Remarkable Physicists from Galileo to Yukawa
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Remarkable Physicists From Galileo to Yukawa Ioan James Mathematical Institute, Oxford published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom cambridge university press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge, CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011–4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon´ 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org C Ioan James 2004 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2004 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeface Trump Mediaeval 9.25/13.5 pt. System LATEX2ε [tb] A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data James, I. M. (Ioan Mackenzie), 1928– Remarkable physicists: from Galileo to Yukawa / by Ioan James. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0 521 816874–ISBN 0 521 01706 8 (pb.) 1. Physicists – Biography. 2. Physics – History. I. Title. QC15.J36 2003 530.0922–dc21 [B] 2003055423 ISBN 0 521 81687 4 hardback ISBN 0 521 01706 8 paperback Contents Preface page ix Prologue xi 1 From Galileo to Daniel Bernoulli 1 Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) 1 Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) 8 Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) 16 Isaac Newton (1642–1726) 21 Daniel Bernoulli (1700–1782) 31 2 From Franklin to Laplace 36 Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) 36 Roger Joseph Boscovich (1711–1787) 47 Henry Cavendish (1731–1810) 56 Charles Augustin Coulomb (1736–1806) 60 Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827) 65 3 From Rumford to Oersted 74 Sir Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) (1753–1814) 74 Jean-Baptiste Fourier (1768–1830) 85 Thomas Young (1773–1829) 90 Andre-Marie´ Ampere` (1775–1836) 97 Hans Christian Oersted (1777–1851) 102 4 From Ohm to Helmholtz 107 Georg Ohm (1789–1854) 107 Michael Faraday (1791–1867) 112 George Green (1793–1841) 119 Joseph Henry (1797–1878) 125 Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) 132 5 From Kelvin to Boltzmann 141 William Thomson (Lord Kelvin of Largs) (1824–1907) 141 vi Contents James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) 150 J. Willard Gibbs (1839–1903) 157 John William Strutt (Lord Rayleigh) (1842–1919) 163 Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906) 168 6 From Rontgen¨ to Marie Curie 177 Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen¨ (1845–1923) 177 Joseph John Thomson (1856–1940) 183 Max Planck (1858–1947) 192 William Henry Bragg (1862–1942) 199 Marie Curie (1867–1934) 208 7 From Millikan to Einstein 221 Robert Millikan (1868–1953) 221 Ernest Rutherford (Lord Rutherford) (1871–1937) 227 Lise Meitner (1878–1968) 234 Otto Hahn (1879–1968) 242 Albert Einstein (1879–1955) 247 8 From Ehrenfest to Schrodinger¨ 259 Paul Ehrenfest (1880–1933) 259 Max Born (1882–1970) 266 Niels Bohr (1885–1962) 273 Frederick Lindemann (Lord Cherwell) (1886–1957) 284 Erwin Schrodinger¨ (1887–1961) 295 9 From de Broglie to Fermi 307 Louis de Broglie (1892–1987) 307 Satyendranath Bose (1894–1974) 313 Piotr Leonidovich Kapitza (1894–1984) 320 Jean-Fred´ eric´ Joliot (1900–1958) 327 Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) 335 10 From Heisenberg to Yukawa 343 Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) 343 Paul Dirac (1902–1984) 353 Contents vii J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) 359 Maria Goeppert-Mayer (1906–1972) 364 Hideki Yukawa (1907–1981) 369 Epilogue 375 Further Reading 379 Collections 385 Acknowledgements 387 1 From Galileo to Daniel Bernoulli Our first five remarkable physicists were born in the 137 years from 1564 to 1700. They came from Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, England and Switzerland. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) The great scientist we know as Galileo was born in Pisa on February 15, 1564. He was the eldest son of the notable composer, lutenist and musical theorist Vincenzio Galilei, of a long-established Florentine family, and his wife Giulia (nee´ Ammananti), a native of Pisa who considered herself socially superior to her husband. They had five or six other children. Like Dante, Leonardo, Michelangelo and other great Italians of that period he is universally known by his first name rather than by his family name. In 1574 the family moved to Florence. After four years of education in the Camaldolese abbey of Vallombrosa on the upper Arno, Galileo was expect- ing to make his career in the church. However, his father decided otherwise and arranged for his son to live in Pisa with a cousin, who would train him as a wool merchant. Before long it became clear that the young man was unusually able and so, at the age of seventeen, he entered the University of Pisa, training to become a doctor in accordance with his father’s wishes. However, he was dissatisfied with the lectures provided, left