Nishina Memorial Lectures

This volume is a collection of Nishina Memorial Lectures delivered by distinguished physicists during the past 50 years at the invitation of the Nishina Memorial Foundation. The Lectures commemorate Yoshio Nishina, the father of modern physics in Japan.

Yoshio Nishina, referred to in Japan as the Father of Modern Physics, is well known for his theoretical work on the KleinNishina formula, which was done with Oskar Klein in the 6 years he spent in Copenhagen under Niels Bohr during the great era of the development of quantum physics. As described by Professor Ryogo Kubo in Chap. 2 of this volume, Nishina returned to Tokyo in 1929, and started to build up experimental and theoretical groups at RIKEN. His achievements there were many and great: (1) Encouraging Hideki Yukawa and Sin-itiro Tomonaga to tackle a new frontier of physics, leading eventually to their making breakthroughs in fundamental theoretical physics that won them Nobel prizes; (2) the discovery of mesotrons (the name for Yukawa particles at that time, now called muons) in 1937, which was published in Phys. Rev. , parallel to two American groups; (3) construction of small and large cyclotrons and subsequent discoveries of an important radioisotope 237 U and of symmetric ?ssion phenomena by fast neutron irradiation of uranium (1939 40), published in Phys. Rev. and Nature; and (4) creation of a new style of research institute, open to external reseachers, an idea inherited from Copenhagen. During World-War-II his laboratory was severely damaged, and also his cyclotrons were destroyed and thrown into Tokyo Bay right after the end of the war.

Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Inhalt

1. Abstraction in Modern Science Werner Karl Heisenberg 2. Yoshio Nishina, the Pioneer of Modern Physics in Japan Ryogo Kubo 3. Tomonaga Sin-Itiro : A Memorial unskip ignorespaces -- Two Shakers of Physics Julian Schwinger 4. The Discovery of the Parity Violation in Weak Interactions and Its Recent Developments Chien-Shiung Wu 5. Origins of Life Freeman J. Dyson 6. The Computing Machines in the Future Richard P. Feynman 7. Niels Bohr and the Development of Concepts in Nuclear Physics Ben R. Mottelson 8. From X-Ray to Electron Spectroscopy Kai Siegbahn 9. Theoretical Paradigms for the Sciences of Complexity Philip W. Anderson 10. Some Ideas on the Aesthetics of Science Philip W. Anderson 11. Particle Physics and Cosmology: New Aspects of an Old Relationship Leon Van Hove 12. The Experimental Discovery of CP Violation James W. Cronin 13. The Nanometer Age: Challenge and Change Heinrich Rohrer 14. From Rice to Snow Pierre-Gilles de Gennes 15. SCIENCE --- A Round Peg in a Square World Harold Kroto 16. Are We Really Made of Quarks? Jerome I. Friedman 17. Very Elementary Particle Physics Martinus J.G. Veltman 18. The Klein-Nishina Formula & Quantum Electrodynamics Chen Ning Yang Appendix. List of Nishina Memorial Lectures