Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2011
Volume 56, Number 1
Monday–Friday, March 21–25, 2011; Dallas, Texas
Session V24: History of Physics and International Programs |
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Sponsoring Units: FHP FIP Chair: Gloria Lubkin, American Institute of Physics, retired Room: D167 |
Thursday, March 24, 2011 8:00AM - 8:12AM |
V24.00001: Castles in the Air: The Einstein-De Sitter Debate, 1916-1918 Charles Midwinter, Michel Janssen The Einstein De Sitter debate marked the birth of modern cosmology and the infamous cosmological constant. For Einstein, the controversy was essentially a philosophical one. Einstein's insistence on a static Universe and Mach's Principle guided him in the construction of his own cosmological model, and compelled him to criticize De Sitter's. For De Sitter, the debate began as idle conjecture. Before long, however, he began to wonder if the ``spacious castles'' he and Einstein had constructed might actually represent physical reality. We plan to write a volume that reproduces the documents relevant to the debate. Our commentary will retrace and explain the arguments of the historical players, complete with calculations. For the first time readers will be able to follow the arguments of Einstein and De Sitter in a detailed exploration of the first two relativistic cosmological models. Readers will see how Einstein's flawed criticisms of De Sitter were supported by Herman Weyl, and finally how Felix Klein settled the whole matter with a coordinate transformation. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 24, 2011 8:12AM - 8:24AM |
V24.00002: Ettore Majorana, Ugo Fano and Autoionization Ennio Arimondo, Charles W. Clark, William C. Martin In his brief career, Ettore Majorana posed some questions that remain of compelling interest today, such as the nature of the neutrino. Less remembered now is his virtuosity as an atomic theorist. His first published paper (1928) dealt successfully with complex atomic structures like those of Gd and U, using Fermi's statistical model which was only a few months old at the time. In the early 1930s he solved two outstanding problems of atomic spectroscopy, correctly interpreting them as involving multiply-excited discrete states of atoms that were embedded in single-electron continuua, and thus first identifying the phenomenon of autoionization in atomic spectra.$^{1}$ His unpublished notebooks$^{2}$ show that he grasped this phenomenon at a level of detail comparable to that of modern theory, which derives from the independent work of Ugo Fano.$^{3}$ We review Majorana's work on this subject and show how it still guides present understanding. $^{1}$E. Arimondo, C. W. Clark and W. C. Martin, \textit{Rev. Mod. Phys.} \underline {\textbf{82}}\underline {, 1947} (2010) $^{2}$E. Di Grezia and S. Esposito, \textit{Found. Phys.} \underline {\textbf{38}}\underline {, 228} (2008) $^{3}$U. Fano, Nuovo Cimento \textbf{12}, 154 (1935); \textit{Phys. Rev. }\textbf{124}, 1866 (1961); \textit{J. Res. Natl. Inst. Stand. Technol.} \underline {\textbf{110}}\underline {, 583} (2005) [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 24, 2011 8:24AM - 8:36AM |
V24.00003: The Golden Age of Radio: Solid State's Debt to the Rad Lab Joseph D. Martin While MIT's Radiation Laboratory is rightly celebrated for its contributions to World War II radar research, its legacy extended beyond the war. The Rad Lab provided a model for interdisciplinary collaboration that continued to influence research at MIT in the post-war decades. The Rad Lab's institutional legacy--MIT's interdepartmental laboratories--drove the Institute's postwar research agenda. This talk examines how solid state physics research at MIT was shaped by a laboratory structure that encouraged cross-disciplinary collaboration. As the sub-discipline of solid state physics emerged through the late-1940s and 1950s, MIT was unique among universities in its laboratory structure, made possible by a large degree of government and military funding. Nonetheless, the manner in which MIT research groups from physics, chemistry, engineering, and metallurgy interfaced through the medium of solid state physics exemplified how the discipline of solid state physics came to be structured in the rest of the country. Through examining the Rad Lab's institutional legacy, I argue that World War II radar research, by establishing precedent for a particular mode of interdisciplinary collaboration, shaped the future structure of solid state research in the United States. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 24, 2011 8:36AM - 8:48AM |
V24.00004: Willie Hobbs Moore (1934-1994): The First Female African American Physicist Ronald Mickens We discuss the life and career of Willie Hobbs Moore, the first African American woman to receive a doctorate degree in physics. This achievement occurred in June 1972 at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. Her dissertation, directed by the renowned spectroscopist Samuel Krimm, was on the subject of ``A Vibrational Analysis of Secondary Chlorides," and focused on a theoretical analysis of the secondary chlorides for polyvinal-chlorine polymers. From 1972--1977, she, Krimm, and collaborators published more than thirty papers on this and related research issues. In addition to an overview of her family background, her careers as a research physicist and scientist working in various industrial laboratories, we discuss the obstacles and successes she encountered at various stages of her life. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 24, 2011 8:48AM - 9:12AM |
V24.00005: Encounters with John Van Vleck: Elevating the Self-Esteem of an Experimentalist James Wynne As a Harvard freshman in 1960, John H. Van Vleck was assigned to guide me through physics course selections. As a Harvard first year graduate student in 1964, I took his course on Group Theory. He was an esteemed theoretician, and I was an experimentalist. Nevertheless, I liked him, and he both educated me and gave me good advice. Later, I learned that Van Vleck was responsible for bringing Nicolaas Bloembergen, my Ph. D. advisor, back to Harvard from Holland, with a faculty appointment in the Division of Engineering and Applied Physics. (Bloembergen had done his Ph.D. thesis with Ed Purcell, making NMR into a science, and Purcell was one of the best teachers I encountered in 9 years at Harvard.) Stepping forward in time to May, 1969, just after defending my doctoral thesis, I ran into Van Vleck in the hallway. I told him I had earned my Ph.D., and he asked me what I had done for my thesis. Feeling defensive while talking to a great theoretician, I started out cautiously to say that I had built a carbon dioxide laser. He immediately started praising me as the best of the breed, someone who could build things and actually make them work. The praise continued, he told some stories (which I will share), and I left the building on ``Cloud 9.'' It was a really good day. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 24, 2011 9:12AM - 9:24AM |
V24.00006: US-Finland Planning Visit: Cooperative Research and Education Activities in Integrated Access Networks Arlene Maclin This planning grant visit sponsored by the NSF Office of International Science and Engineering occurred from October 3-10, 2010. The Dean of the School of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences from Morgan State University (MSU), the PI and a faculty member from engineering at MSU along with a faculty member from the University of Arizona and two advanced level graduate students from the NSF-funded Center for Integrated Access Networks participated in this visit. The topic of novel low dimensional nano-materials was determined to be one possible area for future collaboration. As a result of this visit, a Materials World Network proposal has been submitted to the NSF involving MSU and CIAN in the US and Aalto University in Finland. A companion proposal on novel low dimensional nano- materials has also been submitted to the Academy of Finland. Another anticipated outcome of this collaboration of MSU with Aalto University and CIAN expands the outreach and diversity component to MSU, an institution serving largely an underrepresented minority student. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 24, 2011 9:24AM - 9:36AM |
V24.00007: ABSTRACT WITHDRAWN |
Thursday, March 24, 2011 9:36AM - 9:48AM |
V24.00008: ABSTRACTWITHDRAWN |
Thursday, March 24, 2011 9:48AM - 10:00AM |
V24.00009: ABSTRACT WITHDRAWN |
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