Legends in Their Own Time: A Century of American Physical Scientists

Front Matter....Pages i-xvii
Astronomy and the Harvard Observatory....Pages 1-20
Henry Rowland and Electricity....Pages 21-31
J. Willard Gibbs and the Origins of Physical Chemistry....Pages 33-53
A. A. Michelson and the Ether....Pages 55-78
R. A. Millikan and the Maturity of American Science....Pages 79-98
The Growth of American Astronomy....Pages 99-115
Irving Langmuir and the General Electric Laboratories....Pages 117-132
Linus Pauling and American Quantum Chemistry....Pages 133-144
Arthur Compton and “Compton Scattering”....Pages 145-169
Davisson and Germer and Quantum Physics....Pages 171-177
E. O. Lawrence and Nuclear Research....Pages 179-197
Carl Anderson and Antimatter....Pages 199-215
Hans Bethe and Energy in the Sun....Pages 217-231
The Manhattan Project: Witness to the Atomic Age....Pages 233-243
The Myth of Symmetry: Yang and Lee....Pages 245-255
The Emergence of Solid-State Physics....Pages 257-276
Murray Gell-Mann and More Particles: Forces within the Nucleus....Pages 277-295
Richard Feynman and Quantum Electrodynamics....Pages 297-314
Glashow, Weinberg, and the Search for a Unified Field Theory....Pages 315-322
Beyond the GUT....Pages 323-329
Back Matter....Pages 331-361