Nuclear Forces: The Making of the Physicist Hans Bethe The Making of the Physicist Hans Bethe

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. “A highly readable account... tracing the future Nobel laureate through his formative years and up to the eve of World War II” (The Wall Street Journal).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.Praise for Nuclear Forces“Schweber's account of Hans Bethe's life... reveals the origins of a charismatic scientist, grounded in the importance of his parents and his Jewish roots... [Schweber] recreates the social world that shaped the character of the last of the memorable young scientists who established the field of quantum mechanics.” —Publishers Weekly“Nuclear Forces is a carefully researched, historically and biographically insightful account of the development of a profession and of one of its leading representatives during a century in which physics and physicists played key roles in scientific, cultural, political, and military developments.” —David C. Cassidy, author of A Short History of Physics in the American Century

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.

German-American physicist Hans Bethe (1906-2005) was among the young generation of scientists of the late 1920s and early 1930s who worked on wide-ranging applications and extensions of quantum mechanics after its initial formulation by such foundational figures as Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger. He also, as head of the Theoretical Division of the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, was centrally involved in the early history of nuclear weapons and, still later, won a Nobel Prize for his explanation of stellar nucleosynthesis. In this intellectual biography, Schweber (history of science, Harvard U.) examines Bethe's career within the broader context of developments in theoretical physics during his lifetime and in relation to the institutions and networks that made his career possible. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Contents Introduction 1 Growing Up 2 Maturing 3 Becoming Bethe 4 Beyond the Doctorate: 1928–1933 5 England, 1933–1935 6 Hilde Levi 7 Cornell University 8 The Happy Thirties 9 Rose Ewald Bethe Conclusion: Past and Future Appendixes. Notes. References. Acknowledgments. Index Appendix A. The Bethe Family Genealogy Appendix B. Courses Taken at Frankfurt University Appendix C. A Brief History of the Genesis of Quantum Mechanics Appendix D. Courses Taken at Munich University Appendix E. Bethe’s Doctoral Thesis Appendix F. The Habilitationsschrift Defense Notes References Acknowledgments Index

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.