Physics flourishing at Cambridge | University of Cambridge Physics flourishing at Cambridge News Physics flourishing at Cambridge The Department of Physics Cavendish Laboratory has initiated a campaign to recruit an unprecedented number of academic posts to meet the growing department’s needs. The Department of Physics Cavendish Laboratory has initiated a campaign to recruit an unprecedented number of academic posts to meet the growing department’s needs. The ten posts will include six lectureships, two readerships and two chairs. Dire statistics on the state of university physics departments abound with 30% of British university physics departments having closed in the last dozen years, and the number of students sitting A-levels physics having dropped by 38% since 1990. At a time when there is considerable concern about the state of physics, these investments reflect the University's confidence in the future of physics and the significance of the Cavendish Laboratory. Professor Peter Littlewood, Head of the Physics Department, said: "Our undergraduate numbers are buoyant and our research income is ever increasing, doubling in the last decade.

These appointments come at a time when we are engaged in a major new expansion of research activity in the Physics of Medicine and plan to make a major thrust in fundamental aspects of quantum science as well as bolstering our current programme in other areas. "Additionally, we have already made very substantial investments in nanoscience. I am not aware of another physics department that has such an aggressive hiring programme as we do now." The Department of Physics has ambitious plans to invest not only in new staff but also in new infrastructure. The £20M Physics of Medicine Development, due to start construction in the next few months, is the first phase of a planned £125M redevelopment of the world famous Cavendish Laboratory. As part of the Department's efforts to encourage wider participation and interest in physics, the Cavendish Laboratory runs an outreach programme, a major aspect of which is 'Physics At Work'. This popular event provides 14- to 16-year-olds with the opportunity to meet scientists working in academic and commercial fields and learn more about their research. After short presentations about their work, they open the session for students to ask questions and probe in more detail the areas that most interest them. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence .

If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. Published Physics flourishing at Cambridge - Cambridge Network Cambridge Network Physics flourishing at Cambridge 22/03/2006 The University of Cambridge Department of Physics Cavendish Laboratory has initiated a campaign to recruit an unprecedented number of academic posts to meet the growing department's needs. The ten posts will include six lectureships, two readerships and two chairs. Dire statistics on the state of university physics departments abound, with 30% of British university physics departments having closed in the past dozen years, and the number of students sitting A-level physics having dropped by 38% since 1990. At a time when there is considerable concern about the state of physics, these investments reflect the University's confidence in the future of physics and the significance of the Cavendish Laboratory. Professor Peter Littlewood, Head of the Physics Department, said: 'Our undergraduate numbers are buoyant and our research income is ever increasing, doubling in the last decade.

These appointments come at a time when we are engaged in a major new expansion of research activity in the Physics of Medicine and plan to make a major thrust in fundamental aspects of quantum science as well as bolstering our current programme in other areas. 'Additionally, we have already made very substantial investments in nanoscience. I am not aware of another physics department that has such an aggressive hiring programme as we do now.' The Department of Physics has ambitious plans to invest not only in new staff but also in new infrastructure. The 20M Physics of Medicine Development, due to start construction in the next few months, is the first phase of a planned 125M redevelopment of the world famous Cavendish Laboratory. As part of the Department's efforts to encourage wider participation and interest in physics, the Cavendish Laboratory runs an outreach programme, a major aspect of which is 'Physics At Work'. This popular event provides 14- to 16-year-olds with the opportunity to meet scientists working in academic and commercial fields and learn more about their research. After short presentations about their work, they open the session for students to ask questions and probe in more detail the areas that most interest them.

******* For further information, please contact the University of Cambridge Press Office on 01223 332300 Reproduced courtesy University of Cambridge Press Office The University of Cambridge is acknowledged as one of the world's leading higher education and research institutions. The University was instrumental in the formation of the Cambridge Network and its Vice- Chancellor, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz is also the President of the Cambridge Network. Cavendish Laboratory Cavendish Laboratory Austin Wing Early picture of the Austin Wing It was in April 1936 that Herbert Austin sent the following letter to the Chancellor, Stanley Baldwin. Lickey Grange, Dear Mr. Baldwin, I have for several years been watching the very valuable work done by Lord Rutherford & his colleagues at Cambridge in the realm of Scientific research & knowing that, as Chancellor, you are keenly interested in obtaining sufficient funds with which to build, equip & endow a very much needed addition to the present resources, I shall be very pleased indeed to present securities to the value of approximately £250,000 for this purpose. May I request, if it is in order that my name will be associated with the extension.

