Download Climbing the Mountain: The Scientific Biography of Julian by Jagdish Mehra PDF

By Jagdish Mehra

This is often the 1st biography ever written at the exotic physicist Julian Schwinger. Schwinger used to be essentially the most very important and influential scientists of the 20 th century. The record of his contributions is spectacular, from his early paintings resulting in the Schwinger motion precept, Euclidean quantum box thought, and the genesis of the normal version, to later worthwhile paintings on magnetic cost and the Casimir impact. He additionally shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics with Richard Feynman. despite the fact that, even between physicists, figuring out and popularity of his paintings is still restricted. This e-book by means of Mehra and Milton, either one of whom have been in my view accustomed to Schwinger, provides a different portrait that sheds mild on either his character and his paintings via dialogue of his lasting effect on technological know-how. a person who needs to realize a deeper figuring out of 1 of the nice physicists of this century must learn this booklet.

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Extra info for Climbing the Mountain: The Scientific Biography of Julian Schwinger

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CONTENTS THOMSON, Sir George Paget [1156] THOMSON, Sir Joseph John [869] THOMSON, Robert William [637] TINBERGEN, Nikolaas [1326] TING, Samuel C. C. c . Imhotep is remarkable for being the first historic equivalent, known by name, of what we would today call a scientist. There was not to be another for over two thousand years. The one definite feat that is attributed to him is that of being the architect of the “step pyramid” at the modern village of Sakkara (near the site of ancient Memphis) in Egypt.

Thales was the first Greek to maintain that the moon shone by reflected sunlight and this, too, may rep­ resent Babylonian lore. Thales also borrowed Egyptian geome­ try, but here he made a fundamental ad­ vance. He converted it into an abstract study, being the first man we know of to consider it as dealing with imaginary lines of zero thickness and perfect straightness, rather than with actual lines, thick and imperfect, scraped in the sand or scratched on wax. ) Thales seems also to have been the first to go about proving mathematical statements by a regular series of argu­ ments, marshaling what was already known and proceeding step by step to the desired proof as inevitable conse­ quence.

We have only very slight in­ formation about Thales’ younger con­ temporary, Eupalinus [8], who in his way may have been as accomplished a sage. In later centuries, when the Greeks made up lists of the “seven wise men,” Thales was invariably placed first. c . c . Like Thales, whose pupil he was, Anax­ imander helped introduce the science of the ancient East to Greece. He was the first Greek to make use of the sun­ dial, for instance, which had been known for centuries both in Egypt and Bab­ ylonia.

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