- ISBN-10:
- 0226121119
- ISBN-13:
- 9780226121116
- Pub. Date:
- 08/16/2004
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- ISBN-10:
- 0226121119
- ISBN-13:
- 9780226121116
- Pub. Date:
- 08/16/2004
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
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Overview
Born out of a symposium held to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Fermi's birth, Fermi Remembered combines essays and newly commissioned reminiscences with private material from Fermi's research notebooks, correspondence, speech outlines, and teaching to document the profound and enduring significance of Fermi's life and labors. The volume also features extensives archival material—including correspondence between Fermi and biophysicist Leo Szilard and a letter from Harry Truman—with new introductions that provide context for both the history of physics and the academic tradition at the University of Chicago.
Edited by James W. Cronin, a University of Chicago physicist and Nobel laureate himself, Fermi Remembered is a tender tribute to one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century.
Contributors:
Harold Agnew
Nina Byers
Owen Chamberlain
Geoffrey F. Chew
James W. Cronin
George W. Farwell
Jerome I. Friedman
Richard L. Garwin
Murray Gell-Mann
Maurice Glicksman
Marvin L. Goldberger
Uri Haber-Schaim
Roger Hildebrand
Tsung Dao Lee
Darragh Nagle
Jay Orear
Marshall N. Rosenbluth
Arthur Rosenfeld
Robert Schluter
Jack Steinberger
Valentine Telegdi
Al Wattenberg
Frank Wilczek
Lincoln Wolfenstein
Courtenay Wright
Chen Ning Yang
Gaurang Yodh
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226121116 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 08/16/2004 |
| Edition description: | 1 |
| Pages: | 296 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
With Fermi at Columbia, Chicago, and Los Alamos
By Darragh Nagle
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2004 University of ChicagoAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0-226-12111-9
Chapter One
The story begins for me back in 1940 at Columbia University when, as a shiny new graduate student, I thought I should pay a courtesy call on the illustrious Professor Enrico Fermi, whose presence at Columbia was one reason for my coming. His office was listed as seventh floor of Pupin physics laboratory. So I took the elevator and got off at that floor. There was a sort of foyer serving two wings. I looked around for the office. I wondered whether he would be very formal, as I had heard some Europeans were, and would require an appointment set up with his secretary. Suddenly ... a door burst open, and a dark-haired man ran past me at full tilt, disappearing through the opposite door. He was wearing a lab coat and was carrying a bit of something in a pair of chemical tongs. I stood there flat-footed wondering what to do, when the first door burst open again, and what appeared to be a younger version of the first gentleman, similarly attired and similarly burdened, dashed by me and also disappeared through the second door. Although the full significance of this minidrama was not completely clear to me then, it seemed clear enough that this was not the day for a courtesy call on the professor. The bit of something that was being carried was probably a rhodium foil, which had been activated by neutrons. Because rhodium decays with a half-life of 42 seconds, one had to be quick in carrying it from the lab where it was activated to a place where its activity could be measured. Only later did I find myself caught up in races devised by Fermi and Herbert Anderson.Soon afterward I was to meet Fermi in the classroom. The course was mechanics, elasticity, hydrodynamics, and a short introduction to quantum mechanics. The course was exceptionally clear, beautifully organized. He wrote everything out on the board: as a consequence I have complete notes of the course. He also gave a course in thermodynamics, using his book. Other faculty members-Maria Mayer, Arnold Nordseick-also gave great lectures. Edward Teller, on the other hand, was interesting and informative, but quite disorganized.
In February 1942 Fermi transferred his activities to the University of Chicago. It was December of that year that he directed the historic startup of the pile in the west stands of Stagg Field. I always thought of the pile as a sleeping, malevolent monster, and the Gothic style entrance to the stands as appropriate for some kind of horror movie. Inside you saw demonic figures, with red eyes glaring in faces black as pitch (although of course it was graphite) scurrying about. Instead of chains there were the control rods to restrain the monster. Outside the students and citizens of Chicago plodded through the snow, unaware.
