Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics

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The Washington Conferences on Theoretical Physics were ten academic conferences held annually in Washington, D.C., United States from 1935 to 1947. The conferences were organized by nuclear physicists George Gamow and Edward Teller from George Washington University and geophysicist John Adam Fleming from Carnegie Institution of Washington. Topics included nuclear physics, condensed matter physics, geophysics, biophysics, astrophysics and cosmology. These were invitation-only events and small in size, the 1938 conference, for example, consisted of 25 members. [1]

Contents

During the 1935 conference, Niels Bohr famously announced the discovery of nuclear fission.

History

In 1934, geophysicist Merle Tuve of Carnegie Institution, proposed the president of George Washington University (GWU), Cloyd H. Marvin, to open a professorship in theoretical physics to make a bridge between the two institutions. [2] George Gamow was invited and took the position the same year. [2] He accepted under two conditions, he wanted his collaborator Edward Teller to be accepted as well, and he wanted to be responsible of organizing a series of international conferences. [2] [3] John Adam Fleming from Carnegie Institution also joined the organization. [4]

Major events

The first conference was held on 1935 on the topic of nuclear physics. The discussion was around the differences between the nucleon magnetic moment and the electron magnetic moment, as well as theories of gamma rays and of beta decay. [5]

The 4th conference in 1938 was on stellar energy and nuclear processes. Hans Bethe inspired by the discussions during the conference, developed in 1939 a theory of stellar nuclear processes, including the theory of the CNO cycle. [2] [5] [6] He received the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work. [5]

On January 26, 1939, during the 5th conference on low temperature physics, Bohr made speech on an unrelated topic. [2] He made the first overt announcement to the scientific community on the successful splitting of uranium nuclei by neutron bombardment. [2] The discoveries were made by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, who confirmed the ideas of Otto Robert Frisch and Lise Meitner, colleague of Hahn, in Copenhagen. [7] Teller reports that Tuve reproduced the experiment overnight and invited the participants the next day to observe the fission events in his lab with the aid of a Geiger counter. [8] Scientists rapidly raised concerns that such a discovery could enable Nazi Germany to develop a nuclear weapon. [2] This announcement led to the Einstein–Szilard letter sent to the US president Franklin D. Roosevelt. [2] The implications of this discovery were not communicated to the wider public until 1945. [9]

During 1942, the conferences were postponed due to United States involvement in World War II. [10] During this time, Teller went to work in the Manhattan Project. The project led to the creation of the first atomic bomb. [2]

The conference series restarted in 1946 on the topic of biophysics by recent interest of Gamow on proteins. [5]

The last conference was on gravitation and electromagnetism in November 1947. It followed after the Shelter Island Conference (May 1947) which had reawakened the interest of physicists in quantum field theory. Julian Schwinger was present in both of the conferences and, in-between conferences, worked a preliminary paper on his seminal calculation of the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of the electron (published in 1948). This attracted the attention of J. Robert Oppenheimer and Richard Feynman, both also present at Washington, leading to the development of quantum electrodynamics. [11]

Dissolution and legacy

After the 10th conference in 1947, the conferences were discontinued due to a variety of reasons: Gamow had turned his interest into cosmology, Teller had left after the war to work at the University of Chicago and Fleming, co-organizer had stepped down from his position of chief of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at Carnegie Institution. [10]

In 2003, Stephen Joel Trachtenberg commissioned two bronze plaques that were mounted in the Corcoran Hall of GWU. One about the life and work of Gamow, and another plaque of the 1939 announcement of Bohr. [9] Bohr's plate begins as: [9]

In this room, January 26, 1939, Niels Bohr made the first public announcement of the successful disintegration of uranium into barium with the attendant release of approximately two hundred million electron volts of energy per disintegration. This announcement was heard by the physicists listed below who were attending the fifth of the Conferences on Theoretical Physics which are sponsored jointly by the Carnegie Institution of Washington and The George Washington University.

