Hans Bethe: Nobel Physicist (1906-2005)

[robphy]

http://www.news.cornell.edu/
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2005-03-07-bethe-obit_x.htm

http://bethe.cornell.edu/index.html
http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1967/bethe-bio.html

 

[ohwilleke]

Here is the entire news release from Cornell. I presume that republication of this obituary would not be objectionable on copyright grounds, as the authors presumably wanted the news to be widely distributed:

Nobel laureate Hans Bethe, the last of the giants of the golden age of 20th-century physics and the birth of modern atomic theory, and one of science÷s most universally admired figures, died at his home in Ithaca, N.Y., on Sunday evening, March 6. He was 98. Bethe was emeritus professor of physics at Cornell, where he came in 1935 after fleeing Nazi Germany. He was one of the most honored members of the faculty in Cornell's 140-year history. During World War II, Bethe was a key figure in the building of the first atomic bomb as head of the Manhattan Project's theoretical physics division at Los Alamos, N.M. He made groundbreaking discoveries about energy production in stars, for which he won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1967. He also made major discoveries about how atoms are built up from smaller particles, about what makes dying stars blow up, and how the heavier elements are produced from the ashes of these supernovas.

 

[reilly]

And, Bethe made the first theoretical computation of the Lamb Effect, which made him, in a sense, the first to compute QED effects to second order in the charge. Indeed, he was a giant.
Regards,
Reilly Atkinson

 

[reilly]

And, Bethe made the first theoretical computation of the Lamb Effect, which made him, in a sense, the first, or close thereto, to compute QED effects to second order in the charge. Indeed, he was a giant.
Regards,
Reilly Atkinson

 

[selfAdjoint]

Amazingly, Bethe was still scientifically active until recently. He had a part to play in the discovery of neutrino mass.

One of my warmest memories is the story of how he acceded to Gamow's request to let his name be used on a paper that he had actually had nothing to do with, allowing the creation of the famous Alpher, Bethe, and Gamow paper.

 

[juvenal]

R.I.P Dr. Bethe.

 

[franznietzsche]

He will be missed.

 

[selfAdjoint]

He will be missed.

Aye, indeed! He was one of my heros. When people statrted to go on and on about Feynmann, I thought, but what about Hans Bethe?