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This book tells captivating stories of misadventures of two renowned theoretical physicists in the Soviet Union. The first part is devoted to Friedrich (Fritz) Houtermans, an outstanding Dutch-Austrian-German physicist who was the first to suggest that the source of stars' energy is thermonuclear fusion, and also made a number of other important contributions to cosmochemistry and geochemistry. In 1935, Houtermans, a German communist, in an attempt to save his life from Hilter's Gestapo, fled to the Soviet Union. He took up an appointment at the Kharkov Physico-Technical Institute, working there for two years with the Russian physicist Valentin P Fomin. In the Great Purge of 1937, Houtermans...
In the 1950s, Soviet nuclear scientists and leaders imagined a stunning future when giant reactors would generate energy quickly and cheaply, nuclear engines would power cars, ships, and airplanes, and peaceful nuclear explosions would transform the landscape. Driven by the energy of the atom, the dream of communism would become a powerful reality. Thirty years later, that dream died in Chernobyl. What went wrong? Based on exhaustive archival research and interviews, Red Atom takes a behind-the-scenes look at the history of the Soviet Union's peaceful use of nuclear power. It explores both the projects and the technocratic and political elite who were dedicated to increasing state power through technology. And it describes the political, economic, and environmental fallout of Chernobyl. A story of big science run amok, Red Atom illuminates the problems that can befall any society heavily invested in large-scale technology.
Aided by personal documents and institutional archives that were closed for decades, this book recounts the development of physics—or, more aptly, science under stress—in Soviet Russia up to World War II. Focusing on Leningrad, center of Soviet physics until the late 1930s, Josephson discusses the impact of scientific, cultural, and political revolution on physicists' research and professional aspirations. Political and social revolution in Russia threatened to confound the scientific revolution. Physicists eager to investigate new concepts of space, energy, light, and motion were forced to accommodate dialectical materialism and subordinate their interests to those of the state. They ultimately faced Stalinist purges and the shift of physics leadership to Moscow. This account of scientists cut off from their Western colleagues reveals a little-known part of the history of modern physics. Aided by personal documents and institutional archives that were closed for decades, this book recounts the development of physics—or, more aptly, science under stress—in Soviet Russia up to World War II. Focusing on Leningrad, center of Soviet physics un
This book describes the life, times and science of the Soviet physicist Lev Vasilevich Shubnikov (1901-1937). From 1926 to 1930 Shubnikov worked in Leiden where he was the co-discoverer of the Shubnikov-De Haas effect. After his return to the Soviet Union he founded in Kharkov in Ukraine the first low-temperature laboratory in the Soviet Union, which in a very short time became the foremost physics institute in the country and among other things led to the discovery of type-II superconductivity. In August 1937 Shubnikov, together with many of his colleagues, was arrested and shot early in November 1937. This gripping story gives deep insights into the pioneering work of Soviet physicists before the Second World War, as well as providing much previously unpublished information about their brutal treatment at the hands of the Stalinist regime.
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The story of the discovery of supersymmetry is a fascinating one, unlike that of any other major development in the history of science. This engaging book presents a view of the process, mainly in the words of people who participated. It combines anecdotal descriptions and personal reminiscences with more technical accounts of the trailblazers, covering the birth of the theory and its first years — the origin of the idea, four-dimensional field theory realization, and supergravity. The eyewitnesses convey to us the drama of one of the deepest discoveries in theoretical physics in the 20th century. This book will be equally interesting and useful to young researchers in high energy physics and to mature scholars — physicists and historians of science.
Includes entries for maps and atlases.