosophy And Politics In The Twentieth Century written by Anja Skaar Jacobsen and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2012-01-16 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Léon Rosenfeld (1904-1974) was a remarkable, many-sided physicist of exceptional erudition. He was at the center of modern physics and was well-known as Niels Bohr's close collaborator and spokesman. Besides he reflected deeply on the history and philosophy of science and its social role from a leftist perspective. As both actor and acute spectator of modern physics and as a polyglot cosmopolitan whose life crossed those of many important people in both the East and West, as well as by virtue of his close collaboration and friendship with Bohr, Rosenfeld was an important figure in twentieth century physics. His biography illuminates the development, popularization, and reception of quantum physics and its interpretation in addition to the development of the political Left. The book draws extensively from previously untapped, unpublished sources in more than five languages.
