Inward Bound: Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World

Title ......Page 3
Copyright ......Page 4
Preface ......Page 5
Dedication ......Page 7
Contents ......Page 9
a) From X to Z ......Page 15
b) 1895-1945: a history ......Page 21
c) The postwar years: a memoir ......Page 32
Part One. 1895-1945: A History ......Page 47
a) Roentgen: X-rays ......Page 49
b) Becquerel: uranic rays ......Page 56
a) The Curies: Becquerel rays ......Page 66
b) Rutherford: a- and B-rays ......Page 72
a) Of Geissler\'s pump and Geissler\'s tube and Ruhmkorff\'s coil ......Page 81
b) Faraday, Maxwell, and the atomicity of charge ......Page 84
c) Of Rowland, Zeeman, and Lorentz ......Page 88
d) The discovery of the electron ......Page 92
f) Relativistic kinematics ......Page 101
5 Interlude: earliest physiological discoveries ......Page 107
a) Introduction ......Page 117
b) The first energy crisis ......Page 119
c) Interlude: atomic energy ......Page 129
d) Metabolous matter ......Page 131
e) Why a half-life? ......Page 134
f) Postscripts: modern times ......Page 138
7 Pitfalls of simplicity ......Page 143
a) Introduction ......Page 156
b) a-decay and the conjecture of B-monochromacy ......Page 159
c) Passage of electrons through matter: the position in 1907 ......Page 162
d) The first attack: absorption of B-rays ......Page 163
e) \'A revolutionary conclusion\' ......Page 166
f) The second attack: magnetic separation, photographic detection ......Page 167
g) Prenatal nuclear spectroscopy ......Page 169
h) The third attack: magnetic separation, detection by counters ......Page 172
a) Introduction ......Page 177
b) Pre-electron preludes ......Page 180
c) Early electron models ......Page 192
d) Ernest Rutherford, theoretical physicist ......Page 202
e) Niels Bohr ......Page 207
10 \'It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity\' ......Page 222
a) Introduction ......Page 235
b) Niels Bohr on B-radioactivity ......Page 237
c) Isotopes ......Page 238
d) From A to Z ......Page 239
e) A new pitfall: the first model of the nucleus ......Page 244
f) Binding energy ......Page 246
g) Physicists in the First World War ......Page 248
h) Strong interactions: first glimpses ......Page 251
a) The status of physics in the spring of 1925 ......Page 258
b) End of a revolution ......Page 264
c) A chronology ......Page 266
d) Quantum mechanics interpreted ......Page 269
e) Changing of the guard ......Page 275
a) Introduction ......Page 279
b) The exclusion principle ......Page 281
c) Spin ......Page 288
d) Quantum statistics ......Page 294
e) The Dirac equation ......Page 300
a) Quantum mechanics confronts the nucleus ......Page 310
b) In which the proton-electron model of the nucleus runs into trouble ......Page 312
c) B-spectra 1914-30, or the life and times of Charles Drummond Ellis ......Page 317
d) New physical laws or new elementary particles? Enter the neutrino ......Page 323
a) The end of the game of marbles ......Page 338
b) Preludes: Goettingen ......Page 345
c) Foundations: Dirac ......Page 348
d) Quantum fields and quantum statistics ......Page 352
e) Relativistic invariance and gauge invariance: beginnings ......Page 355
f) The positron ......Page 360
g) Appendix ......Page 366
a) Introduction ......Page 374
b) Physics in America: the onset of maturity; the emergence of Oppenheimer ......Page 378
c) A prelude: infinities before the positron theory ......Page 384
d) Quantum electrodynamics in the thirties ......Page 388
e) Scientific nostalgia: the search for alternatives ......Page 402
a) Enter the neutron ......Page 411
b) Of the deutcron, of cosmic rays, and of accelerators ......Page 416
c) What is a neutron? ......Page 423
d) Nuclear forces: phenomcnological beginnings ......Page 427
e) Fermi\'s tcntativo ......Page 431
f) How charge independence led to isospin ......Page 437
g) Quantum field theory encounters the nucleus. Mesons ......Page 440
h) Death of Rutherford ......Page 450
Part Two. The Postwar Years: A Memoir ......Page 459
a) Shelter Island and other personal reminiscences ......Page 461
b) Divine laughter: the muon ......Page 466
c) Quantum electrodynamics: the great leap forward ......Page 469
a) Of new accelerators and physics done by consortium ......Page 485
b) Home-made pions ......Page 493
c) In which meson field theories fall upon hard times ......Page 495
d) Symmetry saves, up to a point ......Page 499
e) Of a new spectroscopy and new detectors ......Page 504
f) What use quantum field theory? The years of uncertainty ......Page 506
a) \'Four r-mesons observed on Kilimanjaro\' ......Page 525
b) Early theoretical ideas ......Page 531
c) In which the invariance under reflections in space and conjugation of charge  turns out to be violated ......Page 537
d) Being selecta from the exploding weak interaction literature ......Page 547
e) Unfinished story of a near miss: the violations of CP- and of  time-reversal-invariance ......Page 552
f) Final comments on discrete symmetries ......Page 555
a) In which it is explained why a very rich period is treated with such brevity ......Page 564
b) Higher symmetries take off ......Page 566
c) New tools—new physics ......Page 583
d) Scaling. Partons ......Page 590
e) Conclusion: quantum field theory redux ......Page 594
22 Being a conclusion that starts as epilog and ends as prolog ......Page 635
APPENDIX. A synopsis of this book in the form of a chronology ......Page 641
INDEX OF NAMES ......Page 653
INDEX OF SUBJECTS ......Page 665