NOBEL LECTURES IN PHYSICS 1981-1990 NOBEL LECTURES I NCLUDING P RESENTATION S PEECHES AND LAUREATES' BIOGRAPHIES PHYSICS CHEMISTRY PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE LITERATURE PEACE ECONOMIC SCIENCES NOBEL LECTURES I NCLUDING P RESENTATION S PEECHES AND LAUREATES' BIOGRAPHIES PHYSICS 1981-1990 EDITOR-IN-CHARGE T ORE F RÄNGSMYR EDITOR G ÖSTA E KSPONG Published for the Nobel Foundation in 1993 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. P O Box 128, Farrer Road, Singapore 9128 USA office: Suite 1B, 1060 Main Street, River Edge, NJ 07661 UK office: 73 Lynton Mead, Totteridge, London N20 8DH NOBEL LECTURES IN PHYSICS (1981-1990) All rights reserved. ISBN 981-02-0728-X ISBN 981-02-0729-E (pbk) Printed in Singapore by Continental Press Pte Ltd Foreword Since 1901 the Nobel Foundation has published annually “Les Prix Nobel” with reports from the Nobel Award Ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo as well as the biographies and Nobel lectures of the laureates. In order to make the lectures available to people with special interests in the different prize fields the Foundation gave Elsevier Publishing Company the right to publish in English the lectures for 1901-1970, which were published in 1964-1972 through the following volumes: Physics 1901-1970 4 volumes Chemistry 1901-1970 4 volumes Physiology or Medicine 1901-1970 4 volumes Literature 1901-1967 1 volume Peace 1901-1970 3 volumes Elsevier decided later not to continue the Nobel project. It is therefore with great satisfaction that the Nobel Foundation has given World Scientific Publishing Company the right to bring the series up to date. The Nobel Foundation is very pleased that the intellectual and spiritual message to the world laid down in the laureates’ lectures will, thanks to the efforts of World Scientific, reach new readers all over the world. Lars Gyllensten Stig Ramel Chairman of the Board Executive Director Stockholm, June 1991 vii PREFACE The present volume contains the lectures by the Nobel laureates in physics during the years 1981-1990. Included for each year is also a translation of the presentation speech by a member of the Nobel Committee for Physics within the Royal Academy of Sciences delivered during the ceremony on December 10 - the day of Alfred Nobel’s death. The autobiographies of the laureates are reprinted with updated information according to the wishes of the respective author. The number of laureates is 23, since during the decade, three prizewinners were honoured during each of the five years 1981, 1986, 1988, 1989, and 1990, two prizewinners in 1983, 1984, and 1987, whereas a single laureate was awarded the prize in 1981 and again in 1985. Although there is no rule of rotation between the fields of physics, it is interesting in retrospect to note the following. Atomic physics was in focus in 1981 with the prize going to Nicolaas Bloembergen, Arthur Schawlow and Kai Siegbahn and again in 1989 to Norman Ramsey, Hans Dehmelt and Wolfgang Paul. In 1983 the prize to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and William Fowler was awarded for researches in astrophysics, while achievements within the field of elementary particle physics was the motivation on three occasions, in 1984 to Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer, in 1988 to Leon Lederman, Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, and in 1990 to Jerome Friedman, Henry Kendall and Richard Taylor. Discoveries or inventions within solid state physics appeared four times in the citations, namely in 1982 to Kenneth Wilson, in 1985 to Klaus von Klitzing, in 1986 to Ernst Ruska, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer and in 1987 to Georg Bednorz and Alex Müller. The last two mentioned prizes went in consecutive years not only to the same field of physics but also to people working in the same research institute, something unique in the history of the Nobel prizes in physics. The division of physics into subfields as done above is debatable, since the borderlines are not sharp. Take the case of lasers, which have importance and applications within large areas of science and technology, or take that of the electron microscope, which is of similar wide ranging importance. A new, important method or invention may be first used in conjunction with making a new discovery, but it may later turn out that the method or invention has much broader, significant applications within or outside the initial area of research. Gösta Ekspong ix CONTENTS Foreword Preface vii 1981 NICOLAAS BLOEMBERGEN, ARTHUR L SCHAWLOW and KAI M SIEGBAHN Presentation by Ingvar Lindgren 3 Biography of Nicolaas Bloembergen 7 Nonlinear Optics and Spectroscopy 12 Biography of Arthur L Schawlow 33 Spectroscopy in a New Light 36 Biography of Kai M Siegbahn 61 Electron Spectroscopy for Atoms, Molecules and Condensed Matter 63 1982 KENNETH G WILSON Presentation by Stig Lundqvist 95 Biography of Kenneth G Wilson 99 The Renormalization Group and Critical Phenomena 102 1983 SUBRAHMANYAN CHANDRASEKHAR and WILLIAM A FOWLER Presentation by Sven Johansson 135 Biography