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.