I am, April 30 1936 Dear Sir Herbert As Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, I gratefully accept on behalf of the University your most generous offer of £250,000 towards the extension and further endowment of the Cavendish Laboratory. There can be no greater encouragement to the men who devote themselves to scientific research than to feel that their work is appreciated by those engaged in industry, the progress and development of whose business depends so much on the laboratories of our country. Your noble gift will be invaluable at this time to Cambridge, and the benefits arising from its applications will be available for the civilised world. Yours very sincerely Stanley Baldwin Lord Rutherford, Director of the Cavendish Laboratory, made the following statement. I am very much gratified at the very generous gift of Sir Herbert Austin and his recognition of the important work that has been done in the past by Sir J J Thomson and his colleagues at the Cavendish Laboratory. The donation will give us an opportunity of building a modern research laboratory and will also be of great value in helping to defray the large expenditure required on modern research in physics, which often involves the use of apparatus on a costly scale.

The first use of the money will be to build a laboratory for the utilisation of very high voltages, in order to carry out experiments on the transmutation of matter by high-speed particles and radiation. The Austin Wing The Cavendish laboratory was severely overcrowded but with the Austin donation it was now possible to use some of the money to fund a high-tension laboratory and cyclotron, along with improving the Cavendish block. In the end a total of £91,500 was used for the construction and equipping the new wing. Early in 1938 Lord Rutherford died unexpectedly and so Lawrence Bragg was appointed as Director. Physics at Cambridge had enjoyed immense popularity under Rutherford, but further progress in nuclear science required resources that were no longer available at the University. 'Big Science', nuclear and particle research requiring highly energetic accelerators, could now only be supported at national levels of expenditure. At the same time the other Cambridge sciences, such as Chemistry and Engineering, were growing in popularity. It was clear that the Cavendish needed a change of direction. Architects Adams. Holden & Pearson & Harold Cherry were given the contract to design the new Austin Wing.

The main architect was Charles Holden who designed the London Underground stations for the London Passenger Board in the 1920s and 30s. Work started in May 1938 using a local builder by the name of Rattee & Kett, who are still in Cambridge today doing Building Restoration & Stonemasonry, and in 2006 carried out stonework cleaning, restoration and repair to the external fabric of Baskerville House, Birmingham. With war on the horizon, Bragg only got permission to go ahead with the project by agreeing that the wing would be used for military purposes during hostilities, and in fact, it was used by an Army ballistics unit and Navy signals unit. The Austin Wing actually cost £77,000 with apparatus and fittings a further £15,000. Lawrence Bragg made the comment that they were lucky to build it so cheaply, as after the war it would have been far more expensive. ------------ Location 2006. It is believed that the stone is no longer there, because of redevelopment. When the building was well under way, Bragg was very embarrassed to get a letter from Austin asking when he could lay the “foundation” stone.

The architect, Charles Holden (1875-1960) suggested that as the “foundation” were actually in as at this point, (in fact it appears they were now up to the second floor). That the foundation stone could be built into a wall flanking the entrance steps. The laying of the foundation stone ceremony took place on the 6th May 1939. It appears that Austin complimented him on this original concept, but Holden let the cat out of the bag by saying “Oh, you heard about that, did you, we forgot all about the bloody thing”. The Austin wing was completed in June 1940, it was 115 feet long and 45 feet wide, with four floors and a basement giving a total floor area of 34,000 square feet. It had a central corridor which ran the full length of each floor, with research rooms typically measuring 15 feet by 17 feet opening off the corridor. The external and corridor wall supported the floors, so that internal walls could be easily removed to give extra room if needed. To facilitate this arrangement the services came up a shaft next to the elevators and ran along the corridor above the doors.

The second floor contained offices, a museum bay, tea-room and library. The colloquium room seated 70 and there were various workshops and storerooms, but no teaching facilities. The building cost £77.000 with equipment adding a further £10,000. Bragg was allowed to spend a further £4,500 on “magnificent” furniture and fittings, but these were stored in the library for the duration of the war. When the Second World War began the British demand for physicists exceeded the supply. In 1939 the Cavendish was producing 160 physicists a year, with 40 researchers and 20 assistants. In the years following the war these numbers increased tremendously, and by 1948 had reached a peak of 600 physicists a year, with 160 in research. The War also prompted the introduction of telephones and secretarial staff to the Cavendish.

___________________ This slate plaque in Free School Lane commemorates the first hundred years of the Cavendish Laboratory, from its foundation by the first Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics, James Clerk Maxwell, with the move of the Physics department in 1974 to a green field site in West Cambridge. DNA "The structure of DNA (known as "the secret of life") was discovered in the Austin Wing of the Cavendish Laboratory by Francis H.C. Crick and James D. Watson - for which they and Maurice H.F. Wilkins - were jointly subsequently awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology & Medicine." © 2006-2016 John Baker Fiftieth anniversary of major discoveries at the Cavendish Laboratory (Journal Article) | SciTech Connect In-Document Search Title: Fiftieth anniversary of major discoveries at the Cavendish Laboratory This paper begins with some recollections of the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge in the years 1928--30, which just preceded the discovery of the neutron and other major discoveries there in 1932--33.

