Hans Bethe

Hans Bethe
Born
Hans Albrecht Bethe

(1906-07-02)July 2, 1906
DiedMarch 6, 2005(2005-03-06) (aged 98)
CitizenshipGermany
United States (1941–2005)
Alma materUniversity of Frankfurt
University of Munich (PhD)
Known for
Spouse
Rose Ewald
(m. 1939)
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsNuclear physics
Theoretical physics
Institutions
ThesisTheorie der Beugung von Elektronen an Kristallen (1928)
Doctoral advisorArnold Sommerfeld
Doctoral students
Other notable studentsFreeman Dyson
Signature

Hans Albrecht Bethe (/ˈbɛθə/; German: [ˈhans ˈbeːtə] ; July 2, 1906 – March 6, 2005) was a German-American physicist who made major contributions to nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum electrodynamics and solid-state physics, and received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1967 for his work on the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis.[1][2] For most of his career, Bethe was a professor at Cornell University.[3]

During World War II, he was head of the Theoretical Division at the secret Los Alamos laboratory that developed the first atomic bombs. There he played a key role in calculating the critical mass of the weapons and developing the theory behind the implosion method used in both the Trinity test and the "Fat Man" weapon dropped on Nagasaki in August 1945.

After the war, Bethe also played an important role in the development of the hydrogen bomb, although he had originally joined the project with the hope of proving it could not be made. Bethe later campaigned with Albert Einstein and the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists against nuclear testing and the nuclear arms race. He helped persuade the Kennedy and Nixon administrations to sign, respectively, the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (SALT I).

His scientific research never ceased and he was publishing papers well into his nineties, making him one of the few scientists to have published at least one major paper in his field during every decade of his career, which in Bethe's case spanned nearly seventy years. Freeman Dyson, once his doctoral student, called him the "supreme problem-solver of the 20th century".[4]

  1. ^ a b Lee, S.; Brown, G. E. (2007). "Hans Albrecht Bethe. 2 July 1906 -- 6 March 2005: Elected ForMemRS 1957". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 53: 1. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2007.0018.
  2. ^ Horgan, John (1992). "Illuminator of the Stars". Scientific American. 267 (4): 32–40. Bibcode:1992SciAm.267d..32H. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1092-32.
  3. ^ Available at www.JamesKeckCollectedWorks.org [1] Archived May 9, 2019, at the Wayback Machine are the class notes taken by one of his students at Cornell from the graduate courses on Nuclear Physics and on Applications of Quantum Mechanics he taught in the spring of 1947.
  4. ^ Wark, David (January 11, 2007). "The Supreme Problem Solver". Nature. 445 (7124): 149–150. Bibcode:2007Natur.445..149W. doi:10.1038/445149a.

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