By Thea Derado, Kaufmann Verlag 2007. Hardback ISBN 9783780630599, €19.95.
Using letters, articles and biographies the author of this book paints a lively and private picture of the tragic life of Lise Meitner, which was thorny for two reasons: she was Jewish and a woman. Born in 1878 Meitner attended school in Vienna but could pass her maturity examination only after expensive private lessons. After studying in Vienna, she moved to Berlin in 1907, and for many years had to earn her living by giving private teaching lessons. Eventually she was accepted by the radiochemist Otto Hahn as a physicist collaborator at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin (but without pay), and so began a creative co-operation and a lifelong friendship. Since women were not allowed to enter the institute, Meitner had to do experiments in a wood workshop in the basement accessible from a side entrance.
Derado describes Meitner’s scientific achievements in an understandable way, particularly experiments leading to nuclear fission and the discovery of protactinium. The technical terms are explained in an appendix.
During her stay in Berlin, Meitner met all the celebrities in physics at the time, such as Max Planck, James Franck, Emil Fischer and Albert Einstein, whose characters are all described in a colurful fashion. She developed warm relations with Max von Laue, one of the few German physicists who had bravely withstood the Nazi regime. Apart from science, music played an important role in her life, and through music Meitner made friends with Planck’s family and happily sang Brahms’ songs with Hahn in the wood workshop.
During the First World War Meitner volunteered for the Austrian army as a radiologist. Working in a military hospital she learned the horrors of war. These experiences, and discussions with Hahn and Einstein led to some inner conflicts. During the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis, Meitner enjoyed a certain protection thanks to her Austrian passport, yet after the annexation of Austria it became impossible for her to leave Germany legally. Neglecting her colleagues’ warnings she hesitated too long, until in July 1938 she saved herself by escaping to Holland. Hahn gave her a diamond ring that he had inherited from his mother as a farewell present.
After a short stay in Holland Niels Bohr arranged for Meitner to stay at the Nobel Institute in Stockholm, which was directed by Manne Siegbahn, and finally in 1947 she obtained a research professorship at the Technical University in Stockholm. I was able to work with her there for a year and can confirm many of the episodes mentioned in the book. She was a graceful little person, with a combination of Austrian charm, Prussian orderliness and a sense of duty; she was also very kind and motherly.
Derado discusses, of course, why Meitner did not share the Nobel Prize with Hahn in 1944. Her merits were uncontested, and even after the publication of the Nobel Prize documents questions remain unanswered. It seems that being a woman had negative influences. However, numerous German and international honours and awards, as well as an overwhelming reception in the US, have compensated to a certain extent.
Meitner never married, but various family ties played an important role in her life. She was particularly attached to her nephew Otto Frisch, with whom she interpreted nuclear fission. She spent her last days with him in Cambridge, where she died in 1968.
In all, this book provides an historically accurate account, at the same time from a female perspective, of the turbulent life of one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. It is worth reading, not only for those interested in history, but also perhaps as encouragement for young women scientists.
• This is an abridged version of a review originally published in German in Spektrum der Wissenschaft, March 2008.
by Harry Suhl, Oxford University Press. Hardback ISBN 9780198528029 £49.95 ($150).
Electrons in solids behave like microscopic bar magnets, and in certain solids these align to produce macroscopic magnetizations. This book deals with the dynamics of this magnetization field, which is intrinsically nonlinear. This is important in applications, particularly magnetic recording, which involves very large motion of the magnetization, well beyond the validity of linearized (small motion) approximations or their limited extensions. The author therefore emphasizes nonlinear solution methods but with only minimal use of numerical simulation. The book should be useful to physicists studying magnetic phenomena.
by Eric Akkermans and Gilles Montambaux, Cambridge University Press. Hardback ISBN 9780521855129 £55 ($99).
