Abstract
To his friends, colleagues, and students, Martin Klein was a gentle and modest man of extraordinary integrity whose stellar accomplishments garnered him many honors. I sketch his life and career, in which he transformed himself from a theoretical physicist at Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Case Institute of Technology into a historian of physics while on leave at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Study and the University of Leiden and then pursued this field full time at Yale University.
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Notes
If I understood Klein correctly, he particularly meant Nicholas M. Butler, President of Columbia University, who felt that a young talent such as him should not be easily sacrificed on the battlefield.
Other physicists visiting the Dublin Institute during 1952–1953 included F.L. Roesler, J. R. Pounder, V.G. Hart, H.F. Sandham, P.N. Daykin, P.J. Donohoe, J.G. Roche, G.H.F. Gardner, and S. O’Brien. I thank Dublin Institute archivist Michelle Williams for this information.
This professorship honors a former dean of Yale College by addressing his concern that undergraduate education should not become excessively narrow and departmentalized. DeVane Professors appointed before 2001 included Jonathan Spence, Jaroslav Pelikan, Paul Kennedy, Sidney Altman, Martin Klein, Guido Calabresi, Harold Bloom, Vincent Scully, Charles Lindblom, and Alexander Bickel; see website <http://www.yale.edu/opa/arc-ybc/v30.n1/story4.html>, accessed on March 25, 2012.
References
My biographical sketch is based primarily on Martin J. Klein, curriculum vitae, Department of Physics, Yale University; idem, “Essays for My Family,” unpublished interview, Carolina Meadows Health Center, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, February 27, 2009; A.J. Kox, “Martin Jesse Klein, 25 June 1924-28 March 2009,” Isis 101 (2010), 163-165; Diana Kormos-Buchwald and Jed Z. Buchwald, “Martin J. Klein 1924-2009,” National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir (2011), 1-17; and personal conversations, 1993 to 2009. I also quote freely from my essay, “In Memoriam: Martin J. Klein (1924-2009),” History of Science Society Newsletter 38, no. 3 (July 2009), 12.
Kormos-Buchwald and Buchwald, “Martin J. Klein” (ref. 1), p. 3.
Quoted in Dennis Hevesi, “Martin J. Klein, Historian of Physics, Dies at 84,” The New York Times (April 1, 2009), website <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/nyregion/02klein.html?_r=2>, accessed March 12, 2012.
Klein, personal conversation, ca. 1997.
Leon M. Lederman, with Dick Teresi, The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), p. 5.
Quoted in Klein, “Essays for My Family” (ref. 1), p. 3.
Laszlo Tisza, “Adventures of a Theoretical Physicist, Part I: Europe,” Physics in Perspective 11 (2009), 46-97; idem, “Part II: America,” ibid., 120-168; Kox, “Martin Jesse Klein” (ref. 1), p. 163; “Laszlo Tisza, physics professor emeritus, 101,” MIT News, website <http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/obit-tisza-0416.html>, accessed March 24, 2012.
Klein, personal conversation, late 1990 s. Tisza might well have recommended Klein to his close friend Edward Teller. On their friendship, see Edward Teller with Judith L. Shoolery, Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Publishing, 2001), pp. 40, 68-70.
Quoted in Klein, “Essays for My Family” (ref. 1), p. 4.
Klein, personal conversation, ca. 1994.
Klein, “Essays for My Family” (ref. 1), pp. 4-5. On Schrödinger’s health problems, see Walter Moore, Schrödinger: life and thought (Cambridge, New York, Port Chester, Melbourne, Sydney: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 456-457.
Klein, “Essays for My Family” (ref. 1), p. 5.
For further discussions, see Kox, “Martin Jesse Klein” (ref. 1), p. 163, and Kormos-Buchwald and Buchwald, “Martin J. Klein” (ref. 1), p. 5.
Paul Ehrenfest, Collected Scientific Papers. Edited by Martin J. Klein (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1959).
H.B.G. Casimir, “Introduction,” in Ehrenfest, Collected Scientific Papers (ref. 14), pp. xi-xii, on p. xii.
Kox, “Martin Jesse Klein” (ref. 1), p. 164; Klein, “Essays for My Family” (ref. 1), p. 5.
Kox, “Martin Jesse Klein” (ref. 1), p. 164; Klein, “Essays for My Family” (ref. 1), p. 6; Kormos-Buchwald and Buchwald, “Martin J. Klein” (ref. 1), p. 6.
Martin J. Klein, “Max Planck and the Beginnings of the Quantum Theory,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 1 (1962), 459-479.
Martin J. Klein, “Planck, Entropy, and Quanta, 1901-1906,” The Natural Philosopher 1 (1963), 83-108.
Martin J. Klein, “Einstein’s First Paper on Quanta,” ibid. 2 (1963). 59-86.
Martin J. Klein, “Einstein and the Wave-Particle Duality,” ibid. 3 (1964), 1-49.
Martin J. Klein, “Einstein, Specific Heats, and the Early Quantum Theory,” Science 148 (1965), 173-180.
Martin J. Klein, “Thermodymanics and Quanta in Planck’s Work,” Physics Today 19, (November 1966), 23-32.
Martin J. Klein, “Thermodynamics in Einstein’s Thought,” Science 157 (1967), 509-516.
Kox, “Martin Jesse Klein” (ref. 1), p. 164; Kormos-Buchwald and Buchwald, “Martin J. Klein” (ref. 1), pp. 6-7.