A few months later the pile was torn down and moved to the Argonne Palos Park site. Later, after the pile had been rebuilt and brought back into operation, a vigorous program of experimentation was instituted, and Fermi would often be at Palos Park. Sometimes he would stay overnight in the dorm. At night there was no food service, so we did our own thing in the kitchen. Fermi would sometimes make a frittata. I remember his sitting up in bed one night, reaching for a little notebook, writing a few lines, and then going back to sleep.
Later, many from the "Met lab" moved to Los Alamos. Anderson and I drove out together. We were met by Fermi, who characteristically took us on a hike: to the Upper Crossing of Frijoles Canyon, in the course of which he told us about some current activities.
Fermi had a little group headed by Herb, which carried out experiments at Omega site. Perc King was in charge of the Water Boiler, the enriched reactor we used for measurements of cross sections, etc. Others in the group were myself, Julius Tabin, Joan Hinton, Bob Carter, and Jim Bridge. We shared the building with a group doing critical assembly work: Fermi was deeply suspicious and ordered us to stay away whenever critical assembly tests were planned. We would go up to the mesa or sometimes take a hike, often with Fermi. Sadly, he was proven right by the tragic, needless deaths of Louis Slotin and Harry Daghlian. I have often wondered why Fermi did not intervene with Robert Oppenheimer.
Following the Trinity test in July 1945, one wanted to collect soil samples from the crater a few hours after the explosion. The samples were to be analyzed by the radiochemists to obtain the ratio of the fission products to the unreacted fissionable material. From this one got a value for the yield of the explosion. The Anderson-Nagle-Tabin method was to use a Sherman tank to go into the crater, to dig up samples thru a hole in the bottom of the tank. The tank bottom and personnel compartments were lined with lead.
Julius Tabin, Anderson, and I took turns going into the crater, and of course there was a driver. It was dangerous because if the tank stalled, there was no escape; we would have cooked. Our luck held, we got our samples, and the tank didn't stall, but we all got significant doses of radiation.
Fermi's method was simple, practical, and safer. He had George Weil fit out a second Sherman tank with rockets that were to be fired into the crater and retrieved with cables attached to the rockets. As it turned out, the second tank stalled some distance away from where it was supposed to be, and the cables got scrambled up. The experiment failed, but nobody got hurt.
I joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1952, with the intention of working on the new cyclotron. Herb Anderson told me how the cyclotron happened. After the war, scientists were held in the highest regard in the United States, Fermi in particular. The story is that Urner Liddell, chief of the nuclear physics branch of the Office of Naval Research, came to Chicago and asked, "What instrument would Fermi like to have?" Herb said to Fermi, "What would you like? I'll build it. An accelerator, a big computer, ... You name it." Fermi chose a cyclotron. The ONR was as good as its word providing funds (along with the Atomic Energy Commission), and also making available the facilities of the New York Naval Shipyard for much of the construction. The machine followed principles developed at Berkeley. Indeed they provided drawings and invaluable advice. But the success of the Chicago project was due in large measure to the engineering and organizing skills of Herbert Anderson.
In 1952, the cyclotron was at the stage of final assembly and testing in the new building known as John Marshall's Barn. I had come back to Chicago, and one day I had taken time off from hunting leaks to sit in my lab and read some reports. Suddenly, Herb burst through the door in a manner reminiscent of our first encounter years ago. He demanded, rather truculently I thought, to know what I was doing. I said politely that I was thinking of building a liquid hydrogen target in order to study pion-proton scattering. He said, politely this time, that that was a good idea, and to get going. So I got out of my chair and went across the street to the famous west stands to see Earl Long of the Institute for the Study of Metals, who then was very helpful to me in getting a hydrogen target built quickly out of simple materials.
Anderson, Fermi, and I began to measure the total cross sections of hydrogen at several energies, first for negative pions, then for the charge-exchange reaction, followed by deuterium and hydrogen cross sections for several energies of negative and positive pions. Later we were joined by Anderson's students Ron Martin, Maurice Glicksman, and Guarang Yodh, who made important contributions and added to the pleasure of the work.
