Session C02: Pais Prize Session: "Physics History: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow"

Oppenheimer, Wheeler, and the Golden Age of General Relativity

On September 1, 1939, the same day as the start of World War II, two remarkable papers appeared in Physical Review. The first, “The Mechanism of Nuclear Fission,” by Bohr and Wheeler, offered a theoretical blueprint for uranium fission processes that would help guide the Manhattan Project. The second, “On Continued Gravitational Contraction,” by Oppenheimer and Snyder, described the mechanisms for the catastrophic collapse of the cores of massive stars into what would be called black holes. Ironically, given those topics, it is Wheeler who is now known for black holes and Oppenheimer for atomic bombs. This talk will explain how events in the 1940s through the 1960s led to that twist of fate. While the Oppenheimer-Snyder paper anticipated the future direction of general relativity, it would be Wheeler who switched fields and helped establish what became known as its “golden age.”   

Does It Count as History if I Can Still Remember?

Exercising our usual 20-60 hindsight, astronomers generally agree that the "long 1920s" (1918–1929) were a Golden Age for finding our place in the Cosmos, not at the center, not in a unique galaxy, and not static, with credits to Shapley, Hubble, V. M. Slipher, Leavitt, and Humason. This is now history for all of us. But there was a second Golden Decade (1963–73) that added many new kinds of entities to the Universe with the discovery of quasars, the cosmic microwave background, pulsars, X-ray binaries including both NS and BH, and with the propounding of plausible mechanisms for them all. These I do remember as current events and have had the privilege of meeting most of the Prime Movers: Schmidt and Hazard; Gamow, Dicke, Penzias, and Wilson; Bell and Hewish; Giacconi; Salpeter, Gold, and Woltjer; Rees and Hawking; Fowler, Hoyle, and the Burbidges; and more. I even wrote the last fundamentally wrong paper about Cygnus X-1 and a wrong letter to Nature about pulsars (not quite the last). And I was there when John Mather showed the COBE CMB spectrum and Geoff Burbidge asked what we were applauding for — The Universe? The presentation will consist of short rounds of appreciation for the Universe and for the privilege of being allowed to investigate it in both in real time and as history.   

Virginia Trimble: A Scholar of the Past Guiding the Future

I have had the pleasure of working with Professor Virginia Trimble on a variety of projects over the past several years, getting to know her both as a mentor and as a person. Our first project together mapped the history of papers concerning Newton's gravitational constant to understand the difficulty of finding a more precise value, even with international collaboration. After publishing our results, we started another project, this time related to exploring diversity within the astrophysics community. We decided to look at the correlation of time from submission to acceptance of astronomical papers for men versus women lead authors. We found that on average, in the years 1998 and 2018, there was a 2-week difference in elapsed time from submission to acceptance for male versus female first authored papers. Working with Professor Trimble on different projects allowed me to explore the interdisciplinary nature of astrophysics and gave me the confidence and direction to explore my newfound research interests. Now, as a graduate student at Caltech, I am deeply appreciative of the immense support I've received throughout my academic journey from Professor Trimble. With her mentorship, I learned how to be an independent researcher, advocate for myself, and communicate my scientific interests.