Conferences and participants

Timeline

Here is a list of all the conferences an topics covered: [5]

YearMain topic
1935Nuclear Physics
1936Molecular Physics
1937Problems of Elementary Particles and Nuclear Physics
1938Stellar Energy and Nuclear Processes
1939Low Temperature Physics and Superconductivity
1940Geophysics and the Interior of the Earth
1941Elementary Particles
1942Stellar Evolution and Cosmology
Gap due to World War II
1946Physics on Living Matter
1947Gravitation and Electromagnetism

List of participants

Aside from Gamow, Teller, Fleming and Tuve, some notable participants include:

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Gamow</span> Russian-American theoretical physicist and cosmologist (1904–1968)

George Gamow was a Soviet and American polymath, theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He was an early advocate and developer of Georges Lemaître's Big Bang theory. Gamow discovered a theoretical explanation of alpha decay by quantum tunneling, invented the liquid drop model - the first mathematical model of the atomic nucleus, worked on radioactive decay, star formation, stellar nucleosynthesis, Big Bang nucleosynthesis, predicted the existence of the cosmic microwave background radiation and molecular genetics. Gamow was a key figure in the development and understanding of quantum tunneling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hans Bethe</span> German-American physicist (1906–2005)

Hans Albrecht Bethe 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. For most of his career, Bethe was a professor at Cornell University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Cockcroft</span> English physicist (1897–1967)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emilio Segrè</span> Italian-American physicist and Nobel laureate (1905–1989)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Roy Mottelson</span> American-Danish nuclear physicist (1926–2022)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Rainwater</span> American physicist

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ralph Alpher</span> American cosmologist (1921–2007)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker</span> German physicist (1912–2007)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gregory Breit</span> American physicist (1899–1981)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Einstein–Szilard letter</span> 1939 letter to U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Dmitri Dmitrievich Ivanenko was a Soviet theoretical physicist of Ukrainian origin who made great contributions to the physical science of the twentieth century, especially to nuclear physics, field theory, and gravitation theory. He worked in the Poltava Gravimetric Observatory of the Institute of Geophysics of NAS of Ukraine, was the head of the Theoretical Department Ukrainian Physico-Technical Institute in Kharkiv, Head of the Department of Theoretical Physics of the Kharkiv Institute of Mechanical Engineering. Professor of University of Kharkiv, Professor of Moscow State University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">S-1 Executive Committee</span> Group that helped initiate the Manhattan Project

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The first Shelter Island Conference on the foundations of quantum mechanics was held from June 2–4, 1947 at the Ram's Head Inn in Shelter Island, New York. Shelter Island was the first major opportunity since Pearl Harbor and the Manhattan Project for the leaders of the American physics community to gather after the war. As Julian Schwinger would later recall, "It was the first time that people who had all this physics pent up in them for five years could talk to each other without somebody peering over their shoulders and saying, 'Is this cleared?'"

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Adam Fleming</span> American geophysicist

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Critchfield</span> American mathematical physicist (1910–1994)

Charles Louis Critchfield was an American mathematical physicist. A graduate of George Washington University, where he earned his PhD in physics under the direction of Edward Teller in 1939, he conducted research in ballistics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Ballistic Research Laboratory at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, and received three patents for improved sabot designs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lawrence R. Hafstad</span> American electrical engineer and physicist

Lawrence Randolph Hafstad was an American electrical engineer and physicist notable for his pioneering work on nuclear reactors and development of proximity fuzes. In 1939, he created the first nuclear fission reaction in the United States.

Jagdish Mehra was an Indian–American physicist and historian of science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bibliography of Max Born</span>

Max Born was a widely influential German physicist and mathematician who was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics for his pivotal role in the development of quantum mechanics. Born won the prize primarily for his contributions to the statistical interpretation of the wave function, though he is known for his work in several areas of quantum mechanics as well as solid-state physics, optics, and special relativity. Born's entry in the Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society included thirty books and 330 papers.

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