The Seventh Solvay Conference: Nuclear Physics, Intellectual Migration, and Institutional Influence

Stuewer, Roger H.

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-59420-4_4

Roger H. Stuewer⁵

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology ((PSHST))

277 Accesses

Abstract

I discuss the founding of the Solvay Conferences in Physics by Ernest Solvay in Brussels in 1911 and then turn to the seventh Solvay Conference in October 1933. I show how it lay at the crossroads in the history of experimental and theoretical nuclear physics when new experimental techniques and instruments were being developed and new theoretical ideas and concepts were being generated, all of which were diffused to physicists in many countries of the world, some of whom were part of the greatest intellectual migration in the twentieth century, if not in history. I conclude by indicating the great influence that the Solvay Conferences exerted as a model for other conferences in physics and in the history and philosophy of physics.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 39.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 54.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 54.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
Jagdish Mehra, The Solvay Conferences on Physics: Aspects of the Development of Physics since 1911 (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975); Pierre Marage and Grégoire Wallenborn, The Solvay Councils and the Birth of Modern Physics (Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhäuser Verlag, 1999).
2.
Mehra, Solvay Conferences, 1–3; Marage and Wallenborn, Solvay Councils, 1–6; W.A. Campbell, “Solvay, Ernest,” in Charles Coulston Gillispie, Dictionary of Scientific Biography Vol. XII (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975), 520–521.
3.
Quoted in Marage and Wallenborn, Solvay Councils, 9.
4.
Quoted in ibid.
5.
P. Langevin et M. de Broglie, La Théorie du Rayonnement et les Quanta. Rapports et Discussions de la Réunion tenue á Bruxelles, du 30 octobre au 3 novembre 1911. Sous les Auspices de M. E. Solvay (Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1912).
6.
Quoted in Marage and Wallenborn, Solvay Councils, 18.
7.
Quoted in ibid., 19.
8.
Électrons et Photons. Rapports et Discussions du Cinquième Conseil de Physique tenu a Bruxelles du 24 au 29 octobre 1927 sous les Auspices de l’Institut International de Physique Solvay. Publiés par la Commission administrative de l’Institut (Paris, Gauthier-Villars et C^ie, 1928); Guido Bacciagaluppi and Antony Valentini, Quantum Theory at the Crossroads: Reconsidering the 1927 Solvay Conference (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
9.
Quoted in Marage and Wallenborn, Solvay Councils, 41.
10.
Institut International de Physique Solvay, Structure et Propriétés des Noyaux Atomiques. Rapports et Discussions du Septieme Conseil de Physique tenu a Bruxelles du 22 au 29 Octobre 1933 (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1934), 348–353, on 348; Roger H. Stuewer, “The Seventh Solvay Conference: Nuclear Physics at the Crossroads,” in No Truth Except in the Details: Essays in Honor of Martin J. Klein, ed. A.J. Kox and Daniel M. Siegel (Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer, 1995), 333–362, on 333.
11.
Langevin, Solvay Rapports, ix.
12.
Reale Accademia d’Italia, Convegno di Fisica Nucleare Ottobre 1931-IX (Roma: Reale Accademia d’Italia, 1932).
13.
Langevin, Solvay Rapports, x.
14.
Robert Crease, “Physical Sciences,” in The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, ed. Robert Frodeman et al. (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 79–102, especially 96.
15.
Langevin, Solvay Rapports, x.
16.
Roger H. Stuewer, “Artificial Disintegration and the Cambridge-Vienna Controversy,” in Observation, Experiment, and Hypothesis in Modern Physical Science, ed. Peter Achinstein and Owen Hannaway (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 1985), 239–307.
17.
Otto R. Frisch, “The Discovery of Fission: How It All Began,” Physics Today 20 (November 1967), 43–48, on 43–44.
18.
Langevin, Solvay Rapports, viii.
19.
George Gamow, My World Line: An Informal Autobiography (New York: Viking, 1970), 28–54.
20.
George Gamow, “Zur Quantentheorie des Atomkernes,” Zeitschrift für Physik 51 (1928), 204–212; Roger H. Stuewer, “Gamow’s Theory of Alpha-Decay,” in The Kaleidoscope of Science, ed. Edna Ullmann-Margalit (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986), 147–186.
21.
George Gamow, “The Facts Concerning My Getaway from Russia” Gamow papers (Library of Congress, October 1950), 2.
22.
Gamow, My World Line, 128.
23.
Gamow, “Facts Concerning My Getaway”, 3.
24.
Ibid., 1.
25.
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), 241.
26.
Quoted in Norman Bentwich, The Refugees from Germany April 1933 to December 1935 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1936), 28–29.
27.
Laura Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants: The Intellectual Migration from Europe 1930–41 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 174–214; Charles Weiner, “A New Site for the Seminar: The Refugees and American Physics in the Thirties,” in The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930–1960, ed. Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), 190–234; Daniel J. Kevles, The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America (New York: Knopf, 1978), 279–283; Gerald Holton, “The Migration of Physicists to the United States,” in The Muses Flee Hitler: Cultural Transfer and Adaptation 1930–1945, ed. Jarrell C. Jackman and Carla M. Borden (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983), 169–188; Roger H. Stuewer, “Nuclear Physicists in a New World: The Émigrés of the 1930s in America,” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 7 (1984), 23–40.
28.
Reproduced in Weiner, “New Site,” 234.
29.
Nathan Reingold, “Refugee Mathematicians in the United States, 1933–1941: Reception and Reaction,” in Jackman and Borden, Muses, 206.
30.
Langevin, Solvay Rapports, vii.
31.
Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (New York: Bonanza, 1954), 205–209; Otto Nathan and Heinz Norden, Einstein on Peace (New York: Avenel, 1960), 215–216; Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times (New York: World, 1971), 463–464.
32.
Nathan and Norden, Einstein on Peace, 237–238.
33.
Heisenberg to Bohr, June 30, 1933, Bohr Scientific Correspondence, Archive for History of Quantum Physics (AHQP).
34.
This account is based on two interviews with Bloch, the first one with Thomas S. Kuhn, May 14, 1964 (AHQP), the second one with Charles Weiner, August 15, 1968, Center for History of Physics, American Institute of Physics, College Park, Maryland.
35.
Walter Moore, Schrödinger: life and thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 269.
36.
Quoted in David C. Cassidy, Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg (New York: Freeman, 1992), 310.
37.
Moore, Schrödinger, 276.
38.
Rudolf Peierls, Bird of Passage: Recollections of a Physicist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 16–81, 90, 99.
39.
Egon Bretscher and Eugen Guth, “Zusammenfassender Bericht über die Physikalische Vortragswoche der Eidg. Technischen Hochschule Zürich vom 20–24. Mai 1931,” Physikalische Zeitschrift 32 (1931): 649–674.
40.
Reale Accademia d‘Italia, Convegno di Fisica Nucleare.
41.
M.P. Bronshtein et al. Atomic Nuclei: A Collection of Papers for the All-Union Nuclear Conference (Leningrad and Moscow: State Technical-Theoretical Publishing House, 1934) [in Russian]. I am grateful to Morton Hamermesh for translating substantial portions of these proceedings for me.
42.
Ibid., Preface.
43.
J.D. Cockcroft, “La Désintégration des Éléments par des Protons accélérés,” Solvay Rapports, 1–56.
44.
Ibid., 61–70.
45.
Ibid., 76.
46.
Kenneth T. Bainbridge, “The Equivalence of Mass and Energy,” Physical Review 44 (1933), 123.
47.
J. Chadwick, “Diffusion anomale des Particules α. Transmutation des Éléments par des Particules α. Le Neutron,” Solvay Rapports, 81–112; Frédéric and Irène Joliot, “Rayonnement pénétrant des Atomes sous l’Action des Rayons α,” ibid., 121–156.
48.
Roger H. Stuewer, “Mass-Energy and the Neutron in the Early Thirties,” Science in Context 6 (1993), 195–238.
49.
M.S. Livingston, Malcolm C. Henderson and E.O. Lawrence, “Neutrons from Deutons and the Mass of the Neutron,” Physical Review 44 (1933), 781–782; quote on 782.
50.
Irène Curie and Frédéric Joliot, “La complexité du proton et la masse du neutron,” Comptes rendus hebdomadaries des séances de l’Académie des Sciences 197 (1933), 237–238.
51.
Lawrence, Solvay Rapports, 67–69.
52.
H. Richard Crane, Charles C. Lauritsen and A. Soltan, “Production of Neutrons by High Speed Deutons,” Physical Review 44 (1933), 692–693.
53.
Chadwick, Solvay Rapports, 102.
54.
Curie, Joliot, 156.
55.
Walther Bothe, “Das Neutron und das Positron,” Die Naturwissenschaften 21 (1933), 825–831; on 830.
56.
Werner Heisenberg, “Considérations théoriques générales sur la Structure du Noyau,” Solvay Rapports, 289–323.
57.
Roger H. Stuewer, “The Origin of the Liquid-Drop Model and the Interpretation of Nuclear Fission,” Perspectives on Science 2 (1994), 39–92.
58.
George Gamow, “Discussion on the Structure of Atomic Nuclei,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London [A] 123 (1929), 386–387.
59.
George Gamow, “Mass Defect Curve and Nuclear Constitution,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London [A] 126 (1930), 632–644.
60.
Werner Heisenberg, “Über den Bau der Atomkerne I,” Zeitschrift für Physik 77 (1932), 1–11; Werner Heisenberg, “Über den Bau der Atomkerne II,” Zeitschrift für Physik 78 (1932), 156–164; Werner Heisenberg, “Über den Bau der Atomkerne III,” Zeitschrift für Physik 80 (1933), 587–596.
61.
Ettore Majorana, “Über die Kerntheorie,” Zeitschrift für Physik 82 (1933), 137–145.
62.
Heisenberg, Solvay Rapports, 316.
63.
Pauli, ibid., 324–325.
64.
C.D. Ellis and W.A. Wooster, “The Average Energy of Disintegration of Radium E,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London [A] 117 (1927), 109–123.
65.
Lise Meitner, Wilhelm Orthmann, “Über eine absolute Bestimmung der Energie der primären β-Strahlen von Radium E,” Zeitschrift für Physik 60 (1930), 143–155.
66.
Pauli to Meitner, Geiger and others, December 4, 1930, in Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel mit Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg u.a., Vol. II, ed. Karl von Meyenn (Berlin: Springer, 1985), 39.
67.
S. Goudsmit, “Present Difficulties in the Theory of Hyperfine Structure,” in Convegno di Fisica Nucleare, ed. Reale Accademia d’Italia, 41.
68.
Pauli, Solvay Rapports, 324; Bohr, ibid., 327–328.
69.
The felicitous term, “intellectual decapitation,” is Alan D. Beyerchen’s; see Jackman and Borden, Muses, 41.
70.
Irène Curie and Frédéric Joliot, “Un nouveau type de radioactivité,” Comptes rendus 198 (1934), 254–256; Roger H. Stuewer, “The Discovery of Artificial Radioactivity,” in Oeuvre et engagement de Frédéric Joliot-Curie, ed. Monique Bordry and Pierre Radvanyi (Les Ulis: EDP Sciences, 2001), 11–20.
71.
Enrico Fermi, “Versuch einer Theorie der β-Strahlen. I,” Zeitschrift für Physik 88 (1934), 161–177.
72.
Enrico Fermi, “Radioattività indotta da Bombardamento di Neutroni, I,” Ricerca Scientifica 5 (1934), 283.
73.
Gilbert N. Lewis et al., “On the Hypothesis of the Instability of the Deuton,” Physical Review 45 (1934), 497.
74.
James Chadwick and Maurice Goldhaber, “A ‘Nuclear Photo-effect’: Disintegration of the Diplon by γ-Rays,” Nature 134 (1934), 237–238; Maurice Goldhaber, “The Nuclear Photoelectric Effect and Remarks on Higher Multipole Transitions: A Personal History,” in Nuclear Physics in Retrospect: Proceedings of a Symposium on the 1930s, ed. Roger H. Stuewer (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979), 83–106, on 85–88.
75.
The Physical Society, International Conference on Physics London 1934: A Joint Conference organized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics and The Physical Society. Papers & Discussions, Vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935).
76.
Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, “Zur Theorie der Kernmassen,” Zeitschrift für Physik 96 (1935), 431–458.
77.
Hans A. Bethe and Robert F. Bacher, “Nuclear Physics: A. Stationary States of Nuclei,” Reviews of Modern Physics 8 (1936): 165–168.
78.
Niels Bohr, “Neutron Capture and Nuclear Constitution,” Nature 137 (1936): 344–348.
79.
Roger H. Stuewer, “Bringing the News of Fission to America,” Physics Today 38 (October 1985), 48–56.
80.
“Solvay Conference,” website https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvay_Conference (accessed August 17, 2014).
81.
Silvan S. Schweber, QED and the Men Who Made It: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 179.

References

Bacciagaluppi, Guido, and Antony Valentini. 2009. Quantum theory at the crossroads: Reconsidering the 1927 Solvay Conference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Bainbridge, Kenneth T. 1933. The equivalence of mass and energy. Physical Review 44: 123.
Article Google Scholar
Bentwich, Norman. 1936. The refugees from Germany April 1933 to December 1935. London: Allen & Unwin.
Google Scholar
Bethe, Hans A., and Robert F. Bacher. 1936. Nuclear physics: A stationary states of nuclei. Reviews of Modern Physics 8: 165–168.
Article Google Scholar
Bohr, Niels. 1936. Neutron capture and nuclear constitution. Nature 137: 344–348.
Article Google Scholar
Bothe, Walther. 1933. Das Neutron und das Positron. Die Naturwissenschaften 21: 825–831.
Article Google Scholar
Bretscher, Egon, and Eugen Guth. 1931. Zusammenfassender Bericht über die Physikalische Vortragswoche der Eidg. Technischen Hochschule Zürich vom 20.–24. Mai 1931. Physikalische Zeitschrift 32: 649–674.
Google Scholar
Bronshtein, M.P., V.M. Dukelsky, D.D. Ivanenko, and Yu.B. Khariton. 1934. Atomic nuclei: A collection of papers for the All-Union Nuclear Conference. Leningrad/Moscow: State Technical-Theoretical Publishing House.
Google Scholar
Campbell, W.A. 1975. Solvay, Ernest. In Dictionary of scientific biography, vol. XII, ed. Charles Coulston Gillispie, 520–521. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Google Scholar
Cassidy, David C. 1992. Uncertainty: The life and science of Werner Heisenberg. New York: Freeman.
Google Scholar
Chadwick, James. 1934. Diffusion anomale des Particules α. Transmutation des Éléments par des Particules α. Le Neutron. Institut International de Physique Solvay: 81–112.
Google Scholar
Chadwick, James, and Maurice Goldhaber. 1934. A ‘nuclear photo-effect’: Disintegration of the diplon by γ-rays. Nature 134: 237–238.
Article Google Scholar
Clark, Ronald W. 1971. Einstein: The life and times. New York: World.
Google Scholar
Cockcroft, J.D. La Désintégration des Éléments par des Protons accélérés. Institut International de Physique Solvay: 1–56.
Google Scholar
Crane, H. Richard, Charles C. Lauritsen, and Andrzej Soltan. 1933. Production of neutrons by high speed deutons. Physical Review 44: 692–693.
Google Scholar
Crease, Robert. 2010. Physical sciences. In The Oxford handbook of interdisciplinarity, ed. Robert Frodeman, Julie Thompson Klein, and Carl Mitcham, 79–102. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Curie, Irène, and Frédéric Joliot. 1933. La complexité du proton et la masse du neutron. Comptes rendus hebdomadaries des séances de l’Académie des Sciences 197: 237–238.
Google Scholar
Curie, Irène, and Frédéric Joliot. 1934. Un nouveau type de radioactivité. Comptes Rendus 198: 254–256.
Google Scholar
Einstein, Albert. 1954. Ideas and opinions. New York: Bonanza.
Google Scholar
Électrons et Photons. Rapports et Discussions du Cinquième Conseil de Physique tenu a Bruxelles du 24 au 29 octobre 1927 sous les Auspices de l’Institut International de Physique Solvay. 1928. Publiés par la Commission administrative de l’Institut. Paris, Gauthier-Villars et C^ie.
Google Scholar
Ellis, C.D., and W.A. Wooster. 1927. The average energy of disintegration of radium E. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A 117: 109–123.
Article Google Scholar
Fermi, Enrico. 1934a. Versuch einer Theorie der β-Strahlen. I. Zeitschrift für Physik 88: 161–177.
Article Google Scholar
Fermi, E. 1934b. Radioattività indotta da Bombardamento di Neutroni. I. Ricerca Scientifica 5: 283.
Google Scholar
Fermi, Laura. 1968. Illustrious immigrants: The intellectual migration from Europe 1930–41. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Google Scholar
Frisch, Otto R. 1967. The discovery of fission: How it all began. Physics Today 20: 43–48.
Article Google Scholar
Gamow, George. 1928. Zur Quantentheorie des Atomkernes. Zeitschrift für Physik 51: 204–212.
Article Google Scholar
Gamow, George. 1929. Discussion on the structure of atomic nuclei. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A 123: 386–387.
Google Scholar
Gamow, George. 1930. Mass defect curve and nuclear constitution. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A 126: 632–644.
Article Google Scholar
Gamow, George. 1950. The facts concerning my getaway from Russia… Gamow papers, Library of Congress.
Google Scholar
Gamow, George. 1970. My world line: An informal autobiography. New York: Viking.
Google Scholar
Goldhaber, Maurice. 1979. The nuclear photoelectric effect and remarks on higher multipole transitions: A personal history. In Nuclear physics in retrospect: Proceedings of a symposium on the 1930s, ed. Roger H. Stuewer, 83–106. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Google Scholar
Goudsmit, Samuel A. 1932. Present difficulties in the theory of hyperfine structure. In Convegno di Fisica Nucleare, ed. Reale Accademia d’Italia, 41.
Google Scholar
Heisenberg, Werner. 1932a. Über den Bau der Atomkerne I. Zeitschrift für Physik 77: 1–11.
Article Google Scholar
Heisenberg, Werner. 1932b. Über den Bau der Atomkerne II. Zeitschrift für Physik 78: 156–164.
Article Google Scholar
Heisenberg, Werner. 1933. Über den Bau der Atomkerne III. Zeitschrift für Physik 80: 587–596.
Article Google Scholar
Heisenberg, Werner. 1934. Considérations théoriques générales sur la Structure du Noyau. Institut International de Physique Solvay: 289–323.
Google Scholar
Heisenberg, Werner. Letter to Bohr, June 30, 1933. Bohr Scientific Correspondence, Archive for History of Quantum Physics (AHQP).
Google Scholar
Holton, Gerald. 1983. The migration of physicists to the United States. In The Muses flee Hitler: Cultural transfer and adaptation 1930–1945, ed. Jarrell C. Jackman and Carla M. Borden, 169–188. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Google Scholar
Institut International de Physique Solvay. 1934. Structure et Propriétés des Noyaux Atomiques. Rapports et Discussions du Septieme Conseil de Physique tenu a Bruxelles du 22 au 29 Octobre 1933. Paris: Gauthier-Villars.
Google Scholar
Joliot, Frédéric, and Irène Joliot. 1934. Rayonnement pénétrant des Atomes sous l’Action des Rayons α. Institut International de Physique Solvay: 121–156.
Google Scholar
Kevles, Daniel J. 1978. The physicists: The history of a scientific community in Modern America. New York: Knopf.
Google Scholar
Langevin, P., and M. de Broglie. 1912. La Théorie du Rayonnement et les Quanta. Rapports et Discussions de la Réunion tenue á Bruxelles, du 30 octobre au 3 novembre 1911. Sous les Auspices de M. E. Solvay. Paris: Gauthier-Villars.
Google Scholar
Lewis, Gilbert N., M. Stanley Livingston, Malcolm C. Henderson, and Ernest O. Lawrence. 1934. On the hypothesis of the instability of the deuton. Physical Review 45: 497.
Article Google Scholar
Livingston, M.S., Malcolm C. Henderson, and E.O. Lawrence. 1933. Neutrons from deutons and the mass of the neutron. Physical Review 44: 781–782.
Article Google Scholar
Majorana, Ettore. 1933. Über die Kerntheorie. Zeitschrift für Physik 82: 137–145.
Article Google Scholar
Marage, Pierre, and Grégoire Wallenborn. 1999. The Solvay Councils and the birth of modern physics. Basel/Boston/Berlin: Birkhäuser Verlag.
Book Google Scholar
Mehra, Jagdish. 1975. The Solvay Conferences on physics: Aspects of the development of physics since 1911. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Book Google Scholar
Meitner, Lise, and Wilhelm Orthmann. 1930. Über eine absolute Bestimmung der Energie der primären β-Strahlen von Radium E. Zeitschrift für Physik 60: 143–155.
Article Google Scholar
Moore, Walter. 1989. Schrödinger: Life and thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Nathan, Otto, and Heinz Norden. 1960. Einstein on peace. New York: Avenel.
Google Scholar
Pauli. 1985. Letter to Meitner, Geiger, and others, December 4, 1930. In Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel mit Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg u.a. vol. II, ed. Karl von Meyenn. Berlin: Springer.
Google Scholar
Peierls, Rudolf. 1985. Bird of passage: Recollections of a physicist. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Google Scholar
Reale Accademia d’Italia. 1932. Convegno di Fisica Nucleare Ottobre 1931-IX. Roma: Reale Accademia d’Italia.
Google Scholar
Reingold, Nathan. 1983 Refugee mathematicians in the United States, 1933–1941: Reception and reaction. In The Muses Flee Hitler: Cultural transfer and adaptation 1930−1945, ed. Jarrell C. Jackman and Carla M. Borden, 206, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Google Scholar
Schweber, Silvan S. 1994. QED and the men who made it: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Google Scholar
Shirer, William L. 1960. The rise and fall of the Third Reich: A history of Nazi Germany. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Google Scholar
Stuewer, Roger H. 1984. Nuclear physicists in a New World: The emigrés of the 1930s in America. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 7: 23–40.
Article Google Scholar
Stuewer, Roger H. 1985a. Bringing the news of fission to America. Physics Today 38: 48–56.
Article Google Scholar
Stuewer, Roger H. 1985b. Artificial disintegration and the Cambridge-Vienna controversy. In Observation, experiment, and hypothesis in modern physical science, ed. Peter Achinstein and Owen Hannaway, 239–307. Cambridge, MA/London: The MIT Press.
Google Scholar
Stuewer, Roger H. 1986. Gamow’s theory of alpha-decay. In The kaleidoscope of science, ed. Edna Ullmann-Margalit, 147–186. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Chapter Google Scholar
Stuewer, Roger H. 1993. Mass-energy and the neutron in the early thirties. Science in Context 6: 195–238.
Article Google Scholar
Stuewer, Roger H. 1994. The origin of the liquid-drop model and the interpretation of nuclear fission. Perspectives on Science 2: 39–92.
Google Scholar
Stuewer, Roger H. 1995. The Seventh Solvay Conference: Nuclear physics at the crossroads. In No truth except in the details: Essays in honor of Martin J. Klein, ed. A.J. Kox and Daniel M. Siegel, 333–362. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer.
Chapter Google Scholar
Stuewer, Roger H. 2001. The discovery of artificial radioactivity. In Oeuvre et engagement de Frédéric Joliot-Curie, ed. Monique Bordry and Pierre Radvanyi, 11–20. Les Ulis: EDP Sciences.
Google Scholar
The Physical Society. 1935. International Conference on Physics London 1934: A joint conference organized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics and the Physical Society, Papers & discussions, vol. I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar
von Weizsäcker, Carl Friedrich. 1935. Zur Theorie der Kernmassen. Zeitschrift für Physik 96: 431–458.
Article Google Scholar
Weiner, Charles. 1969. A new site for the seminar: The refugees and American physics in the thirties. In The intellectual migration: Europe and America, 1930–1960, ed. Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, 190–234. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Google Scholar
Wikipedia. Solvay Conference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvay_Conference. Accessed 10 May 2016.

Download references

Acknowledgments

I gratefully acknowledge the supplemental travel support I received from the University of Minnesota Office of the Vice President for Research and the University of Minnesota Retirees Association to attend the “International Conference on Intellectual and Institutional Innovation in Science” at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, September 13–15, 2012, where I presented an early version of this paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA
Roger H. Stuewer

Authors

Roger H. Stuewer
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Roger H. Stuewer .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Interdisciplinary Center for Science and Technology Studies (IZWT) University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany
Thomas Heinze
University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany
Richard Münch

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Stuewer, R.H. (2016). The Seventh Solvay Conference: Nuclear Physics, Intellectual Migration, and Institutional Influence. In: Heinze, T., Münch, R. (eds) Innovation in Science and Organizational Renewal. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59420-4_4

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59420-4_4
Published: 12 July 2016
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-59419-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-59420-4
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics