Abstract
All the known interactions that occur in nature can be reduced to four interactions between material particles. Listed in order of decreasing strength, these are: the strong (nuclear) interaction, electromagnetism, the weak (nuclear) interaction, and gravity (see Table 1.1). The interaction strength varies with distance between the force centers. This is illustrated in the figure accompanying Table 1.1.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Bibliographical Notes
BECQUEREL, Henri Antoine, physicist, *15.12.1852 in Paris, 1-25.8.1908 in Le Croisie (France), professor at the Ecole Polytechnique. He discovered natural radioactivity in uranium and its salts; also discovered the Faraday effect in gases. He shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics with Pierre and Marie Curie.
BOHR, Niels Henrik, theoretical physicist, *7.10 1885, 1-18.11.1962, in Copenhagen. Bohr spent most of his scientific career in Copenhagen, where he received his doctorate in 1911 and became university professor in 1916. His Institute for Theoretical Physics (supported by the Carlsberg brewery) became the focus of the development of quantum mechanics in the 1920s and 1930s. He developed the first quantum model of the atom, the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and the liquid drop model of the atomic nucleus. He received the Nobel Prize for physics in 1922. During the second World War Bohr saved many Jewish scientists from persecution by the Nazi regime.
CHADWICK, James, *20.10.1891 in Manchester, 124.7.1974 in Cambridge, professor at the University of Liverpool, was a student of Ernest Rutherford and Hans Geiger. In 1932 he discovered the neutron by bombarding beryllium with alpha particles in an ionization chamber. For this he was awarded the Nobel prize in 1935.
FERMI, Enrico, *29.9.1901 in Rome, 1–28.11.1954 in Chicago, from 1927 he was professor of theoretical physics at the University of Rome. He was awarded the Nobel prize in 1938 for the discovery of artificial radioactive elements and the nuclear reactions induced by slow neutrons. In 1935 he had to emigrate to the USA, where from 1941 on he was the scientific leader of the nuclear reactor/atomic bomb projects in New York, Chicago, and Los Alamos. Fermi holds an eminent place in the physics of the twentieth century, because he made equally outstanding contributions in theoretical and experimental physics.
FEYNMAN, Richard, theoretical physicist, *11.5.1918 in New York, 1-15.2.1988 in Pasadena, received his doctorate at Princeton in 1942. After working on the nuclear bomb in Los Alamos, he became professor at Cornell and since 1950 at the California Institute of Technology. Feynman made seminal contributions to many areas of theoretical physics: he developed quantum electrodynamics, the V—A theory of weak interactions and the quarkparton model. He invented the path-integral formulation of quantum mechanics, and contributed to the theory of liquid helium. The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to him in 1965 together with Schwinger and Tomonaga.
GAMOW, George, *4.3.1904 in Odessa, -19.8.68 in Boulder (Colorado), professor of physics at George Washington University (St. Louis) and the University of Colorado. Besides his work on beta decay he made pioneering contributions to the explanation of alpha decay of nuclei (the tunnelling effect) and applications of nuclear physics to astrophysical problems. In connection with the problem discussed here, see Phys. Rev. 51, 288 (1937).
GOLDHABER, Maurice, physicist, *18.4.1911 in Lemberg (then in Austria), studied in Berlin, after 1933 in Cambridge, emigrated to the United States in 1938. From 1945 he was professor at the University of Illinois, after 1950 senior scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, since 1961 its director. He made many important discoveries in nuclear and particle physics, including the moderation of neutrons by certain materials.
KAUFMANN, Walter, *5.6.1871 Elberfeld (Germany), t1.1.1947 in Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany), professor at the Physics Institute at the University of Königsberg (Prussia), determined the charge-to-mass ratio of Q particles; in 1901 he showed that the electron mass rises with increasing velocity.
LEE, Tsung-Dao, theoretical physicist, *25.11.1926 in Shanghai, came to the United States in 1946, received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1950. Since 1953 professor at Columbia University. Together with Yang he refuted the law of parity conservation for which he shared in the 1957 Nobel Prize in physics. He also made many contributions to particle physics and statistical physics.
NISHIJIMA, Kazuhiko, physicist, *4.9.1926 in Tsuchiura (Japan). After his education in Tokyo and Osaka, he worked in Göttingen, Princeton and Illinois. In 1966 N. became professor at the University of Tokyo; later director of the Yukawa Hall at Kyoto University. N. has made numerous contributions to theoretical particle physics, most notably the suggestion of the strangeness quantum number, the two-neutrino hypothesis and the field theory of bound states.
PAULI, Wolfgang, *25.4.1900 in Vienna, 115.12.1958 Zürich, professor at the “Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule” (Federal Technical University) in Zürich since 1928, was a student of Arnold Sommerfeld and Max Born. In 1945 he was awarded the Nobel prize for the discovery of the exclusion principle which carries his name. He also developed the first theory of the electron spin, which led to the Pauli equation.
RUTHERFORD Sir Ernest, physicist, *30.8.1871 in Spring Grove (New Zealand), t 19.10.1937 in Cambridge. Professor at McGill University in Montreal and Victoria University in Manchester, after 1919 director of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, which became the foremost nuclear physics laboratory of its time. His scattering experiments with alpha particles established the existence of the atomic nucleus, and he first observed the artificial transmutation of nuclei by ion bombardment. He was awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
SCHWINGER Julian, theoretical physicist, * 12.2.1918 in New York. He received his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1939, and as early as 1947 became a full professor at Harvard University. Since 1975 professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Schwinger’s work laid the foundations for modern quantum field theory and in 1947 predicted the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron. He shared in the 1965 Nobel Prize in physics with Feynman and Tomonaga for the development of quantum electrodynamics.
TELLER Edward, * 15.1.1908 in Budapest, studied in Germany obtaining his Ph.D. in 1930 as a student of Arnold Sommerfeld. From 1935, he was professor of physics at George Washington University (St. Louis), and subsequently at the University of California, in particular, at Livermore Laboratory. He is considered the “father of the hydrogen bomb”, the construction of which he decisively influenced.
WEYL Hermann, *9.11.1885 in Elmshorn (Germany), t5.12.1955 in Zürich, received his Ph.D. in mathematics in Göttingen in 1908 as a student of D. Hilbert. He was professor at the Universities of Zürich, Göttingen and and Princeton, He was one of the most prominent mathematiciens of his time, in 1925 he was awarded the Lobashevski prize.
WU Chien-Shiung, *31.5.1912 in Shanghai, has been professor of physics at Columbia University since 1952, discovered parity violation in nuclear beta decay, received the Wolf Price in physics 1974.
YANG, Chen-Ning, theoretical physicist,*22.9.1922 in Hofei (China), came to the United States in 1945 and received his Ph.D. in 1948 at the University of Chicago under Fermi. Became professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1955, now professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Together with Lee he predicted the possibility of parity nonconservation. Yang also made important contributions to quantum field theory (Yang—Mills equations) and to statistical physics. He shared the Nobel Prize in physics with Lee in 1957.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Greiner, W., Müller, B. (2000). The Discovery of the Weak Interaction. In: Gauge Theory of Weak Interactions. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-04211-3_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-04211-3_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-67672-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-04211-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive