Schweber, Silvan Sam (Author)
On the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima, Nobel-winning physicist Hans Bethe called on his fellow scientists to stop working on weapons of mass destruction. What drove Bethe, the head of Theoretical Physics at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, to renounce the weaponry he had once worked so tirelessly to create? That is one of the questions answered by Nuclear Forces, a riveting biography of Bethe's early life and development as both a scientist and a man of principle. As Silvan Schweber follows Bethe from his childhood in Germany, to laboratories in Italy and England, and on to Cornell University, he shows how these differing environments were reflected in the kind of physics Bethe produced. Many of the young quantum physicists in the 1930s, including Bethe, had Jewish roots, and Schweber considers how Liberal Judaism in Germany helps explain their remarkable contributions. A portrait emerges of a man whose strategy for staying on top of a deeply hierarchical field was to tackle only those problems he knew he could solve. Bethe's emotional maturation was shaped by his father and by two women of Jewish background: his overly possessive mother and his wife, who would later serve as an ethical touchstone during the turbulent years he spent designing nuclear bombs. Situating Bethe in the context of the various communities where he worked, Schweber provides a full picture of prewar developments in physics that changed the modern world, and of a scientist shaped by the unprecedented moral dilemmas those developments in turn created. What drove Nobel-winning physicist Hans Bethe, head of Theoretical Physics at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, to later renounce the weaponry he had worked so tirelessly to create? That is one of the questions answered by Nuclear Forces, a riveting biography of Bethe's early life and development as both a scientist and a man of principle.
...MoreEssay Review Walker, Mark (2015) Émigré Biographies [Review Essay Number 1552111]. Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (pp. 206-216).
Review Hubisz, John L. (2014) Review of "Nuclear Forces: The Making of the Physicist Hans Bethe". Physics Teacher.
Review Navarro, Jaume (2014) Review of "Nuclear Forces: The Making of the Physicist Hans Bethe". British Journal for the History of Science (pp. 579-580).
Article
Underwood, Martin C.;
(2011)
Joseph Rotblat's Archive: Some Anomalies and Difficulties
(/isis/citation/CBB001320777/)
Article
Oppenheimer, Frank;
(2013)
A Physicist for All Seasons: Part II
(/isis/citation/CBB001320407/)
Article
Zangwill, Andrew;
(2014)
The Education of Walter Kohn and the Creation of Density Functional Theory
(/isis/citation/CBB001202209/)
Article
Oppenheimer, Frank;
(2013)
A Physicist for All Seasons: Part I
(/isis/citation/CBB001320402/)
Article
Reed, B. Cameron;
(2011)
Liquid Thermal Diffusion during the Manhattan Project
(/isis/citation/CBB001036137/)
Chapter
Alessandro Costazza;
(2014)
La dialettica dell'illuminismo nel dramma. "Sul caso di J. Robert Oppenheimer" di Heinar Kipphardt
(/isis/citation/CBB831255164/)
Chapter
Alberto Bentoglio;
(2014)
"Sul caso di J. Robert Oppenheimer" al Piccolo Teatro di Milano
(/isis/citation/CBB475136154/)
Book
Matthew Shindell;
(2019)
The Life and Science of Harold C. Urey
(/isis/citation/CBB639943328/)
Book
Cassidy, David;
(2008)
Beyond Uncertainty: Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, and the Bomb
(/isis/citation/CBB001220838/)
Book
Cowan, G. A.;
(2010)
Manhattan Project to the Santa Fe Institute: The Memoirs of George A. Cowan
(/isis/citation/CBB001032625/)
Book
Gino Segrè;
Bettina Hoerlin;
(2017)
Il Papa della fisica: Enrico Fermi e la nascita dell’era atomica
(/isis/citation/CBB512699130/)
Book
Byrne, Peter;
(2010)
The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III: Multiple Universes, Mutual Assured Destruction, and the Meltdown of a Nuclear Family
(/isis/citation/CBB001022747/)
Book
Hargittai, Istvan;
(2010)
Judging Edward Teller
(/isis/citation/CBB001023155/)
Book
McMillan, Priscilla J.;
(2005)
The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Birth of the Arms Race
(/isis/citation/CBB000641976/)
Book
Baggott, Jim;
(2010)
The First War of Physics: The Secret History of the Atom Bomb, 1939--1949
(/isis/citation/CBB001033687/)
Article
Rubinson, Paul;
(2011)
“Crucified on a Cross of Atoms”: Scientists, Politics, and the Test Ban Treaty
(/isis/citation/CBB001231508/)
Chapter
Antonino Drago;
Giovanni Salio;
(2016)
Panoramica delle dichiarazioni pubbliche dei fisici contro le armi nucleari: Il periodo della guerra fredda
(/isis/citation/CBB646086294/)
Book
Michael Eckert;
(2013)
Arnold Sommerfeld: Science, Life and Turbulent Times 1868-1951
(/isis/citation/CBB490294723/)
Book
Cassidy, David C.;
(2004)
J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century
(/isis/citation/CBB000750857/)
Book
Norris, Robert S.;
(2002)
Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project's Indispensable Man
(/isis/citation/CBB000330252/)
Be the first to comment!