Heisenberg's theory on the composition of a nucleus

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Chadwick and Goldhaber's work on deuteron disintegration

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Heisenberg's theory on the composition of a nucleus

Hans Bethe Scientist

		Views	Duration
41. Heisenberg's theory on the composition of a nucleus		756	01:14
42. Chadwick and Goldhaber's work on deuteron disintegration		475	02:01
43. Working on a theory of deutron disintegration		428	03:07
44. The deuteron disintegration theory disproved		511	02:38
45. Lecturing at Manchester University and Bragg's metal alloys		439	03:31
46. Short range order vs long range order in the metal alloy		482	02:02
47. Work on ferromagnetism and the 'Bethe Ansatz'		622	04:17
48. Work on beta radioactivity		421	02:49
49. Fermi postulates the beta-decay theory: Fermi's interaction		521	04:04
50. Job offers from Bristol and Cornell	1	507	03:30

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Now, Heisenberg, as soon as the neutron had been discovered, wrote two very useful papers saying 'Well now we know how the nucleus is made up. It's made of neutrons and protons. They are substantial particles, they can very easily fit into the nucleus by wave mechanics. We can get their wave functions inside the nucleus. We can get their interaction.' And then after Heisenberg, Majorana improved that interaction, Wigner got into the act and suggested a third type of interaction. Heisenberg actually was wrong about the interaction he proposed. Majorana was the one most closely right, and so Peierls and I both began working on nuclear physics.

The late German-American physicist Hans Bethe once described himself as the H-bomb's midwife. He left Nazi Germany in 1933, after which he helped develop the first atomic bomb, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1967 for his contribution to the theory of nuclear reactions, advocated tighter controls over nuclear weapons and campaigned vigorously for the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

Title: Heisenberg's theory on the composition of a nucleus

Listeners: Sam Schweber

Silvan Sam Schweber is the Koret Professor of the History of Ideas and Professor of Physics at Brandeis University, and a Faculty Associate in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. He is the author of a history of the development of quantum electro mechanics, "QED and the men who made it", and has recently completed a biography of Hans Bethe and the history of nuclear weapons development, "In the Shadow of the Bomb: Oppenheimer, Bethe, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist" (Princeton University Press, 2000).

Tags: Werner Heisenberg, Ettore Majorana, Eugene Wigner, Rudi Peierls

Duration: 1 minute, 15 seconds

Date story recorded: December 1996

Date story went live: 24 January 2008