Ray to Rabi, November 22, 1966, Rabi Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division; hereafter Rabi Papers. I thank Zuoyue Wang for bringing this and other letters from the Rabi Papers to my attention.
Rabi to Ray, November 25, 1966, Rabi Papers.
Asger Aaboe, “Martin Klein at Yale,” in A.J. Kox and Daniel M. Siegel, ed., No Truth Except in the Details: Essays in Honor of Martin J. Klein (Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), pp. xxiii-xxv, on p. xxiii.
Stevenson to Rabi, April 21, 1967, Rabi Papers.
Rabi to Stevenson, May 12, 1967, Rabi Papers.
Martin J. Klein, Paul Ehrenfest. Vol. 1. The Making of a Theoretical Physicist (Amsterdam and London: North-Holland Publishing Company and New York: American Elsevier Publishing Company, 1970).
Quoted in Kormos-Buchwald and Buchwald, “Martin J. Klein” (ref. 1), p. 7.
Thomas L. Hankins, “In Defence of Biography: The Use of Biography in the History of Science,” History of Science 17 (1979), 1-16, on pp. 13-14, 11, 12.
Aaboe, “Martin Klein at Yale” (ref. 28), p. xxiv; Kormos-Buchwald and Buchwald, “Martin J. Klein” (ref. 1), p. 7.
Martin J. Klein,《保尔·厄任费斯脱——20世纪初著名的理论物理学家的成长历程》[Paul Ehrenfest–The making of a theoretical physicist], translated by Gao Dasheng高达声、Zhuo Yunchang卓韵裳and Liu Yuanliang刘元亮 (Beijing:Tsinghua University Press, 1999). “译者序 [Translators’s Foreword],” I-II, on p. I.
Klein, “Essays for My Family” (ref. 1), pp. 5, 8. According to Klein, Ehrenfest committed suicide “because he felt a lot of pressure due to the world situation (the rise of Nazi Germany)… and also felt that he was not qualified to hold the position he had at the university, which was not true.” (p. 5) See also Kormos-Buchwald and Buchwald, “Martin J. Klein” (ref. 1), p. 9.
Kormos-Buchwald and Buchwald, "Martin J. Klein" (ref. 1), p. 9. Shortly before his death, Klein had begun to collaborate on the second volume with a young Dutch historian of science, whom he considered "very well qualified"; see Klein, "Essays for My Family" (ref. 1), p. 8. In fact, the first chapter of the second volume has been published posthumously; see Martin J. Klein, "Paul Ehrenfest, Niels Bohr, and Albert Einstein: Colleagues and Friends," Physics in Perspective 12 (2010), 307-337.
Kormos-Buchwald and Buchwald, “Martin J. Klein” (ref. 1), p. 9; Kox, “Martin Jesse Klein” (ref. 1), p. 164. For a list of Klein’s publications from 1947 to 1998, see Kox and Siegel, No Truth Except in the Details (ref. 27), pp. 363-367; for 1995 and 1996, see Kormos-Buchwald and Buchwald, “Martin J. Klein” (ref. 1), pp. 15-17, on p. 17.
Kox, “Martin Jesse Klein” (ref. 1), p. 164.
Aaboe, “Martin Klein at Yale” (ref. 27), p. xxiii.
M.J. Klein, “The Beginnings of the Quantum Theory,” in C. Weiner, ed., History of Twentieth Century Physics. Proceedings of the International School of Physics “Enrico Fermi.” Course LVII (New York and London: Academic Press, 1977), pp. 1-39.
Klein, personal conversation, ca. 1994.
Kormos-Buchwald and Buchwald, “Martin J. Klein” (ref. 1), p. 10.
Roger H. Stuewer, “First Pais Award Granted: Winner Is Announced to Be Martin J. Klein,” History of Physics Newsletter 9, No. 3 (Fall 2004), 3.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Professor Tandy Warnow (University of Texas at Austin) for sharing with me the unpublished interview with Martin Klein on February 27, 2009, and I thank Zuoyue Wang, Linda Klein, and Sarah Zaino for their kind support and helpful suggestions. Moreover, I wish to thank Roger H. Stuewer for his careful and thoughtful editorial work on my paper.
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Danian Hu is Associate Professor in the Department of History of The City College of New York.
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Hu, D. Martin J. Klein: From Physicist to Historian. Phys. Perspect. 14, 498–507 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-012-0095-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-012-0095-8
Keywords
- Martin J. Klein
- Asger Aaboe
- Hendrik B.G. Casimir
- Paul Ehrenfest
- Albert Einstein
- Leon M. Lederman
- Max Planck
- Derek J. de Solla Price
- Robert S. Shankland
- Laszlo Tisza
- Isidor I. Rabi
- Lloyd G. Stevenson
- James Monroe High School
- Columbia University
- Columbia Underwater Sound Reference Laboratory
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Case Institute of Technology
- Dublin Institute for Advanced Study
- University of Leiden
- Yale University
- University of Amsterdam
- Harvard University
- Institute for Advanced Studies
- National Research Council
- Guggenheim Foundation
- George Sarton Memorial Lecture
- Morris Loeb Lectures
- Abraham Pais Prize
- Académie Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences
- National Academy of Sciences
- American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- statistical mechanics
- quantum physics
- history of quantum theory