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A Different Laboratory Tale: Fifty Years of Mössbauer Spectroscopy

Abstract.

I explore the fifty-year development of Mössbauer spectroscopy by focusing on three episodes in its development at Argonne National Laboratory: work by nuclear physicists using radioactive sources in the early 1960s, work by solid-state physicists using radioactive resources from the mid- 1960s through the 1970s,and work by solid-state physicists using the Advanced Photon Source from the 1980s to 2005. These episodes show how knowledge about the properties of matter was produced in a national-laboratory context and highlights the web of connections that allow nationallaboratory scientists working at a variety of scales to produce both technological and scientific innovations.

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Correspondence to Catherine Westfall.

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Westfall, C. A Different Laboratory Tale: Fifty Years of Mössbauer Spectroscopy. Phys. perspect. 8, 189–213 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-006-0274-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-006-0274-6

Keywords.

  • Rudolf Mössbauer
  • Stanley Hanna
  • Gilbert Perlow
  • Mina Rea Perlow
  • Michael Kalvius
  • Stanley Ruby
  • Robert Dunlap
  • Gopol Shenoy
  • Erich Gerdau
  • Ercan Alp
  • Wolfgang Sturhahn
  • Thomas Toellner
  • Argonne National Laboratory
  • Big Science
  • Mössbauer spectroscopy
  • solid-state physics
  • nuclear physics