Horia Hulubei

Conclusion infant is healthy, also hope that it Acknowledgments The Nuffield Advanced Physics will grow and develop. The last thing Figure 1 is from Nuffield Advanced course has been developed over the we wish to see is adoption of the Physics, Teachers’ Handbook, (Pen last four or five years. At the time of course in a static and unchanging way, guin Education, 1972) writing, the publications are still so that the course becomes a new The publisher is Penguin Education emerging from the press, and it is orthodoxy, and a sad case of arrested and further information may be ob too soon to give any account of their development. Its future, however, is tained from : Penguin Education, reception. So the course is still in its not now in our hands, but in those Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK infancy. Those of us who were associ of teachers, whose creative efforts Figure 2 is from photography by ated with it, while hoping that the are needed to give it life. M. Plomer. HORIA HULUBEI On 22 November 1972, there ended elaboration of the well-known tables the meritorious activity, which had of wavelengths, the recording of the gained the recognition of the entire multiple Compton effect as well as scientific world, of Horia Hulubei, the the X-lines of the elements 87 and 93, President of the Romanian National were only a few of his investigations. Committee of Physics, scientist of He returned to Romania in 1938. worldwide renown, who died, leaving Because of the Second World War deep regret not only with those who which prevented him from continuing had the privilege of knowing him but his laboratory research, he devoted also with the new generation of himself to academic work. He held, Romanian physicists. at Bucharest University, the Chair As words can only dimly evoke a of Physical Chemistry subsequently personality so outstanding as that of transformed into the Chair of Atomic Republic, the French Academy of Horia Hulubei’s, we shall confine our Physics. Sciences, the Academy of Science of selves to the facts. Soon his activity was considerably Portugal, the Academy of Science of Horia Hulubei was born on the expanded. As Director of the first New York, and other scientific socie 15 November 1897 in Iasi where he Institute for Physics and then of ties. attended high school and university. the Institute for Atomic Physics in Full of vitality up to the last In 1926, after taking his degree in Bucharest, as well as President of moments of his life, he took an active physics and chemistry, he left for the Committee for Nuclear Energy, part in the World Peace Council, in Paris to obtain his doctorate at the he made an invaluable contribution the Conferences for Nuclear Energy Sorbonne where he joined the group to the development of physics in (Geneva), in the scientific councils of headed by the new Nobel prize winner, Romania and to the formation of new the Joint Institute for Nuclear Re Jean Perrin, and where he remained, generations of physicists. With his search in Dubna, as well as in the with brief interruptions, until 1938. unerring competence, hard to over activity of the International Agency There, in the company of the great estimate, he co-ordinated the in for Atomic Energy, where he played names of French physics : Jean Perrin, vestigations of complex teams of a leading role as Governor, and Vice- Marie Curie, Paul Langevin and Aimé researchers in new fields, such as President of the Governors’ Council. Cotton, Hulubei’s scientific personality high energy physics, reactor physics Paving the way to the development took shape as he established himself or nuclear reactions, and he militated, of the most advanced branches of as an original researcher. His works, without respite, for the stimulation of physics, Horia Hulubei appears in regarded as classical, on Raman effect wide collaboration between physicists perspective as the real founder of upon water, the Cauchois-Hulubei to ensure a continuous flow of infor modern physics in Romania. spectrometer which exceeded in mation and ideas. sensitivity all existing X-ray spectro- He was elected member of the Submitted by the Romanian National graphic methods and which afforded Academy of the Romanian Socialist Committee of Physics. ence was successful in bringing to Nuclear Physics gether what have tended to become 26 June - 1 July 1972, Aix-en-Provence, France somewhat separated areas of the subject. The Nuclear Physics Division of EPS while remaining a reasonable size, Fission has in the past been a held its first large conference from the programme was centred around separate part of nuclear physics. The 26 June-1 July in the pleasant sur three topics, emphasizing different fission isomers and their explanation roundings of Aix-en-Provence. The but complementary aspects of the in terms of the double hump po conference was mainly organized by nucleus. The three topics were : I Fis tential barrier have brought fission the French Physical Society and was sion, II Nuclear spectroscopy with back into the main stream of nuclear dedicated to the memory of Claude heavy ions, III Nuclear physics above physics particularly through the pre Bloch who died in December 1971 and 100 MeV. There were main invited dictions of the double hump from who had a major influence on post-war talks in each of these fields and the the Strutinski synthesis of the micro French theoretical nuclear physics. conference broke up into parallel scopic shell model and the macro In order that the conference should sessions for shorter contributed papers scopic liquid drop model. Claude cover a wide area of nuclear physics in each field. In its format the confer Bloch at the time of his death was 5.

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