after four years without taking a degree, and when he returned home it was to work on math- ematics. Apparently he was introduced to the subject by Ostilio Ricci, said to have been a student of Tartaglia’s, who was mathematician at the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Galileo took pupils and gave some public lectures on mathematics in Siena and Florence. In 1587 he visited the lead- ing Jesuit astronomer and mathematician Father Christopher Clavius at the Gregorian University in Rome, who was interested in his first research papers, one on the determination of centres of gravity of parabolic conoids and another on an ingenious balance (La bilancetta)hehad designed for determining specific weights with precision. In 1589 Galileo was appointed to a teaching post in mathematics at the priest-dominated University of Pisa, at that time something of an intel- lectual backwater. During his time there he wrote, but did not publish, a 2 From Galileo to Daniel Bernoulli paper called De motu, about the flight of projectiles and other dynamical problems. Three years later he moved to a professorship in Padua, one of the leading universities of Europe, where Copernicus had taught and Dante had studied. Padua, in the Venetian Republic, offered a far more congenial atmosphere than Pisa. Professors were not well-paid; they were expected to supplement their modest salaries by private tuition. Galileo was an excel- lent teacher, whose students were devoted to him. He presided over a lively household of young men to whom he taught practical subjects such as mil- itary architecture, elementary astronomy and perspective. He also ran a small workshop to manufacture scientific instruments, and, as a result of his entrepreneurship, he became a man of means. Even so, after the death of his father in 1591, he found it difficult to meet his responsibilities towards his improvident brother, who frequently came to him for money, also his sisters needed dowries if they were to marry, so that at times he ran the risk of being arrested for debt. In the nearby city of Venice Galileo found friends in the nobility. The most important of these was Gianfrancesco Sagredo, a confirmed bachelor, who seemed to have been exhausted by dissipation in his youth. However, as he grew older he turned to tamer pursuits, including wild parties at his country estate on the River Brenta. Sagredo was interested in science and he formed a lasting friendship with Galileo, which they continued by cor- respondence when the Doge sent Sagredo to Aleppo for three years in a Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) 3 diplomatic capacity in 1608. Galileo never married but he formed a lasting relationship with a twenty-one-year-old Venetian serving-woman named Marina Gamba, said to be beautiful, hot-tempered, lusty and probably illit- erate. Galileo’s shrewish mother thoroughly disapproved of her and caused trouble. Marina had three children by Galileo: Vincenzo, Virginia and Livia. Galileo took an interest in their son’s education; once they were old enough he placed their daughters in the convent of San Matteo in Arcetri, on the outskirts of Florence. Galileo was already coming round to the view that the heliocentric system of Copernicus was much more plausible than the geocentric system of Aristotle and Ptolemy. In this he was influenced by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler, whose profile comes next. Among other things, Galileo invented a machine for raising large amounts of water from aquifers, an air thermoscope and a computing device for geometrical and ballistic purposes described in his first printed work Le operazioni del compasso geometrico e militare (Padua, 1606), which described the operation of a lightweight military compass he had designed in collaboration with a Venetian toolmaker. In pure science his research led him about 1602 to the discovery of the isochronicity of the pendulum and to the preliminary but wrong discussion of the law of falling bodies. In 1609 he was the first to apply the newly invented telescope to astronomical observations, revealing the mountains on the moon, numerous stars invisible to the naked eye, the nature of the Milky Way and four of Jupiter’s satellites (named the Medicean stars). These sensational discoveries were described in his Sidereus nuncius (The Sidereal Messenger)(Venice, 1610), one of the most important scien- tific books of the seventeenth century, which at once made Galileo famous all over Europe. The popular excitement was overwhelming. The Pope had declared the first year of the new century to be a Jubilee year. It was to be a year of celebration but also of renewed determination to stem the tide of reform. The greatest intellectual of the church of Rome, Cardinal Robert Bellamine, led the drive to stamp out heresy. One of the first victims was the Dominican friar Giordano Bruno, who was imprisoned, tortured and burnt at the stake for his beliefs.