It then goes on to describe new developments in experimental techniques for accelerating, detecting, and counting charged particles such as protons and ..cap alpha.. particles in the Cavendish Laboratory which made possible the major discoveries by Chadwick, Blackett, and Cockcroft and Walton in 1932--33. The scintillation method was superseded by the linear amplifier and scale-of-two counter. Other experimental techniques described here include the original proportional counter, the cloud chamber triggered by coincident pulses in two Geiger--Mueller counters for the detection of cosmic rays, and a 700-kV voltage multiplier for the first transmutations by artificially accelerated hydrogen ions. Pioneer measurements on pair production of ..gamma.. rays and annihilation radiation are discussed in terms of Dirac's relativistic theory of the electron. Authors: The Old Cavendish - "The First Ten Years" — Department of Physics The Seventh Duke of Devonshire, William Cavendish (27 Apr 1808 - 21 Dec 1891) The Foundation of the Cavendish Laboratory "The systematic teaching of practical physics is a modern development.

Until the second half of the nineteenth century was well begun, no teaching laboratory and no regular course of instruction were known." So used are we nowadays to the large, carefully organised and elaborately equipped University teaching laboratory that this statement (with which the original History of the Cavendish begins) seems somewhat startling. But in fact it understates the case, for, until that period just over a century ago, no central facilities of any kind existed for the practice of experimentally based physics. The Physics Faculty, with its essential components - the laboratories and workshops, the lecture rooms and libraries, the stores and offices - is, like all the other faculties, quite a modern innovation. All the immense amount of scientific knowledge built up before the 1870's was the result of individual work in essentially private labs. The wealthy amateur physicist, such as Joule or Cavendish, would have a laboratory at his home, while the academic scientist would work in his college rooms. The tremendous contributions to science produced by, for example, Newton at Trinity, Young at Emmanuel, and Stokes at Pembroke were all accomplished in their own accommodation and largely by themselves.

Any assistance they might have would be relatively unskilled - for instance Newton's poor eyesight led him to employ others to describe the results of his optical work to him. But, astonishingly, helping an acknowledged master of experimentation was the only way open to a student physicist to receive any teaching in experimental techniques whatsoever. Indeed such knowledge was actively discouraged by some academics, such as the great Cambridge mathematician Dr. Isaac Todhunter, who said: "Experimentation is unnecessary for the student. The student should be prepared to accept whatever the master told him." Around the middle of the nineteenth century a great deal of discussion arose about the practical training of scientists and engineers at all levels. The British Association, the Great Exhibition, and the Science Museum all came out of this enthusiasm for spreading scientific knowledge. So too came our own Natural Sciences Tripos in 1851, but teaching for the new Tripos was, in physics at least, entirely theoretical, based on the ancient mixture of public lectures and private reading. The only university to have anything like an organised laboratory was Glasgow, where, in the 1840's, William Thompson, later Lord Kelvin, "took over an old wine cellar in his predecessor's house....

threw out the bins, installed a water supply and a sink, and called the room a physical laboratory." Many students were taught in this laboratory and some remarkable work produced, but still the student worked only as the Professor's assistant, not on any organised course, and only a few students could be accommodated in this way. The Old Cavendish The Plans for the Old Cavendish Twenty-five years later pressure for the establishment of organised practical teaching was irresistible. Oxford and Cambridge reacted in their own fashions to it. Oxford began building the Clarendon, and in Cambridge the Senate formed a committee to look into the question. When, in 1869, the committee reported, it was clearly in favour of creating a Cambridge Physics Laboratory, recommending the "founding of a special Professorship, and of supplying the Professor with the means of making his teaching practical - in other words, of giving him a demonstrator, a lecture-room, a laboratory, and several class-rooms, with a sufficient stock of apparatus." However, at this time the University's finances were not very healthy, and the report had to be shelved.

How long things would have remained in this state is not known, but after 18 months, the then Chancellor wrote to the University offering to meet the estimated cost which was the frightening sum of £6,300. The Chancellor was the seventh Duke of Devonshire, himself a Smith's prize winner and Senior Wrangler, and a distant relative of Henry Cavendish. Indeed 'Cavendish' was the family name, and so, finally, the new laboratory became known as the Cavendish. All this created, of course, a great deal of interest in Cambridge, particularly among the group of young mathematicians, mostly recent graduates, who were likely to be the first students at the new lab. It might at first seem surprising that the prospective students should nearly all be mathematicians, and in addition mostly graduates, but maths had, at that time, a very firm hold on Cambridge life. Introduced in 1747, the Mathematical Tripos eventually became the course for all serious students.

Indeed, until 1850 no student could obtain an honours degree without first qualifying in the Maths Tripos, and those of a non-mathematical disposition either "ploughed it", like Macaulay, or entirely refused to graduate, like Gray. Mathematics was described as the vampire of the Cambridge schools, and had absorbed not only philosophy, but also the arts and natural sciences. The nineteenth century finally saw the breaking of this monopoly with the establishment of several Triposes for Classics (1822), Moral Sciences (1851), and, as we have seen, Natural Sciences, also in 1851. But the development of these Triposes was relatively slow, and even in 1874 the N.S.T. could boast only 19 students, compared with some 1500 a century later. The Mathematical Tripos itself, with its rigid order of merit, was an extremely competitive one and undergraduates in it could not fairly be expected to do practical work as well. So the first students at the projected Cavendish Laboratory were bound to be Mathematics graduates. There was, naturally, much speculation about the choice of the new Professor of Experimental Physics.

Kelvin was the most likely candidate, but on being approached in private, refused in order to stay in Glasgow. Another likely candidate was Lord Rayleigh, a brilliant mathematician and physicist who had left Cambridge to work in his private laboratory at his country seat in Essex. When the appointment was eventually announced, the reaction was, if anything, one of disappointment. The new Professor, James Clerk Maxwel1, was relatively unknown. He had, it was true, been Senior Wrangler in 1854, joint Smith's prizeman and a much respected mathematician, but he had not since made any great name for himself - his major and astounding books on Electricity and Kinetic Theory had yet to be published. Moreover, the six years before his appointment had been spent in isolation at his Scottish home. Actually during this time he had, as an examiner for the Mathematical Tripos, done much to change the emphasis of the examination to more physical topics. His appointment was announced on March 8th 1871, and in spite of the initial disappointment, his inaugural lecture was looked forward to by his likely students as much as by the rest of the Cambridge scientists.

George Gamow | Department of Physics | The George Washington University Article reprinted from GW Magazine/Spring 2000, p.14 When Physicist George Gamow Joined the Faculty, GW’s Scientific Reputation Soared. Bold Theoretician, Accomplished Writer and Lecturer, a Man Who Probed the Origins of the Universe, He Generated Ideas So Influential that We’re Still Thinking About Them. (The George Gamow portrait is by William C. Parke, who explains: "The ALA is the amino-acid nickname (for alanine) Gamow selected in the RNA Tie Club he started with 20 members (one for each amino acid), including Watson, Crick, and Feynman. The helix represents DNA. Gamow is wearing a GW robe. The background shows the Spring 2000 'BOOMERANG project' image of the variation in microwave radiation left over from the big-bang explosion about 15 billion years ago.") In August 1934 there appeared on the GW campus a 6-foot-3-inch, 30-year-old, flaxen-haired, Ukrainian émigré scientist.

His startlingly blue eyes twinkled myopically behind lenses that resembled the bottoms of cider bottles. He conversed with a cosmopolitan circle of friends in a variety of European languages, with a fractured but poetic delivery that was animated and usually high-pitched. His name: George Gamow [pronounced GAM-off]. Gamow had already made quite a name for himself among physicists in Europe, but not many in the United States knew much about him in 1934. Few could have predicted that he would achieve worldwide renown as an astrophysicist and as the chief proponent of a bizarre theory of cosmic evolution called the "big bang," a schema that today is the subject of intense theoretical and observational research. Over the next 22 years, the ebullient and charismatic Gamow-"Geo" to most of his colleagues-left an ineradicable impression, both at the University and throughout the nation. Soon after his arrival in Washington, he instituted a series of conferences in theoretical physics and related areas. Conference topics ranged from nuclear physics to cosmology to biological genetics.

Some of the greatest minds of the time-including Hans Bethe, Niels Bohr, Paul Dirac, Enrico Fermi, Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, and John von Neumann-were frequent participants. Never had GW witnessed such a concentration of intellect as during the balmy mid-April days when Gamow usually scheduled his annual "witches Sabbath" in the nation's capital. In addition to developing the big bang theory of the expanding universe, Gamow made enormous contributions to the understanding of the nucleus of the atom, the activity of stars, the creation of the elements, and the genetic code of life. He also laid the foundation for the theory of thermonuclear reactions, and his formula describing the temperature dependence of fusion reactions has been a cornerstone of thermonuclear bomb and reactor work. One of the observing scientists at the "Mike" H-bomb test on Bikini atoll in the Pacific in 1949, he was described by the United Press International reporter covering the event as "the only scientist in America with a real sense of humor." The Associated Press man on the scene said, "I get a kick out of calling him.

He can always take the most technical information and make it simple." He delighted lay readers with several books featuring the timid but inquisitive fictional bank clerk C. G. H. Tompkins. Many now-famous scientists (Nobel laureates Francis Crick and Robert Wilson come to mind) have cited the Tompkins series, or other of Gamow's popular gems (such as One, Two, Three ... Infinity), as having stimulated their youthful fascination with science. In 1956, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization awarded him the Kalinga Prize for the popularization of science. Gyorgy Antonovich Gamow was born in Odessa, Ukraine, in 1904. His love of science manifested itself early. Astronomy, for example, captivated him after his father gave him a small telescope for his 13th birthday. (Photo: George Gamow looking toward the future (Odessa, summer 1907)) In 1921-22 he studied at Odessa's Novorossia University and from 1922 to 1928 took classes at the University of Leningrad.

In 1928, he attended summer school in Göttingen, Germany, at that time the hotbed of the new quantum theory. There he succeeded in explaining nuclear radioactivity as a quantum-mechanical phenomenon. That insight explained experimental findings of scientists at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, led by the titan of nuclear physics, Ernest Rutherford. Gamow went on to apply quantum mechanics to a general theory of low-energy nuclear reactions, essentially founding that field of study. The significance of his work was apparent to Niels Bohr, who was to theoretical physics what Rutherford was to experimental physics. Bohr offered Gamow a 1928-29 fellowship at the Theoretical Physics Institute of the University of Copenhagen. There Gamow invented what was to become known as the liquid-drop model of the nucleus. Later, Bohr and the American theorist John A. Wheeler used the model to explain the phenomenon of nuclear fission. While at Bohr's institute, Gamow collaborated with the Austrian physicist Fritz Houtermans and the English astrophysicist Robert Atkinson on the first calculation of stellar thermonuclear reactions.

That theory rested largely on Gamow's earlier insights into the mechanism of nuclear reactions and some years later showed the way for Carl von Weizäcker, Hans Bethe, and Gamow's GW student Charles Critchfield to provide the correct theory of thermonuclear energy generation in stars. At Bohr's urging, Gamow spent 1929-30 as a Rockefeller Fellow at Cambridge University, home to Ernest Rutherford and his collaborators at the Cavendish Laboratory. The young Ukrainian had a straightforward, no-nonsense way of doing theoretical physics. His approach was strongly intuitive and he lost little time on florid mathematical formalism. That outlook commended itself to the redoubtable Rutherford, who was, to put it mildly, skeptical of the value, if not of all theoretical speculation, certainly of many theoretical scientists. Gamow succeeded in demonstrating to Rutherford the viability of a proposal-advanced by John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, two of Rutherford's young co-workers-to build a proton accelerator in order to study the atomic nucleus.

Thus Gamow played a major role in the theoretical aspects of the 1932 experiment in which Cockcroft and Walton split the lithium-7 nucleus into two alpha particles by bombarding it with high-energy protons. (That accomplishment won wide-spread attention when presented in a 1932 paper. Einstein said in The New York Times that the results provided the strongest evidence yet adduced for the equivalence of mass and energy.) (Photo: John Cockcroft and George Gamow (Cavendish Laboratory, 1931)) In sum, Gamow had established himself as one of the leaders in the rapidly expanding field of nuclear physics before his 25th birthday. Many intellectuals fled Europe as communist and fascist oppression intensified during the 1930s. Gamow, who became a professor at the University of Leningrad, was one of the first. His posthumously published autobiography, My World Line, contains vivid accounts of some of his attempts to escape from the Soviet Union. In what he describes as the "Crimean campaign" of 1932, he and his new wife-Lyubov Vokhminzeva, nicknamed Rho-tried to cross the Black Sea to Turkey.

Gamow had put the distance at about 170 miles. The voyage was to be made in a small kayak equipped only with paddles and provided with little more than eggs, chocolate, strawberries, and two bottles of good brandy. "The first day was a complete success..." he writes. "I'll never forget the sight of a porpoise seen through a wave illuminated by the sun sinking below the horizon." In less than 36 hours, however, the weather turned: "The force of the wind pressing against my chest was moving the boat backward, stem first." The intrepid but exhausted pair had to return to shore. After a couple of days in a hospital, Gamow managed to persuade Soviet authorities that the unexpectedly inclement conditions had supervened to spoil the boat's sea trials! On their return to Leningrad from a later and equally unsuccessful attempt to escape, Gamow and Rho were more than a little surprised to find that the government had appointed him to represent the Soviet Union at the upcoming Solvay theoretical physics conference to be held in Brussels in October 1933. George resolved to take advantage of this opportunity to leave the Soviet Union for good.

He used his acquaintance with Soviet science minister Nikolai Bukharin to get an interview with Stalin's right-hand man, the dour and hard-headed Vyacheslav Molotov, in which he secured the latter's approval to allow Rho to accompany him to Brussels. After the conference, Gamow accepted an invitation to lecture at the University of Michigan Summer School in Theoretical Physics. During that summer of 1934, GW President Cloyd Heck Marvin and Merle Tuve (director of the accelerator laboratory at the Carnegie Institution of Washington) invited Gamow to come to Washington. He would conduct research at Carnegie and join the University's physics department. Gamow advanced three conditions. First, he wanted to invite a colleague of his choice to join the GW faculty to work with him. The man he had in mind, Edward Teller, then at Birkbeck College in London, was appointed to the GW physics department a year later. Second, he asked for Marvin and Tuve's support in organizing a conference on theoretical physics to be held annually in Washington under the joint auspices of the University and the Carnegie Institution. Third, he requested that his initial appointment at GW be described as visiting professor.

(Since his Soviet passport allowed him to remain legally outside the Soviet Union for only a year, he wanted to give the impression that he might not be contemplating defection.) Five years later, Gamow became a naturalized U.S. citizen. During World War II, while still teaching at GW, he worked as a consultant for the U. S. Navy. After the war, he taught a course in nuclear physics to naval officers, with Admiral Chester Nimitz among his students. The military-and private industry-frequently called on his expertise. Throughout his long GW career, Gamow pursued eclectic scientific interests. Abstract mathematics, the workings of turbine and internal combustion engines, astrophysics, the chemical and biological complexity of matter, the properties and structure of the interior of our planet, and the application of the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics to natural phenomena immense and subatomic-all those excited his insatiable curiosity. The mathematician Stanislaw Ulam.

said that Gamow demonstrated, "among other outstanding traits, perhaps the last example of amateurism in scientific work on a grand scale." Gamow disliked working in crowded fields of research, even if it was an area he himself had developed, or one in which he had acquired prestige and eminence. Not long after coming to GW, he shifted from purely nuclear physics to astrophysics and the application of his discoveries in nuclear physics to the problems of stellar birth, evolution, and energy generation-especially the internal structure of red giant stars. That, in turn, led him to the study of galaxy formation and the question of the creation of the elements and to evolutionary cosmology in general. His findings laid much of the foundation for our present understanding of those phenomena. However, he is best remembered for his work on nucleocosmogenesis (the process by which the elements are created out of more fundamental components) and the development of the physical theory of the big bang model of the universe, as well as for his part in the prediction of the existence of cosmic background radiation.

Gamow, his former student at GW, Ralph Alpher, and their long-time colleague Robert Herman were the first to systematically develop the physical aspects of the cosmological theories of the Russian mathematician Alexander Friedmann and the Belgian cosmologist George Lemaitre. The work of Gamow, Alpher, and Herman placed Friedmann's and Lemaitre's conception of the universe on a material (and thus physically observable) foundation. Friedmann and Lemaitre independently had originated the idea that the universe might have had a beginning, which could be represented mathematically as a singularity of Einstein's equations of general relativity. The first announcement of the consequences of Gamow and Alpher's development of the big bang theory of the early universe came in "The Origin of Chemical Elements" (Physical Review, April 1, 1948), one of the most celebrated papers in modem scientific literature. In a paper published in the British journal Nature later in 1948, Gamow developed equations for the mass and radius of a primordial galaxy (which typically contains about one hundred billion stars, each with a mass comparable with that of the sun).

Amazingly, his equations contained only fundamental parameters such as Newton's gravitational constant, Planck's constant, the charge and entropy quanta, and the binding energy of the deuteron! For its time, that proposed connection between microscopic quantities and cosmic behavior was audacious in the extreme. Today such unbridled speculation has become, if not commonplace, at least not rare in the pages of highly respected scientific journals. Depending on how one views the license that such modem luminaries as Stephen Hawking allow themselves in their cosmological speculations (wormholes, quantum foam, etc.), one might either blame or acclaim George Gamow for leading the way in the early '50s, when it was downright dangerous to one's academic reputation to act so adventurously. Gamow had often dealt with biological matters in his popular writings. Many of his friends-such as Max Delbrück and Albert Szent-Gyorgy, both of whom were to win the Nobel Prize-were biologists of distinction. Nonetheless, Gamow's abrupt and precipitous plunge into the theory of genetic coding in 1953 surprised even his closest friends by its daring originality.

In mid-1953, having read the famous paper by Francis Crick and James Watson describing the double helical structure of DNA, Gamow sent Crick a letter, in which he outlined a mathematical code connecting the structure of DNA with the existence of 20 amino acids. The latter are the building blocks of the proteins that form the most important constituent of all biological organisms. (Photo: Gamow explaining a point of interest to members of the Junior Academy of Scientists (GW Lisner Auditorium, 1952)) Crick and Watson did a lot of their brainstorming in the Eagle pub in Ben'et Street in Cambridge, hard by the Cavendish Laboratory where they carried out their genetic researches. It was within the walls of those hallowed precincts that Crick showed Watson the Gamow letter. Gamow's coding proposal hit the biological genetics community like a thunderbolt. His great innovation was the introduction of mathematical reasoning to the coding problem without dwelling too much on biochemical details. Soon the biological world roiled with feverish activity directed toward abstract mathematical attempts to unravel the genetic code. Gamow and Crick were in the van of the enterprise. In the end it was two experimental biologists, Marshall Nirenberg and J.

Heinrich Matthaei, who cracked the code in their laboratory at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. No mathematical regularity of the kind Gamow contemplated has been discerned between the structure of the DNA and that of the amino acid sequence in proteins. Nevertheless, his astounding insight into the nature of the question to be posed played a significant part in stimulating the enormous advances that have occurred in biological genetics and in the understanding of the essentials of genetic coding since 1953. Those achievements are all the more remarkable for having being inspired, not by a trained biologist, but by a practicing physicist and cosmologist. Gamow left GW in 1956 for the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he continued working until his death in 1968. But his impact on GW endures, and this spring we unveiled a campus memorial to him. A bronze plaque on a granite boulder details the scientific and literary accomplishments of the man whom his good friend Edward Teller described as follows: "Gamow was fantastic in his ideas. He was right, he was wrong. More often wrong than right. Always interesting; ...

and when his idea was not wrong it was not only right, it was new." Department of Physics Columbian College of Arts & Sciences Mailing Address: Corcoran Hall, 725 21st Street NW Visiting Address: Staughton Hall, 707 22nd Street NW Washington, DC 20052 Cambridge Physics - Splitting the Atom James Chadwick Childhood in Manchester On 20th October 1891 James Chadwick was born in Bollington near Macclesfield, Cheshire. When his father left to open a laundry business in Manchester, Chadwick remained with his grandmother, was educated locally and later entered Manchester Municipal Secondary School. Chadwick specialised in applied mathematics and at the age of 16 succeeded in gaining two scholarships to attend Manchester University. Chadwick was immature and very shy. He applied to Manchester to read mathematics, but was accidentally interviewed as a potential physics student. He was too shy to mention the mistake, but was so impressed by the interviewer that he decided to do physics. Back to Top Manchester University Chadwick found the first year classes large and noisy, but in his second year he met the Professor, Ernest Rutherford .

When Rutherford set Chadwick his third year research project he left a deliberate mistake in the method to see if Chadwick was alert. Chadwick noticed the mistake but didn't dare correct the Professor, so Rutherford thought he had missed it! Chadwick got his First Class Honours degree in 1911 and began research for a Masters degree. He stayed in Manchester and was interested in Geiger and Marsden's scattering of alpha particles, research that led to Rutherford's discovery of the nucleus . In 1913 Chadwick received his Masters, and Rutherford recommended him for an 1851 Exhibition scholarship. Back to Top Berlin and the War The scholarship required that Chadwick move from Manchester. He wanted to speacialise in radioactivity, so went with Geiger to the Reichsanstalt in Berlin where he quickly learnt German. Geiger supervised Chadwick and introduced him to other leading German scientists, including Albert Einstein. The First World War brought a sudden end to this way of life. Geiger was called away as a reserve officer, but Chadwick stayed in Germany.

When war was declared it was too late for Chadwick to leave, and soon afterwards he was imprisoned at a racecourse at Ruhleben. He lived with five others in a stable built to hold two horses, and suffered from inadequate food and bitter cold. Back to Top The Cavendish Laboratory In 1918 the War ended. After four years of imprisonment, poor and in bad health, Chadwick was free to return to England and Manchester, where Rutherford offered him a job. A year later Rutherford became the Cavendish Professor, and invited Chadwick to join him in Cambridge. From the start Chadwick played a very important part in the running of the Cavendish Laboratory, which Rutherford had decided would concentrate on the experimental study of the atomic nucleus. Chadwick was offered a Wollaston Studentship of £120 a year by Gonville and Caius College. In 1921 he was elected as a research fellow by the college, increasing his income to £350 a year. The following year Chadwick was funded by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research to become the Assistant Director of Research in the Cavendish.

Back to Top Assistant Director Chadwick now concentrated solely on research, and no longer had to teach or lecture. He and Rutherford would allocate research problems, and each morning at 11 o'clock Chadwick reported any progress to the Professor. Their close friendship lasted for sixteen years. Chadwick was married in 1925 and arranged to have a house built by October 1926. The building actually took longer, and the Chadwicks spent some time living in a cold and draughty house. At the time Chadwick was revising Rutherford's book on radioactivity, and is said to have worked each night until midnight, wrapped up in an overcoat and wearing gloves! Back to Top The Neutron In 1932 Chadwick discovered the neutron. He and Rutherford had discussed the possibility of the particle for more than ten years, and had tried many 'silly' experiments to find it. The successful discovery changed the world, and won Chadwick a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1935. Soon after the discovery Cockcroft and Walton's accelerator split nuclei of lithium and Chadwick was keen to build a more powerful accelerator in the Cavendish.

But Rutherford was reluctant to ask for money and refused Chadwick's request. Chadwick had to look elsewhere for his accelerator, so in 1935 was delighted to accept the Lyon Jones Chair of Physics at Liverpool University. Back to Top Liverpool When Chadwick moved to Liverpool its physics department was run down and lacking equipment, but by the time he left he had built up a high level of teaching and research. In 1936 he began by starting the construction of a '37-inch cyclotron', a circular particle accelerator nearly a metre across, using £2000 from the Warren Fund of the Royal Society. Chadwick had asked Cockcroft to design the magnet for his cyclotron. This annoyed Rutherford, who was still opposed to building expensive accelerators. When Chadwick visited Cambridge in June 1936, Rutherford attacked him about the cyclotron and for encouraging his new director of research, Mark Oliphant, to leave for a chair at Birmingham. Chadwick was surprised and shocked, and returned to Liverpool on bad terms with Rutherford.

Rutherford didn't bear any lasting grudge, and even allowed Cockcroft to build his accelerator, but in October 1937 Rutherford died of a strangulated hernia. Although he had resumed writing to Chadwick on good terms the two men had not met since their argument. Chadwick always regretted this sad ending to their long friendship. Chadwick was not elected as a successor to the Cavendish Chair. While the cyclotron was being built, Chadwick took a keen interest in teaching and medical physics. During the first few months of 1939 he spent half his time organising classes and reorganising cancer therapy. He was an able Department Head and brilliant researcher. Back to Top The Second World War History came close to repeating itself as Chadwick almost found himself behind enemy lines at the start of the Second World War. In September 1939 he was on a fishing holiday in Sweden, and when he got back to Stockholm found no immediate way home. Fortunately he obtained a flight to Amsterdam, and after a few days was able to return to England. The Liverpool cyclotron became operational at the start of the Second World War.

Uranium fission had been discovered by Hahn and Strassmann at the start of 1939, and a few months later the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction had been demonstrated. E.V. Appleton, the Secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, asked Chadwick if a nuclear bomb was a possibility. It appeared that such a bomb would need more than a ton of uranium to explode, but Chadwick wasn't sure, and decided to use the Liverpool cyclotron for a feasibility study. By the end of 1940 Chadwick and others found that the first American experiments had underestimated the sizes needed to maintain a chain reaction, and found that only a few kilograms of uranium would be needed to create a nuclear weapon. Chadwick and many of Britain's other leading physicists joined to form 'the Maud Committee', and produced a report saying that a nuclear bomb could be ready by 1943. Only P.M.S. Blackett doubted this timescale. The power plant needed to produce the nuclear material was built in Canada. Back to Top The Manhattan Project America entered the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941.

It became clear that the Amercian nuclear weapons project could quickly overshadow the British efforts, and Chadwick expressed that every effort should be made to allow complete cooperation between the two allied nations. On 19 August 1943 the Quebec Agreement on Anglo-American collaboration was signed by Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt, and British scientists were transferred to the United States. Chadwick quickly established a friendly relationship with Major General Groves, the executive officer in charge of America's nuclear bomb projects, collectively called the Manhattan Project. Groves and Chadwick respected each other, were wholly straightforward and honest. Chadwick was determined to keep Anglo-American relations as strong as possible. He helped draft agreements to provide uranium for the Project, maintained the morale of British scientists during their time in America, and was responsible for British observers being present at the bombing of Nagasaki. After the War Chadwick encouraged cooperation with the United States on nuclear energy matters, and considered the construction of reactors capable of producing plutonium to be the first priority. This cooperation weakened, and by 1955 was extremely limited. Back to Top Return to Liverpool In 1946 Chadwick returned to Britain and Liverpool, physically, mentally and spiritually tired.

He became involved with Britain's nuclear energy programme, continued his work on fundamental research in universities, and advised the British delegation to the United Nations in 1947. At Liverpool he made plans to produce a new synchrocyclotron, so that by the time he left in 1948 Liverpool had the most powerful accelerator outside America. When a European research centre into nuclear physics was proposed, Chadwick was keen that Britain should be involved, seeing it as the only way British scientists could stay competitive with the large accelerators in the United States. He recommended that European scientists be allowed to gain experience on the Liverpool accelerator, and in 1952 recommended that Britain join the Council of Representatives for the European project. Meeting at Cambridge with eleven other physicists, it was decided that Britain should contribute £250,000 a year for eight years. At the end of 1952 Britain agreed to set up C.E.R.N., contributing nearly a quarter of the required resources. Back to Top Gonville and Caius In 1948 Chadwick returned to Cambridge to become the Master of Gonville and Caius College, a move which surprised many of his friends in Liverpool.

He missed his laboratory, but was pleased to have more contact with undergraduates. The College Bursar was absent through illness on Chadwick's arrival, so he handled the finances, managing to make a good return by investing in equities rather than securities. Chadwick was also responsible for building a new court, and relaxing the rules about arriving back late at night! Chadwick accepted the post of Vice-Chancellor at Cambridge, but was overcome with exhaustion before he could take up the role. Back to Top Retirement In 1958 Chadwick became unhappy with the emotional and personal criticism levelled at him as Master, so he resigned from Gonville and Caius and retired to a cottage in North Wales. Chadwick was happy to be back near Liverpool again, and stayed in Liverpool for eleven years. The Chadwicks returned to Cambridge in 1969 to be near their two daughters, and James Chadwick died on 24th July, 1974. More than four hundred attended his funeral at Great Saint Mary's on the 26th October.

Question: The Cavendish Laboratory houses the Physics Department of which major British university ?
Answer: CAMBRIDGE