How Max Born Won Nobel Prize After Getting Suspended

In 1933, when the Nazi Party came to power in Germany, physicist Max Born, who was Jewish, was suspended from professorship at the University of Göttingen. It was a poor decision since under him Göttingen had become one of the world's most promising centres for physics.

Born had spent over 12 years at the University. Here, he developed the matrix mechanics with his assistant Werner Heisenberg. Furthermore, this was the place where he formulated an interpretation of the probability density function, which won him the Nobel Prize, almost 20 years later, in 1954.

Out of job, he accepted an offer from physicist C. V. Raman to go to Bangalore in 1935 where he taught at the Indian Institute of Science. Then, in 1936, he migrated to the University of Edinburgh where he was offered a permanent chair.

Born became a naturalized British citizen in 1939, one year before the second world war broke out in Europe. During this time, he helped as many of his remaining friends and relatives still in Germany get out of the country thus saving them from persecution.

Despite all the bad memories, Gottingen always remained especially close to his heart because it was there that he came under the guidance of the three most renowned mathematicians of the time: Felix Klein, David Hilbert and Hermann Minkowski.

Although Klein didn't approve of Born's particular interest in natural philosophy (physics) he was still impressed by his mathematical prowess. Hilbert especially identified Born's talent and soon hired him as an assistant. Born would often meet Minkowski at Hilbert's house where they would discuss the theory of relativity.

Here, at Gottingen, in 1922, Arnold Sommerfeld sent his student Werner Heisenberg to be Born's assistant. Three years later, they had formulated the matrix interpretation of quantum mechanics. It won Heisenberg his Nobel Prize in physics (1932).

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A year later, Heisenberg wrote a letter to Born in which he said how he had delayed in writing to him due to a "bad conscience" that he alone had received the Prize for work done in collaboration. Born, however, did not mind at all as his contribution to quantum mechanics could not be changed by a "wrong decision" from the outside.

But Born would ultimately win the most coveted prize in 1954 after a fruitful career of 50 years. He was 72 years old at the time of winning. He died in 1970 and is buried in the same cemetery as David Hilbert. Born's life thus came full circle. In 2017, Google honored Born with a doodle on their home page.

Nominated 84 Times For Nobel Prize But Never Won

If there was anybody close to Einstein's genius, it was his compatriot Arnold Sommerfeld. And despite being 10 years Einstein's senior, Sommerfeld was more supportive of the new quantum theory and made many pioneering contributions to it.

Also, did you know that Sommerfeld served in the military for 9 years before becoming a full-time physics professor? Like that, following are 10 amazing facts from Arnold Sommerfeld's life as a tribute to the most under-appreciated physics brain of the 20th century.

1. Since childhood, Arnold Sommerfeld was a quick learner. He received his PhD in physics when he was only 22 years old.

2. He was among the first to acknowledge the validity of Einstein's relativity. His support helped it propel into more of an "accepted status" in the scientific community.

3. Sommerfeld received 84 nominations across 25 years for Nobel Prize in physics (more than any other physicist) but surprisingly, he never won.

4. Yet, he won many times through those he educated and inspired, including (but not limited to) Heisenberg, Pauli, Debye and Bethe.

5. He was the one who introduced the second and the third quantum numbers. They're important because of their use in determining the electron configuration inside an atom.

6. Einstein once told Sommerfeld: "What I especially admire about you is that you have pounded out of the soil such a large number of young talents."

7. Sommerfeld encouraged collaboration from his students. He would home tutor them or meet at a local café to discuss their doubts after a lecture. His successful teaching career was 32 years long.

8. Sommerfeld was also a traveler who traveled around the world in two years (1928-1929) with major stops in India, China, Japan and the US.

9. He wrote to Einstein shortly after Hitler took to power: "I can assure you that the misuse of the word ‘national’ by our rulers has thoroughly broken me of the habit of national feelings that was so pronounced in my case."

10. Sommerfeld died in 1951 in Munich after getting hit by a truck while he was walking with his grandchildren. He was 82 years old. In 2004, department of theoretical physics at the University of Munich was named after Sommerfeld.

Heisenberg and his views on quantum mechanics

Werner Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1932 for the creation of quantum mechanics. He was only 25 years old when he discovered the uncertainty principle. Although at the time Heisenberg did not understand his own work, so he handed it to his immediate supervisor, Max Born, and went on vacation.

Absurdity of nature

Heisenberg was one of the very first people to recognize the ridiculousness of quantum mechanics. It was mind-boggling because it did not agree with the existing physics. His discussions with Niels Bohr went through many hours till very late at night and ended almost in despair.

At the end of their talks, Heisenberg used to go for a walk in the neighboring park and repeated to himself again and again the question: Can nature possibly be so absurd as it seemed in the atomic experiments?

Heisenberg quipped: "The smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language."

He derived inspiration from Greek and Eastern philosophies to arrive at some understanding of his work. "All things are numbers", a sentence attributed to Pythagoras especially attracted his attention. A conversation with Tagore about Indian philosophy also made some sense out of the ideas that seemed to him crazy.

Uncertainty principle

In Feb, 1927, Heisenberg wrote in a paper: The words "position" and "velocity" of an electron seemed perfectly well defined before and in fact they were clearly understood concepts within the mathematical framework of Newtonian mechanics.

But actually they were not well defined, as seen from the relations of uncertainty. The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa. In other words, there was complementarity between the two.

It's worth pointing out that the uncertainty is not a measurement problem but arises due to the wave nature of all quantum objects. Thus, it actually is a "fundamental property" of quantum objects and not a statement about the observational success of current technology.

The main problem was this: A physicist may be satisfied when there is a mathematical scheme and an interpretation of the experiment. But he also has to speak about his results to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some pictorial explanation is given in plain language.

Heisenberg's defence

Heisenberg said: "It is not surprising that our language should be incapable of describing the processes occurring within the atoms, for, it was invented to describe the experiences of daily life, and these consist only of processes involving exceedingly large numbers of atoms.

Furthermore, it is very difficult to modify our language so that it will be able to describe these atomic processes, for words can only describe things of which we can form mental pictures, and this ability, too, is a result of daily experience.

Fortunately, mathematics is not subject to this limitation, and it has been possible to invent a mathematical scheme – the quantum theory – which seems entirely adequate for the treatment of atomic processes; and for visualization."

His biggest opponent was Albert Einstein who did not endorse the uncertainty principle as a fundamental law of nature until his death. He had famously remarked: "God does not play dice with the universe" as a joke. Niels Bohr, an advocate of uncertainty principle, replied: "Don't tell God what he can and cannot do."

Who Was Jagadish Chandra Bose?

There are only a handful of people whose legacy goes on to live for-ever. Indian scientist Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose is one of them, as you shall see. He was born in Bikrampur, present-day Bangladesh, on November 30, 1858. His father was a colleague of reformist Raja Ram Mohan Roy and his mother was a housewife.

Early education

Most of Bose's education was conducted in Calcutta. After graduation in 1879, he wanted to compete for Indian Civil Service examination but his father, Bhagawan Chandra Bose, cancelled that plan. He wanted his son to become a science scholar instead, which was why, he sent Jagadish to London for further training.

Change of Plans

At first, Bose was enrolled at University of London so to become a doctor. However, he had to quit it mid-way because of illness due to the odour in dissection rooms. Therefore, he shifted his attention to natural sciences and earned a general-sciences degree from the University of Cambridge in 1884.

Work with Waves

After returning from England, Bose became a professor of physics at Presidency College, Calcutta. During a November 1894 lecture, he ignited gunpowder and rang a bell at a distance using millimetre long microwaves. He wrote: "The invisible light can easily pass through brick walls, buildings etc. Therefore, messages can be transmitted by means of it without the mediation of wires."

Bose perfected his long-distance communication technique (he invented various microwave components in doing so) but never ever thought of patenting it, unlike his European colleagues, such as Marconi, who himself was developing a telegraphy technique using radio waves.

Fun fact: In 1997, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) named Bose as one of the fathers of radio science.

Plant research

Bose's work with plants was one of a kind. He exposed plants to various stimuli such as microwaves, heat, chemicals, etc. By the help of his own invention, crescograph, a plant movement detector, Bose proved scientifically a parallel between animal and plant tissues. Other striking results were obtained, such as, quivering of injured plants, which Bose interpreted as a power of feeling in plants.

Agnosticism

According to his colleagues, Jagadish Chandra Bose was 60 years ahead of time. He was not only remarkable by intellect but also a very progressive human being by character. Furthermore, he was married to renowned feminist and social worker, Abala Bose.

During a conference in 1915, Bose recalled: "In the school, to which I was sent, the son of the Muslim attendant of my father sat on my right side, and the son of a fisherman sat on my left. They were my playmates. When I returned home from school accompanied by my school fellows, my mother welcomed and fed all of us without discrimination. Although she was an orthodox old-fashioned lady."

Bose grew up worshipping science and scientific method. He believed agnosticism to be the real essence of science and scientific method. A man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has "no scientific grounds" for professing to know or believe. Bose laid the foundations of "Basu Bigyan Mandir" (Bose Institute) in Kolkata, West Bengal.

He said: I dedicate today this Institute, not merely a Laboratory but a Temple. The power of physical methods applies to the establishment of that truth which can be realized directly through our senses, or through the vast expansion of the perceptive range by means of artificially created organs.

Teaching

According to physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, one of the students of Sir J.C. Bose at Presidency College, he was a brilliant teacher whose classes were visually appealing and interactive in style.

But, as a researcher, he faced racial discrimination at the University, because the British Empire continued to assert its control over Indian educational institutions. Bose was denied entry into the laboratories and his funding was often cut short.

Despite it all, J.C. Bose remained a devoted professor there for more than 30 years. In 1917, he established his own research institute and served as its director until his death in 1937.

Summing up

J.C. Bose is a celebrated figure not only for his groundbreaking discoveries and inventions in science but also for his work as an educator. His life's mission was to discourage brain-drain by providing competent research facilities in the country itself. Today, J.C. Bose is remembered as the founder of modern scientific research in India.

Who Was Lise Meitner?

Lise Meitner was an Austrian-Swedish scientist known for her discoveries of the element protactinium and nuclear fission. She was praised by Albert Einstein as the "German Marie Curie" for her long-time association with both physics and chemistry. In this post, let's take a look at 10 most amazing facts about Lise Meitner.

Collaboration with nephew

Lise Meitner became a role model for her nephew, Otto Robert Frisch, who grew up becoming a physicist himself. Together, they hypothesized that the split of Uranium in two, explained the incredible energy release in "fission", a term Frisch coined.

Her role in World War I

Meitner was known for her compassion and modesty. During the World War I, when the situation required, she served as a nurse for two years. In 1916, she resumed her physics research.

Early education & PhD

Her earliest research work began at age eight, when she kept a notebook of her records underneath her pillow. She attended the University of Vienna at age 23 and became the second woman to receive a doctoral degree in physics in 1905.

Professorship & war

In 1926, Meitner accepted a post at the University of Berlin and became the first woman in Germany to become a full professor of physics. In 1938, at the start of World War II, she had to flee Nazi Germany due to her Jewish heritage.

Help by Bohr

Niels Bohr helped Lise escape Nazi Germany in 1938. She stayed with Niels and his wife, Margrethe Bohr, at their holiday house in Tisvilde, Denmark. Meitner fled to Sweden, where she lived for many years, ultimately becoming a Swedish citizen.

Manhattan Project

When the atomic bomb project was started in 1942, Meitner was offered a key position at Los Alamos Laboratory, but she refused to work on it, saying, "I will have nothing to do with the bomb!"

Dinner with President

Meitner was known all over the world, so much so, that many claimed her the female equivalent of Einstein. She was awarded "Woman of the Year" in 1946 by the National Press Club, Washington and also joined President Truman for dinner.

Chemical elements

In 1917, Meitner discovered a stable isotope of Protactinium along with chemist Otto Hahn. She also has a chemical element named after her, a radioactive synthetic element, called the Meitnerium.

Nobel Prize snub

Meitner was nominated 19 times for Chemistry Nobel Prize and 29 times for Physics Nobel Prize but never got the top honors. Despite that, she was invited to attend the prestigious Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in 1962.

Critical of friends

She was critical of her friends: Otto Hahn, Max von Laue and Werner Heisenberg, they who participated in Germany's nuclear bomb project. Their association prompted Einstein to write a letter to the-then American president Roosevelt to build a bomb of their own, before the Germans did.

Meitner wrote a letter to the three: "The reason I write this to you is true friendship. You all worked for Nazi Germany and did not even try to resist...What then must the English and Americans be thinking!?" 

After her death in 1968, her nephew Frisch composed the inscription on her gravestone, which read: "Lise Meitner: a physicist who never lost her humanity."

10 Carl Sagan Quotes On Science And Life

Carl Sagan was the man who brought astronomy into our living rooms with his masterpiece, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which was viewed by over 500 million people around the world!

As a scientist, he contributed enormously to our understanding of the solar system. He correctly predicted the existence of methane lakes on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. When other astronomers had imagined Venus to be a mild summery paradise, Carl showed it to be dry, thick and unpleasantly hot.

He also predicted life on Venus in 1967 and we may be close to proving him right. Not just it, Carl Sagan played a leading role in every major spacecraft mission to explore the solar system in the 20th century: Mariner, Viking, Voyager, you name it!

Although Carl died quite young (had he been alive, he'd be celebrating his 86th birthday in 2020), his ideas and thoughts will remain with us for-ever. Let us have a look at 10 Carl Sagan quotes which are relevant to modern times, shall we?

On climate change

Protest in Goa

Carl says: Our intelligence and our technology have given us the power to affect the climate. How will we use this power? Are we willing to tolerate ignorance and complacency in matters that affect the entire human family? Do we value short-term advantages above the welfare of the Earth? Or will we think on longer time scales, with concern for our children and our grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet? The Earth is a tiny and fragile world. It needs to be cherished.

On life elsewhere

All my life, I've wondered about life beyond the earth. On those countless other planets that we think circle other suns, is there also life? Might the beings of other worlds resemble us, or would they be astonishingly different? What would they be made of? In the vast Milky Way galaxy, how common is what we call life? The nature of life on earth and the quest for life elsewhere are the two sides of the same question: the search for who we are.

On science and politics

We can’t just conclude that science puts too much power into the hands of morally feeble technologists or corrupt, power-crazed politicians and decide to get rid of it. Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history. Advances in transportation, communication, and entertainment have transformed the world. The sword of science is double-edged.

On afterlife

He says: I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.

The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.

On cannabis

The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before. The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I'm down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse. There also have been some art-related insights — I don't know whether they are true or false, but they were fun to formulate.

On experiment

Our perceptions may be distorted by training and prejudice or merely because of the limitations of our sense organs, which, of course, perceive directly but a small fraction of the phenomena of the world.

Even so straightforward a question as whether in the absence of friction a pound of lead falls faster than a gram of fluff was answered incorrectly by Aristotle and almost everyone else before the time of Galileo.

Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage—at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.

On god

The idea that a God or gods is necessary to effect one or more of these origins has been under repeated attack over the last few thousand years. Because we know something about phototropism and plant hormones, we can understand the opening of the morning glory independent of divine micro-intervention. It is the same for the entire skein of causality back to the origin of the universe. As we learn more and more about the universe, there seems less and less for God to do.

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On our place in the cosmos

We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.

On the future

I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us-then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.

On books

The whole idea of what happens when you read a book, I find absolutely stunning. Here's some product of a tree, little black squiggles on it, you open it up, an inside your head is the voice of someone speaking, who may have been dead 3000 years, and there he is talking directly to you, what a magical thing that is.

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Why did Paul Dirac speak so little?

Paul Dirac was a British theoretical physicist who is most well known for his contributions to quantum mechanics. He gave an equation that predicted the existence of anti-matter in 1928. But, perhaps, there's another reason why Dirac is so widely recognized, that for his introversion and timidity.

Some of Dirac's colleagues at Cambridge defined a "unit of conversation" in his honour meaning one spoken word per hour. Although, this was a joke but the reality was pretty much the same. One commented on Dirac: "He's a lean, meek, shy young fellow who goes slyly along the streets, walks quite close to the walls, like a thief, and is not at all healthy."

The reason, for his incredible shyness and speechlessness, many claim, was Dirac's strained relationship with his father, especially during his growing up years. In fact, after his father died, Dirac wrote: "I feel much freer now, and I am my own man."

According to study, authoritarian parenting styles generally lead to children being obedient and proficient, but they rank much lower in happiness, social competence, and self-esteem.

Paul Dirac's father, Charles Adrien Ladislas Dirac, an immigrant from Switzerland, was very strict right from the beginning. He forced his children to speak to him only in French, so that they might learn his native language.

Dirac, who knew just a little French, spoke even less in order to avoid being scolded for wrong grammar. Dirac took a lot of time to frame sentences, as he was told never to start a sentence without knowing its end.

Dirac found comfort in his imagination and when he wanted to put across his thoughts he would do so by writing them. In his early thirties, Dirac wrote in a letter to a close friend that to defend himself against the hostilities he perceived around him he retreated into his own imagination.

Paul had a younger sister, Béatrice, and an older brother, Reginald, who committed suicide in 1925. Dirac, then 23, later recalled: "My parents were terribly distressed by it...But I didn't know they cared so much? I never thought that parents were supposed to care for their children. From then on I knew."

So, from early childhood, physics and maths had become Dirac's escape. The magical world of numbers and objects and their interrelationships interested him quite deeply. His father wanted Dirac to become an engineer but after graduating Dirac switched careers to pursue physics degree.

It was the right thing to go against his father's wishes because as an engineer Dirac couldn't land a job in post-first-world-war Britain. Dirac chose his passion and was allowed to skip the first year of the honours degree credit to his engineering degree.

As we all know, Paul Dirac made not only a career out of pure sciences but also revolutionized physics for next half a century. However, despite all his achievements, Dirac remained merry in his own company and suffered agonies if forced into any kind of socializing or small talk.

Fourth Woman To Win Nobel Prize In Physics

In 1903, Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in physics for research on spontaneous radiation as discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel in 1896.

It took 60 years, in 1963, for another woman to win the most coveted prize in physics. Maria Goeppert Mayer was awarded for discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure.

Another 55 years later, in 2018, Donna Strickland received the award for her 1985 discovery, chirped pulse amplification, a technique which is used to make cellphone screens.

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Cut to 2020, we have another woman Nobel laureate in physics, her name Andrea Ghez, who has been awarded the top honor for the discovery of a supermassive black hole in the Milky Way's center!

She shared the prize with colleague Reinhard Genzel. The other half of it went to Sir Roger Penrose.

When asked to comment on it, Andrea said: "I'm grateful, I'm thrilled. You know I work for the science and I'm just glad that it is recognized."

One might ask, "Why do we care about supermassive black holes, like, why is that so important to know about?

Andrea says: "They represent the breakdown of our understanding of the laws of physics. It's transformed our knowledge of these objects that we didn't really have proof existed in the universe."

By picturing the center of Milky Way galaxy at infrared wavelength, Ghez and her team were able to peer through heavy dust that blocked visible light, and produced images of the Black Hole, Sagittarius A*.

By using Kepler's third law, she showed that its mass was 4.1 million solar masses. Based on its mass and radius calculations, astronomers concluded that Sagittarius A* was a supermassive black hole.

Andrea has appeared on many black hole physics documentaries for BBC and Discovery Channel. When asked about her role as a science comunicator, she replied: "We all must step up to talk about the role of science and that is, I think, more important than ever."

She stayed up many nights at the Keck telescope photographing the center of Milky Way and then superimposed each still photograph on top of the other to make a film showing how stars around the center behaved due to Sag A*. In 2020, we celebrate her brilliance and dedication.

Roger Penrose Wins Nobel Prize In Physics

American theoretical physicist, Richard Feynman, had once said: "Mathematicians are only dealing with the structure of the reasoning and they do not really care about what they're talking. The physicist, on the other hand, has meaning to all the phrases."

Sir Roger Penrose agrees.

In his 1997 book, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Penrose wrote: "Well, why am I talking about things when I do not know what they really mean? It is probably because I am a mathematician and mathematicians do not mind so much about this, so long as those things can say something about the connections between them."

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Cut to 2020, Penrose is the winner of Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity. He shares it with Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez.

"I was good at maths, yes, but I didn't necessarily do very well in my tests. But the teacher realized if he gave me enough time, I would do well," the laureate recalled.

While he had been working proactively to unravel the mysteries of the universe since the 50s, Roger Penrose came to a much wider public attention after publishing of A Brief History of Time in 1988.

Penrose and Hawking go way back. They both were the winners of Wolf Prize in 1988 for Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems (1965). Their friendship and collaboration were captured even in the movies: Hawking (2004) and Theory of Everything (2014).

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Sir Penrose was most heavily inspired by his father, Lionel Penrose, who was a psychiatrist and a geneticist. In fact, brilliance runs down their family: his grandfather was a renowned Irish artist, one of his brothers is a physicist himself and the other is a Chess grandmaster, his sister, a geneticist, has followed in her father's footsteps!

Since Penrose was purely a mathematician, his work was really abstract in that sense. But he was drawn to astrophysics by Dennis Sciama (who also was a doctoral advisor to Stephen Hawking).

And that is how they first met.

They proposed two types of singularities: space-like for non-rotating black holes and time-like for rotating black holes.

It was thought that in the eventual collapse of a star (to form a black hole), if the star is spinning and so possesses even some angular momentum, maybe the centrifugal force could counteract gravity and keep the singularity from forming.

Penrose-Hawking theorems showed that that cannot happen, and that a singularity will always form once an event horizon forms. In other words, Penrose proved with complicated maths that Black holes were not impossible and in fact a result of relativity.

Hence, in 2020, we celebrate Sir Roger Penrose's contributions to physics, his incredible writings on human consciousness and his life in general.