The results showed the cross section for negative pions rising about linearly with the energy up to about 100 MeV and then appearing to level off at about 60 millibarns, the "geometrical" value, that is, pi times the pion Compton wavelength squared. At the time this type of behavior seemed not unreasonable. The positive pion cross sections for a more limited range of energies seemed to be larger, rising, but not yet "leveling off."
At first we were puzzled: why were the positive pion cross sections larger, considering that only one reaction channel was open for pi plus, whereas for pi minus three channels were open: namely, elastic scattering, charge exchange, and radiative capture?
One day Anderson and Fermi were in the cyclotron control room working on the experiment. Fermi was operating the counters, and Anderson was reading his mail. Herb said, "Here's a letter from Keith Brueckner. He says he can explain our cross sections." Fermi grunted something like "What does he know?" Anderson said, "It says here that the sections should be in ratios 9:2:1, and there should be a peak around 180 MeV." At this point Fermi grabbed the paper, went up to his office, and left Anderson to run the counters. Fermi reappeared soon and explained it all to him.
Briefly, Brueckner introduced a phenomenology based on ideas from strong coupling meson theory, and the charge independence of nuclear forces, including the pions. He predicted a resonance at about 180 MeV for pi plus, and that near 180 MeV the cross sections for the pi plus elastic reaction, the charge exchange reaction, and the pi minus elastic scattering would be 9:2:1. Strong suggestions of this seemed to be in our data.
We then set about measuring the angular dependence of these reactions. The target was modified to accommodate this. Partial wave analysis of the data was done first by Fermi, then by the rest of us, and by many others. In particular, Fermi and Nick Metropolis, working at Los Alamos with the Maniac computer, did analyses requiring energy continuity of the several partial wave amplitudes. The Maniac found several plausible solutions, one of which showed the [P.sub.3/2], I-spin 3/2 resonance. It took a long time to convince everyone (including Fermi) that this latter one was the correct one. The work of Martin and Glicksman was important in this connection.
Fermi was proud of his strength and stamina, and liked to lead on hikes, swims, and so on. During the west stands times, we would swim in Lake Michigan, Fermi in the lead, and Herb, me, Tabin, and Leona Woods following along. He liked tennis. He liked to ski: in New Mexico we would ski at places like Sawyer's Hill, the bowl above Camp May, and Hyde Park.
I remember a story about Fermi and Emilio Segrè. His old friend was trying to persuade Fermi that trout fishing was a great sport. Fermi was not persuaded.
Segrè: "But you don't understand, Enrico. It requires great technique: you must select just the right fly, cast it, and make it move through the water just so, and then the fish will think it's a real fly...."
Fermi: "Ah, I see, a battle of wits!"
(Continues...)]
