Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

CHAPTER 15: THE GOLDEN AGE OF PHYSICS

1. Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Op. cit., page 134.

2. C. P. Snow, The Search, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958, page 88.

3. Rhodes, Op. cit., page 137.

4. Wilson, Rutherford: Simple Genius, Op. cit., page 404.

5. Rhodes, Op. cit., page 137.

6. Moore, Niels Bohr, The Man and the Scientist, Op. cit., page 21.

7. Stefan Rozental (editor), Niels Bohr, Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1967, page 137, quoted in Rhodes, Op. cit., page 114.

8. See Moore, Op. cit., pages 80ff for the voltage required to make electrons ‘jump’ out of their orbits; see also pages 122–123 for the revised periodic table; see also Rhodes, Op. cit., page 115.

9. Emilio Segrè, From X-Rays to Quarks, London and New York: W. H. Freeman, 1980, page 124.

10. Helge Kragh, Quantum Generations: A History of Physics in the Twentieth Century, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999, page 160, for a table of visitors to Copenhagen.

11. Paul Strathern, Bohr and Quantum Theory, London: Arrow, 1998, pages 70–72.

12. Moore, Op. cit., page 137.

13. Strathern, Op. cit., page 74.

14. Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Beyond, New York: Harper, 1971, page 38; quoted in Rhodes, Op. cit., page 116.

15. Moore, Op. cit., page 138.

16. Heisenberg, Op. cit., page 61, quoted in Rhodes, Op. cit., pages 116–117.

17. Strathern, Op. cit., page 77.

18. Moore, Op. cit., page 139.

19. Snow, The Physicists, Op. cit., page 68.

20. Moore, Op. cit., page 14.

21. Kragh, Op. cit., page 164–165 for the mathematics.

22. Rhodes, Op. cit., page 128; Moore, Op. cit., page 143; Kragh, Op. cit., page 165.

23. Heisenberg, Op. cit., page 77; quoted in Rhodes, Op. cit., page 130.

24. Moore, Op. cit., page 151.

25. John A. Wheeler and W. H. Zurek (editors). Quantum Theory and Measurement, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983, quoted in Kragh, Op. cit., page 209.

26. Gerald Holton, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1973, page 120.

27. Kragh, Op. cit., page 170 for a table.

28. Wilson, Op. cit., pages 444–446. See also: Rhodes, Op. cit., page 153.

29. Ibid., page 449.

30. Rhodes, Op. cit., page 154.

31. Ibid., page 155.

32. Andrew Brown, The Neutron and the Bomb, A Biography of James Chadwick, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, page 8.

33. Rhodes, Op. cit., pages 155–156.

34. Kragh, Op. cit., page 185.

35. Rhodes, Op. cit., page 160.

36. Brown, Op. cit., page 102.

37. Rhodes, Op. cit., pages 161–162.

38. Brown, Op. cit., page 104; see also: James Chadwick, ‘Some personal notes on the search for the neutron,’ Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Congress of the History of Science, 1964, page 161, quoted in Rhodes, Op. cit., page 162. These accounts vary slightly.

39. Rhodes, Op. cit., pages 163–164; Brown, Op. cit., page 105.

40. Kragh, Op. cit., page 185.

41. Brown, Op. cit., page 106.

42. Timothy Ferris, The Whole Shebang: A State of the Universe(s) Report, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. page 41.

43. Gale Christianson, Edwin Hubble: Mariner of the Nebulae, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, paperback edition, 1996, page 199. See also: John Gribbin, Copernicus to the Cosmos, London: Phoenix, 1997, pages 2 and 186ff.

44. Clark, Einstein, Op. cit., page 213. See also: Banesh Hoffmann, Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel, London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1973, page 215.

45. Ferris, Op. cit., page 42.

46. Christianson, Op. cit., page 199; Ferris, Op. cit., page 43.

47. Clark, Einstein, Op. cit., page 406; Ferris, Op. cit., page 44.

48. Ferris, Op. cit., page 45.

49. Gribbin, Companion to the Cosmos, Op. cit., pages 92–93.

50. Christianson, Op. cit., pages 157–160.

51. Ibid., pages 189–195.

52. Ferris, Op. cit., page 45.

53. Christianson, Op. cit., pages 260–269.

54. Thomas Hager, Force of Nature: The Life of Linus Pauling, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1995, page 217.

55. Ibid., page 65.

56. Ibid., page 113.

57. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Isabelle Stengers, A History of Chemistry, translated by Deborah Dam, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996, pages 242ff.

58. Hager, Op. cit., pages 136.

59. Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers, Op. cit., pages 242–243. Hager, Op. cit., page 136.

60. Hager, Op. cit., page 138.

61. Ibid., page 148.

62. Heider and London’s theory has become the subject of revisionist chemical history recently. See for example, Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers, Op. cit., page 243.

63. Hager, Op. cit., page 169.

64. Ibid., page 171.

65. Ibid., page 159.

66. Many books published on chemistry in the 1930s make no reference to Heitler and London, or Pauling.

67. Glyn Jones, The Jet Pioneers, London: Methuen, 1989, page 21.

68. Ibid., pages 22–23.

69. Ibid., page 24.

70. Ibid., pages 27–28. British accounts of Whittle’s contributions are generally negligent, perhaps because he was so badly treated. In Aviation, An Historical Survey from Its Origins to the End of World War II, by Charles Gibbs-Smith, and published by HMSO in 1970, Whittle rates three references only and by the second he is an Air Commodore! H. Montgomery Hyde’s British Air Policy Between the Wars 1918–1931, London: Heinemann, 1976, 539pp, has one reference and one note on Whittle.

71. Jones, Op. cit., page 29.

72. Ibid., page 36.

73. John Allen Paulos, Beyond Numeracy, New York: Knopf, 1991, page 95.

74. Ray Monk, Wittgenstein, Op. cit., page 295.

75. Ibid., page 295n.

76. Ernst Nagel and James Newman, ‘Goedel’s Proof, in James Newman (editor), The World of Mathematics (volume 3, of 4), New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955, pages 1668–1695, especially page 1686.

77. Newman, Op. cit., page 1687.

78. Paulos, Op. cit., page 97.

79. David Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality, London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1997, Penguin paperback, 1998, pages 236–237.

80. Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh, The Mathematical Experience, London: The Harvester Press, 1981, page 319.