of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar 139 On Stars, their Evolution and their Stability 142 Biography of William A Fowler 167 Experimental and Theoretical Nuclear Astrophysics; The Quest for the Origin of the Elements 172 1984 CARLO RUBBIA and SIMON VAN DER MEER Presentation by Gösta Ekspong 233 x Biography of Carlo Rubbia 237 Experimental Observation of the Intermediate Vector Bosons W +, W- and Z0 240 Biography of Simon van der Meer 289 Stochastic Cooling and the Accumulation of Antiprotons 291 1985 KLAUS VON KLITZING Presentation by Stig Lundqvist 311 Biography of Klaus von Klitzing 315 The Quantized Hall Effect 316 1986 ERNST RUSKA, GERD BINNING and HEINRICH ROHRER Presentation by Sven Johansson 349 Biography of Ernst Ruska 353 The Development of the Electron Microscope and of Electron Microscopy 355 Biography of Gerd Binnig 383 Biography of Heinrich Rohrer 387 Scanning Tunneling Microscopy -From Birth to Adolescence 389 1987 J GEORG BEDNORZ and K ALEX MÜLLER Presentation by Gösta Ekspong 413 Biography of J Georg Bednorz 417 Biography of K Alex Müller 421 Perovskite-type Oxides - The New Approach to High-T, Superconductivity 424 1988 LEON M LEDERMAN, MELVIN SCHWARTZ and JACK STEINBERGER Presentation by Gösta Ekspong 461 Biography of Melvin Schwartz 465 The First High Energy Neutrino Experiment 467 Biography of Jack Steinberger 481 Experiments with High-Energy Neutrino Beams 487 Biography of Leon M Lederman 509 Observations in Particle Physics from Two Neutrinos to the Standard Model 511 xi 1989 NORMAN F RAMSEY, HANS G DEHMELT and WOLFGANG PAUL Presentation by Ingvar Lindgren 543 Biography of Norman F Ramsey 547 Experiments with Separated Oscillatory Fields and Hydrogen Masers 553 Biography of Hans G Dehmelt 575 Experiments with an Isolated Subatomic Particle at Rest 583 Biography of Wolfgang Paul 597 Electromagnetic Traps for Charged and Neutral Particles 601 1990 JEROME I FRIEDMAN, HENRY W KENDALL and RICHARD E TAYLOR Presentation by Cecilia Jarlskog 625 Biography of Richard E Taylor 629 Deep Inelastic Scattering: The Early Years 632 Biography of Henry W Kendall 673 Deep Inelastic Scattering: Experiments on the Proton and the Observation of Scaling 676 Biography of Jerome I Friedman 711 Deep Inelastic Scattering: Comparisons with the Quark Model 715 Physics 1981 NICOLAAS BLOEMBERGEN, ARTHUR L SCHAWLOW for their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy and KAI M SIEGBAHN for his contribution to the development of high-resolution electron spectroscopy 3 THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR PHYSICS Speech by Professor INGVAR LINDGREN of the Royal Academy of Sciences. Translation from the Swedish text Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, This year’s Nobel prize in physics is shared between three scientists- Nicolaas Bloembergen and Arthur Schawlow, both from the United States, and Kai Siegbahn from Sweden-for their contributions to the development of two important spectroscopic methods-laser spectroscopy and electron spectro- scopy. Both of these methods are based upon early discoveries of Albert Einstein. One of the major problems for physicists of the last century was to explain, with the “classical” concepts, the so-called photoelectric effect, i.e. the emission of electrons from a metal surface irradiated with light of short wavelength. In 1905 Einstein explained this phenomenon in a simple and elegant way, using the quantum hypothesis introduced by Max Planck five years earlier. Accord- ing to this model, light is a wave motion, but it is quantized, i.e. it is emitted in small pieces - light quanta or photons -which in some respects behave like particles. This discovery was the first foundation stone to be laid in the building of the “new” physics - the quantum physics - which was to develop rapidly during the first decades of this century. The photoelectric effect is the basis of the spectroscopy which Kai Siegbahn has developed together with his collaborators in Uppsala. When a photon of high energy-e.g. from an X-ray tube-hits an atom, it can penetrate deeply into the atom and expel an electron. By analyzing the electrons expelled in this way, it is possible to extract valuable information about the interior of the atom. Early experiments of this kind where performed in the second decade of this century, but the method was not sufficiently developed to probe the atomic structure until the 1950's. At that time Kai Siegbahn had for a number of years developed more and more sophisticated instruments for analyzing electrons emitted at the decay of certain radioactive nuclei-so called beta decays. When he and his collaborators applied this technique to analyze the electrons emitted in the photoelectric process, the new era of electron spectroscopy was born. With this spectroscopy it became possible to determine the binding energy of atomic electrons with higher accuracy than was previously possible. This was of great importance for testing new atomic models and computation schemes, which were being developed at the same time, partly due to the simultaneous rapid development of computers.