Quantum mesoscopic physics covers a whole class of interference effects related to the propagation of waves in complex and random media, ranging from the behaviour of electrons in metals and semiconductors to the propagation of electromagnetic waves in suspensions such as colloids, and quantum systems like cold atomic gases. A solid introduction to the field, this book addresses the problem of coherent wave propagation in random media. With more than 200 figures, and exercises throughout, it will be useful for graduate students in physics, applied physics, acoustics and astrophysics.
by Malcolm H MacGregor, World Scientific. Hardback ISBN 9789812569615 £50 ($93).
This book focuses on the most pressing unsolved problem in elementary particle physics – the mass generation of particles. It contains physics that is not included in the Standard Model as it is now formulated but at the same time is in conformity with its major results (i.e. isotopic spins and interactions). It differs from the Standard Model in the treatment of masses and pseudoscalar mesons, and in the role assigned to the coupling constant, α. Presented in a careful and phenomenological way, the material can easily be followed by all physicists, both experimental and theoretical, and also by interested workers in other fields.
by Vladilen S Letokhov, Oxford University Press. Hardback ISBN 9780198528166 £55 ($110).
The general term “laser control of atoms and molecules” covers a variety of problems, including the laser selection of atomic and molecular velocities for the purpose of Doppler-free spectroscopy; laser trapping and cooling of atoms; and laser control of atomic and molecular processes (ionization, dissociation) with a view to detecting single atoms and molecules and, in particular, separating isotopes and nuclear isomers. During the past decade, the principal problems have been successfully solved, many evolving in subsequent research worldwide. The aim of this book by one of the acknowledged experts in the field is to review these topics from a unified point of view, providing a resource for researchers in the various different fields.
by Fritz Rohrlich, World Scientific. Hardback ISBN 9789812700049 £33 ($58).
Originally written in 1964, this text is a study of the classical theory of charged particles. Many applications treat electrons as point particles, but there is nevertheless a widespread belief that the theory is beset with various difficulties, such as an infinite electrostatic self-energy and an equation of motion that allows physically meaningless solutions. The classical theory of charged particles has meanwhile been largely ignored and left incomplete. Despite the efforts of great physicists such as Lorentz, Poincaré and Dirac, it is usually regarded as a “lost cause”. Thanks to more recent progress, however, the author has been able to resolve the various problems and to complete this unfinished theory successfully.
by Arthur Ashkin, World Scientific. Hardback ISBN 9789810240578 £102 ($187). Paperback ISBN 9789810240585 £58 ($106).
This volume by the pioneer of optical trapping and “optical tweezers” contains selected papers and extensive commentaries on laser trapping and the manipulation of neutral particles using radiation pressure forces. These optical methods have had a revolutionary impact on the fields of atomic and molecular physics, biophysics and many aspects of nanotechnology. With his colleagues, Ashkin first demonstrated optical levitation, the trapping of atoms, and “tweezer” trapping and manipulation of living cells and biological particles. This extensive review should be of interest to researchers and students in atomic physics, molecular physics, biophysics and nanotechnology.
by Hilegard Meyer-Ortmanns and Thomas Reisz, World Scientific. Hardback ISBN 9789810234416 £71 ($131).
The phase structure of particle physics shows up in matter at extremely high densities and/or temperatures as reached in the early universe or in heavy-ion collisions in modern laboratory experiments. This book cover the various analytical and numerical tools needed to study this phase structure. These include convergent and asymptotic expansions in strong and weak couplings, dimensional reduction, renormalization group studies, gap equations, Monte Carlo simulations with and without fermions, finite-size and finite-mass scaling analyses, and the approach of effective actions as a supplement to first-principle calculations.
The International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) has issued a statement on the need for continuous and stable funding for large international science projects, such as the proposed International Linear Collider. This statement is a reaction to recent cuts in the science budgets of the UK and the US, and addresses governments and science funding agencies around the world.
In the statement, ICFA expresses its deep concern about the recent decisions in the UK and the US on spending for long-term international science projects. It points out that “frontier science relies increasingly on stable international partnerships, since the scientific and technical challenges can only be met by enabling outstanding men and women of science from around the world to collaborate, and by joining forces to provide the resources they need to succeed”.
The statement continues: “A good example is the proposed International Linear Collider. In order to advance the understanding of the innermost structure of matter and the early development of the universe, several thousand particle physicists and accelerator scientists around the world, during the past 15 years, have co-ordinated their work on developing the technologies necessary to make a linear collider feasible.
“In view of these tightly interlinked efforts, inspired and driven by the scientific potential of the linear collider, the sudden cuts implemented by two partner countries have devastating effects. ICFA feels an obligation to make policy makers aware of the need for stability in the support of major international science efforts. It is important for all governments to find ways to maintain the trust needed to move forward international scientific endeavours.”
Barry Barish likes a challenge. He admits to a complete tendency to go for the difficult in his research – in his view, life is an adventure. Some might say that his most recent challenge would fit well with a certain famous TV series: “Your mission, should you choose to accept it… is to produce a design for the International Linear Collider that includes a detailed design concept, performance assessments, reliable international costing, an industrialization plan, and siting analysis, as well as detector concepts and scope.”
Barish did indeed accept the challenge in March 2005, when he became director of the Global Design Effort (GDE) for a proposed International Linear Collider (ILC). He started in a directorate of one – himself – at the head of a “virtual” laboratory of hundreds of physicists and engineers around the globe. To run the “lab” he has set up a small executive committee, which includes three regional directors (for the Americas, Asia and Europe), three project managers and two leading accelerator experts. There are also boards for R&D, change control and design cost.
Barish operates from his base at Caltech, where he has been since 1962 and ultimately became Linde Professor of Physics (now emeritus). His taste for research challenges became evident in the 1970s, when he was co-spokesperson with Frank Sciulli (also at Caltech) of the “narrow band” neutrino experiment at Fermilab that studied weak neutral currents and the quark substructure of the nucleon. He later became US spokesperson of the collaboration behind the Monopole, Astrophysics and Cosmic Ray Observatory, which operated from 1989 to 2000 in the Gran Sasso National Laboratory (LNGS). The experiment did not find monopoles, but it set the most stringent upper limits so far on their existence.
In 1991 he also began to lead the design of the GEM detector for the Superconducting Super Collider project, together with Bill Willis of Columbia University. In October 1993, however, the US congress infamously shut down the project and Barish found himself in search of a new challenge. He did not have to look far, as Caltech was already involved in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), conceived to search for effects even more difficult to detect than neutrinos. The project was already approved and just beginning to receive funding. Barish became principal investigator in 1994 and director of the LIGO Laboratory in 1997.
Here was an incredibly challenging project, Barish explains, that was “making the audacious attempt to measure an effect of 1 in 1021“. It has indeed achieved this precision, but has not yet detected gravitational waves. “Now it’s down to nature,” says Barish, who found the work on LIGO very satisfying. “There is no way I would have left it except for an exciting new challenge – and the ILC is certainly challenging.” He says that it was hard to move on, “but I felt I could make a difference”. Moreover, he adds: “The likelihood is that the ILC will be important for particle physics.”
At 72 years old, Barish does not expect to participate in the ILC – the earliest it could start up would be in the 2020s. “The plan is short term. The question was whether I could pull together a worldwide team to conceive of a design that will do the job,” he says. With no background in accelerator physics, Barish may not seem the obvious choice for the task. However, he points out that “coming in from the outside, not being buried in the forest, can be very useful”. In addition he believes that he is a good student, and that a good student can be a good leader: “If you do your homework, if the people you work with respect you, then it’s possible.”
An important factor in building the team behind the GDE is that there is not as much history of collaboration in accelerator physics as there is in experimental particle physics. Barish points out that many of the members of the accelerator community have met only at conferences. There has never been real collaboration on accelerator design, so the GDE is a learning process in more than one sense. There are also interesting sociological issues, as the GDE has no physical central location, and meetings usually take place via video and tele-conferencing. Barish likens his job as director to “conducting the disparate instruments in an orchestra”.
In February 2007, the GDE reached a major milestone with the release of the Reference Design Report (RDR) for a 31 km long electron–positron linear collider, with a peak luminosity of about 2 × 1034 cm–2s–1, at a top centre-of-mass energy of 500 GeV, and the possibility of upgrading to 1 TeV. The report contains no detailed engineering; it might state, for example, that a magnet is needed for a certain task, but it does not describe how to build it. The report also contains a preliminary cost estimate, of some $6700 m plus 13,000 person-years of effort.
The final goal will be to produce a strong engineering design, and to optimize costing to form a serious proposal. An appealing deadline is the 2010 ICHEP meeting in Paris. By then there should be results from the LHC that could justify the project. “The main job,” says Barish “is to design a good machine and move once it’s justified.”
In the meantime there is important R&D to be done. Two key areas concern the high-voltage gradient proposed in the machine – an average of 31.5 MV/m – and the effects of electron clouds. Electrons from the walls of the beam pipe cause the positron beam to blow up, thereby reducing the luminosity, and ultimately the number of events. The clouds decay naturally and cease to be a problem if there is sufficient time between bunches, but this reduces the collision rate. The conservative option to keep the rate high would be to have two positron rings to inject alternate pulses into the linac. However, this has huge cost implications so, as Barish says: “There is huge motivation to solve the problem.” One attractive possibility that needs further investigation involves grooving and coating the beam pipe, which could reduce the electron cloud a hundredfold.
However, just before the end of 2007, bad news on funding in both the US and the UK struck a major blow to the plan foreseen at the time that the RDR was released. The UK dealt the first strike, stating that it would “cease investment” in the project, while the US reduced funding for the ILC from $60 m to $15 m as part of a hastily agreed compromise budget for FY2008. Barish recalls the complete surprise of the congressional decision on a budget that President Bush had put forward in February 2007. “We went to bed as normal on Friday (14 December), and woke up on Monday to find the project axed out.”
The cuts in the two countries are both quantitatively and qualitatively different. In one sense the UK’s decision is more serious, as it appears to be a policy decision taken with no input from the community (see Particle physics in the UK is facing a severe funding crisis). Barish says that the main loss here to the GDE is in intellectual leadership. He hopes that continued funding in the UK for general accelerator R&D will mean that the project does not lose people that he says are irreplaceable. In contrast, he expects to see the R&D for the ILC revived in the US budget for FY2009 (starting October 2008), albeit at a level lower than the $60 m originally promised for FY2008. Here the problem is how to cope with the loss of people over the coming months, as there is no funding left to support them in the current budget. Where it hurts most, says Barish, is that the US will not be able to develop the same level of home-grown expertise in the technology required for the ILC, compared with Japan or Europe.
A revival of the ILC in the US budget was a key assumption when Barish and the GDE executive committee met for a relatively rare face-to-face meeting at DESY on 12 January to formulate a new plan. At least the collaboration that Barish has forged is “strong enough to give us the ability to adjust and move on, even with reduced goals”. The aim of the new plan that has emerged is to reduce the scope of the R&D work, but maintain the original schedule of completion by 2010 for items with the highest technical risk, while stretching other parts of the programme to 2012.
The work on high-gradients, underway globally, and tests at Cornell University on reducing the electron cloud will remain high priorities for part one of the newly defined Technical Design Phase, to be ready for 2010. Part two, which will focus on the detailed engineering and industrialization, should be ready by 2012.
Looking further ahead, Barish acknowledges that an ILC-like machine could be the end of the line for very high-energy accelerators, but he points out that accelerators for other applications have a promising future. The GDE itself is already providing an important role in teaching accelerator physics to a new generation. “There is no better way to train them than on something that is pushing the state of the art,” he says. In fact, he sees training as a limiting factor in breeding new experts – whether young people or “converts” from other areas of physics, as many accelerator physicists now are. One problem that he is aware of is that “accelerator people are not revered – but they should be!”.
Despite the recent setbacks with the GDE, Barish remains determined to achieve his mission. “In these ambitious, long-range projects you are going to hit huge bumps in the road, but you have to persevere,” he says. What is vital in his view, is that the agenda should remain driven by science, and that this alone should determine if and when the ILC is built on the firm foundations laid by the GDE. Let us hope that those who fund particle physics have the vision to ensure that one day he can say: “Mission accomplished.”
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