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PHYS 362: Modern Physics + Physics Nobel Winners: 1940s

A Research Guide to assist students in their Nobel Laureate Project.

Molecular Ray Method

1943 — Quantum Physics

Otto Stern

Nobel Lecture / Biography

No Banquet Speech was given

About Stern:

Featured: A to Z of Physicists (p 286)

Chapter: "The Work of the School of Otto Stern" inside Atom, Molecule, and Cluster Beams (p 5, GoogleBooks)

Chapter: "Otto Stern's Sulphurus Cigars" inside Eurekas and Euphorias: The Oxford Book of Scientific Anecdotes (p 18, GoogleBooks)

Chapter: "Hubris Meets Hydrogen: Magnetic Moment of the Proton" inside Hydrogen: The Essential Element 

Atomic Nucleus

1944 — Nuclear Physics

Isidor I. Rabi

No Nobel Lecture given / Biography

No Banquet Speech given

About Rabi:

Featured: A to Z of Physicists (p 235)

Chapter: "Discoverer of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance in Molecular Beams" inside The pioneers of NMR and magnetic resonance in medicine - the story of MRI 

Chapter: "Rabi Meets His Match" and "Of Life and Death" inside Eurekas and Euphorias: The Oxford Book of Scientific Anecdotes (p 27 & 42

Article: Use of rotating coordinates in magnetic resonance problems

"I think physicists are the Peter Pans of the human race. They never grow up, and they keep their curiosity."

- Isidor Rabi

 

1945 — Quantum Mechanics

Wolfgang Pauli

Nobel Lecture / Biography

No Banquet Speech given

About Pauli:

Featured: A to Z of Physicists (p 222)

Chapter: "Wolfgang Pauli and the Exclusion Principle" inside The Quantum Moment

Article: On the invariant regularization in relativistic quantum theory

eBook: The Innermost Kernel: Depth Psychology + Quantum Physics: Wolfgang Pauli's Dialogue with C.G. Jung

Book: Neutrino

Book: Electrodynamics

1946 — High-Pressure Physics

Percy W. Bridgman

Nobel Lecture / Biography

Banquet Speech 

About Bridgman: 

Featured: A to Z of Physicists (p 44)

Chapter: "Toward Astrophysics" inside The Conceptual Completion and Extensions of Quantum Mechanics (p 877, GoogleBooks)

Chapter: "The Legacy of Percy Bridgman" inside The Diamond Makers (p 39, GoogleBooks)

Appleton Layer

1947 —Atmospheric Physics

Sir Edward V. Appleton

Nobel Lecture / Biography

Banquet Speech

About Appleton: 

Article: Wireless studies of the ionosphere

 

Cosmic Radiation

1948 — Cosmic Radiation

Patrick M.S. Blackett

Nobel Lecture / Biography

Banquet Speech

About Blackett: 

Featured: A to Z of Physicists (p 31)

Chapter: "A Question of Motives" inside The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians 

 

Wilson Cloud Chamber

1949 — Nuclear Physics

Hideki Yukawa

Nobel Lecture / Biography

Banquet Speech

About Yukawa:

Featured: A to Z of Physicists (p 343)

Featured: Remarkable Physicists (p 369)

Featured: Scientists, Mathematicians + Inventors (p 200)

*Interesting Facts* Yukawa was the first Japanese citizen to receive a Nobel Prize; his acceptance speech was one sentence long.

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