Abstract
The physicist Maria Goeppert Mayer and the chemist Joseph E. Mayer, during some forty years of marriage, exchanged scientific ideas continuously. We can see results of this exchange in the paths their individual intellectual careers took: Maria’s from formal, mathematical atomic physics to nuclear physics informed by the phenomenological insights of a chemist, and Joe’s from experimental chemistry to highly mathematical statistical mechanics. This is the kind of intellectual interaction that often goes on between scientific colleagues during the course of informal interactions, but which is rarely acknowledged since the results are often subtle shifts in scientific perspective.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Johnson, K. Science at the Breakfast Table. Phys. perspect. 1, 22–34 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1007/s000160050003
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s000160050003
- Key words. Biography; history of science; statistical physics; nuclear physics; Maria Goeppert Mayer; Joseph E. Mayer.