The Age of Innocence: Nuclear Physics between the First and Second World Wars

'Highly Recommended' CHOICE\nA fascinating account of the experimental innovations and theoretical breakthroughs in nuclear physics in the period between the two world wars told through the lives and personalities of the physicists who made them.\nThe two decades between the first and second world wars saw the emergence of nuclear physics as the dominant field of experimental and theoretical physics, owing to the work of an international cast of gifted physicists. Prominent among them were Ernest Rutherford, George Gamow, the husband and wife team of Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, Gregory Breit and Eugene Wigner, Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch, the brash Ernest Lawrence, the prodigious Enrico Fermi, and the incomparable Niels Bohr.\nTheir experimental and theoretical work arose from a quest to understand nuclear phenomena; it was not motivated by a desire to find a practical application for nuclear energy. In this sense, these physicists lived in an 'Age of Innocence'. They did not, however, live in isolation. Their research reflected their idiosyncratic personalities; it was shaped by the physical and intellectual environments of the countries and institutions in which they worked. It was also buffeted by the political upheavals after the Great War: the punitive postwar treaties, the runaway inflation in Germany and Austria, the Great Depression, and the intellectual migration from Germany and later from Austria and Italy.\nTheir pioneering experimental and theoretical achievements in the interwar period therefore are set within their personal, institutional, and political contexts. Both domains and their mutual influences are conveyed by quotations from autobiographies, biographies, recollections, interviews, correspondence, and other writings of physicists and historians.

History

Stuewer, Roger H.

Military

Oxford University Press

The two decades between the first and second world wars saw the emergence of nuclear physics as the dominant field of experimental and theoretical physics, owing to the work of an international cast of gifted physicists. Prominent among them were Ernest Rutherford, George Gamow, the husband and wife team of Frederic and Irene Joliot-Curie, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, Gregory Breit and Eugene Wigner, Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch, the brash Ernest Lawrence, the prodigious Enrico Fermi, and the incomparable Niels Bohr. Their experimental and theoretical work arose from a quest to understand nuclear phenomena; it was not motivated by a desire to find a practical application for nuclear energy. In this sense, these physicists lived in an 'Age of Innocence'. They did not, however, live in isolation. Their research reflected their idiosyncratic personalities; it was shaped by the physical and intellectual environments of the countries and institutions in which they worked. It was also buffeted by the political upheavals after the Great War: the punitive postwar treaties, the runaway inflation in Germany and Austria, the Great Depression, and the intellectual migration from Germany and later from Austria and Italy. Their pioneering experimental and theoretical achievements in the interwar period therefore are set within their personal, institutional, and political contexts. Both domains and their mutual influences are conveyed by quotations from autobiographies, biographies, recollections, interviews, correspondence, and other writings of physicists and historians.

The Compton effect: turning point in physics

Science History Publications

First Published in 1970. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &amp; Francis, an informa company.

Historical And Philosophical Perspectives of Science (Classics in the History and Philosophy of Science)

Routledge

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Books by Stuewer, Roger H.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stuewer, Roger H.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Age of Innocence: Nuclear Physics between the First and Second World Wars

The Age of Innocence: Nuclear Physics between the First and Second World Wars

The Compton effect: turning point in physics

Historical And Philosophical Perspectives of Science (Classics in the History and Philosophy of Science)