Excerpted from With Fermi at Columbia, Chicago, and Los Alamos by Darragh Nagle Copyright © 2004 by University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
PrefaceChapter 1 Biographical Introduction
Editor's comment
Emilio Segrè Biographical Introduction
Chapter 2 - Fermi and the Elucidation of Matter
Editor's comment
Frank Wilczek Fermi and the Elucidation of Matter
Chapter 3 Letters and a Speech Relating to the Development of Nuclear Energy
Editor's introductory comments
To Harry M. Durning, January 16, 1939
From George B. Pegram to S. C. Hooper, March 18, 1939
From Leo Szilard, July 3, 1939
From Leo Szilard, July 5, 1939
From Leo Szilard, July 8, 1939
To Leo Szilard, July 9, 1939
From Leo Szilard, July 11, 1939
From Vannevar Bush, August 15, 1941
From Harry S. Truman, August 11, 1950
Outline for the speech "The Genesis of the Nuclear Energy Project," January 30, 1954
Text of the speech "The Genesis of the Nuclear Energy Project," November 1955
Chapter 4 Correspondence between Fermi and Colleagues: Scientific, Political, Humorous
Editor's comments on letters
To James F. Byrnes, October 16, 1945
From C. N. Yang, January 5, 1950
To C. N. Yang, January 12, 1950
From Erwin Schrödinger, February 10, 1951
To Erwin Schrödinger, Februay 27, 1951
From Fred Reines and Clyde Cowan, October 4, 1952
To Fred Reines, October 8, 1952
To Dean G. Acheson, May 22, 1952
From Linus Pauling, June 16, 1952
From George Gamow, March 13, 1953
To George Gamow, March 24, 1953
From Samuel Goudsmit, March 11, 1953
To Samuel Goudsmit, March 24, 1953
From George Kistiakowsky, September 29, 1953
To George Kistiakowsky, September 30, 1953
From Arthur Compton, December 2, 1953
To Arthur Compton, December 14, 1953
From Owen Chamberlain, February 2, 1954
Chapter 5 Research and Teaching: Selections from the Archives
International House application, June 10, 1940
To Walter Bartky, December 3, 1945
Participants at the inauguration of the research institutes at the University of Chicago, August 1945
Staff of the Institute for Nuclear Studies members, 1950
Genesis of theory of cosmic ray acceleration, 1948-1949
To Hannes Alfvén, December 24, 1948
Abstract for Fermi's paper on cosmic radiation, April 15, 1949
Comments by Herbert Anderson and Edward Teller on Fermi's paper on cosmic rays
Summary page from data book on meson-nucleon scattering, February 1952
Program for calculation of cyclotron orbits on the Maniac computer, 1951
Equations for a charged particle in a cylindrically symmetric magnetic field
The instruction set for the Maniac computer
Fermi's flowchart for a program to calculate the orbits emanating from a target
Notes for setting up the calculation of the orbits
Program for calculating initial direction cosines
Quantum mechanics exam, spring quarter 1954
Outline for the speech "The Future of Nuclear Physics," Rochester, January 10, 1952
Chapter 6 Reminiscences of Fermi's Faculty and Research Colleagues, 1945-1954
Richard Garwin Working with Fermi at Chicago and Postwar Los Alamos
Murray Gell-Mann No Shortage of Memories
Marvin Goldberger Enrico Fermi (1901-1954): The Complete Physicist
Roger Hildebrand Fermi's Classrooms
Darragh Nagle With Fermi at Columbia, Chicago, and Los Alamos
Valentine Telegdi Reminiscences of Enrico Fermi
Albert Wattenberg Fermi as My Chauffeur (Fermi at Argonne National Laboratory and Chicago, 1946-1948)
Courtenay Wright Fermi in Action
Chapter 7 Reminiscences of Fermi's Students, 1945-1954
Harold Agnew A Snapshot of My Interaction with Fermi
Owen Chamberlain A Brief Reminiscence of Enrico Fermi
Geoffrey Chew Personal Recollections from 1944-1948
George Farwell Reminiscences of Fermi
Uri Haber-Schaim Fermi in Varenna, Summer 1954
T. D. Lee Reminiscences of Chicago Days
Jay Orear My First Meetings with Fermi
Arthur Rosenfeld Reminiscences of Fermi
Robert Schluter Some Reminiscences of Enrico Fermi
Jack Steinberger Fermi and My Graduate Years at Chicago: Happy Reminiscences
Chapter 8 Reminiscences of Students of the Fermi Period, 1945-1954
Nina Byers Fermi and Szilard
Jerome Friedman A Student's View of Fermi
Maurice Glicksman Enrico Fermi: Teacher, Colleague, Mentor
Marshall Rosenbluth A Young Man Encounters Enrico Fermi
Lincoln Wolfenstein Fermi Interactions
C. N. Yang Reminiscences of Enrico Fermi
Gaurang Yodh This Account Is Not According to the Mahabharata!
Chapter 9 What Can We Learn with High Energy Accelerators?
James W. Cronin Fermi's Look into His Crystal Ball
Further Reading
List of Contributors
Index