The Age of Innocence: Nuclear Physics between the First and Second World Wars

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Roger H. Stuewer (Professor Emeritus, Professor Emeritus, History of Science and Technology, University of Minnesota)

The Age of Innocence

Nuclear Physics between the First and Second World Wars

Roger H. Stuewer (Professor Emeritus, Professor Emeritus, History of Science and Technology, University of Minnesota)

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English

Oxford University Press
09 August 2018

First World War; Second World War; History of science; Nuclear structure physics

The two decades between the first and second world wars saw the emergence of nuclear physics as the dominant field of experimental and theoretical physics, owing to the work of an international cast of gifted physicists. Prominent among them were Ernest Rutherford, George Gamow, the husband and wife team of Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, Gregory Breit and Eugene Wigner, Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch, the brash Ernest Lawrence, the prodigious Enrico Fermi, and the incomparable Niels Bohr.

Their experimental and theoretical work arose from a quest to understand nuclear phenomena; it was not motivated by a desire to find a practical application for nuclear energy. In this sense, these physicists lived in an 'Age of Innocence'. They did not, however, live in isolation. Their research reflected their idiosyncratic personalities; it was shaped by the physical and intellectual environments of the countries and institutions in which they worked. It was also buffeted by the political upheavals after the Great War: the punitive postwar treaties, the runaway inflation in Germany and Austria, the Great Depression, and the intellectual migration from Germany and later from Austria and Italy.

Their pioneering experimental and theoretical achievements in the interwar period therefore are set within their personal, institutional, and political contexts. Both domains and their mutual influences are conveyed by quotations from autobiographies, biographies, recollections, interviews, correspondence, and other writings of physicists and historians.

By: Roger H. Stuewer (Professor Emeritus Professor Emeritus History of Science and Technology University of Minnesota)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 248mm, Width: 176mm, Spine: 31mm
Weight: 1.088kg
ISBN: 9780198827870
ISBN 10: 0198827873
Pages: 502
Publication Date: 09 August 2018
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Roger H. Stuewer received a double Ph.D. major in history of science and physics at the University of Wisconsin and founded the Program in History of Science and Technology at the University of Minnesota where he is Professor Emeritus. He has held appointments at Boston University and Harvard University, and has been visiting professor at the Universities of Munich, Vienna, Graz, and Amsterdam. He received the Abraham Pais Prize for History of Physics in 2013 and the Distinguished Alumni Award of the Department of Physics at the University of Wisconsin in 2014. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Association of Physics Teachers.

Reviews for The Age of Innocence: Nuclear Physics between the First and Second World Wars

This excellently written and extremely well researched account is likely to become a classic text for its subject-matter. Any physicist who is interested in the history of our subject during one of its most critical formative periods should acquire this book, from which I have learnt a lot and which I thoroughly recommend. * Peter Bussey, Contemporary Physics *