Category: Physics

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2091

James Chadwick–the discoverer of the neutron and leading Brit investigator in the Manhattan Project–announced his great discovery in the form of a letter-to-the-editor.  Of course, this was a letter to the editor of Nature–not exactly the Billboard Breeze of Sumpin’, Montana, or the NYT or WSJ for that matter–where letters like this were more a quick way to get experimental results announced quickly, a rapid-publication device in the days when the scientific weekly was the quickest way of getting news out the fellow researchers. 

But, no matter–it is still a short introduction to a long idea, not quite as romantic as the lede implies.  Chadwick’s  “Possible Existence of a Neutron”, appeared in Nature on 27 February 1932. It takes up a tidy and compact  1.25 columns, all on one page (312) of this issue of the journal. It is in a sort of imaginary “tradition” of great letters-to-the-editor, like the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow paper (“The Origin of Chemical Elements”, on the stuff of the Big Bang, a 1948 paper published in the journal Physical Review that worked out the basis for the formation of particles in the universe), another instance of a major scientific announcement being made as a “simple” presentation to the journal’s editor. 

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

“…the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.”–Einstein on Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), only 48 when he died, was one of the supreme science minds of modern history, a giant among giants, a scientist who performed the second-greatest unification of physics after Newton. 

Source: “Scientific Worthies, XVIII–James Clerk Maxwell.”  In: Nature, 27 October 1881, the weekly issue on page 601 (though a single page the article runs a tight 1500 words) with the fine steel engraved portrait of Maxwell and the article occupying pp 601-602.

[The original is offered for sale here.]

The published works of James Clerk Maxwell, from the Maxwell Foundation, here along with a chronological arrangement, here.  His last will and testament, here. Internet Archive collection o fMaxwell’s online works, here. And lastly a short biography from Wolfram Research, here.

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

[The equation in question is at bottom-left; full explanation here.]

I came across an article while researching a work by H.P. Robertson–Lectures on Relativity (Princeton 1935)–and it is much more interesting than what I was actually looking for.  It seems that in the history of Einstein working his famous E = mc² on blackboards around the world that there are no surviving pictures of the man and the chalk and the equation. 

In their article “Einstein’s 1934 Two-Blackboard Derivation of Energy-Mass Equivalence” (found in the American Journal of Physics, 75 (11), November 2007, pp 978-983) David Topper and Dwight Vincent of the University of Winnipeg sort it out and reproduce a not-sharp (but essential!) halftone newspaper file photo clipping showing Einstein doing just this, using two blackboards for the derivation of the equivalence of mass and energy during a public lecture in Pittsburgh in 1934. 

In their short excellent article they do a fine job of discussing the history of these sorts of images as well as provide a nice description of what’s ont he blackboard.  I urge a reading of the full article found here. 

JF Ptak Science Books   Reference Post

• Below are three quck reference lists regading publications of Albert Einstein. Section A is a complete list of his works; Section B, a list of hi smost ofte-cited papers; Section C is a collection of some contemporary reviews of papers published 1904-1920; Section D is a listing of Einstein papers in the Annalen der Physik

A) Quick Complete Publications of Albert Einstein, Listed Chronologically.

[Titles are in English]

1901 ANNALEN DER PHYSIK 4(3):513-523
Conclusions from the capillarity occurrences       

1902 ANNALEN DER PHYSIK 8(8):798-814
The thermodynamic theory
of the potential differences between metals and complete dissociation
solutions of their salts and a electrical method towards the probing of
molecular power