PHYSICS: Decade by Decade by Alfred B. Bortz, Ph. D. (Facts On File, Twentieth-Century Science set, 2007, grades 6-12 and adult), ISBN#9780816055326.
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Updates and Corrections
Pages 25, 46, 89, 241:
Add the following book to the further reading list
Reeves, Richard. A Force of Nature: The Frontier Genius of Ernest Rutherford. New York: Norton, 2007. A brief and readable biography of the physicist who discovered the transmutation of elements and the atomic nucleus, and predicted the existence of the neutron.
Pages 46, 132, 190, 242:
Add the following web site to the further reading list
American Institute of Physics, Center for the History of Physics, "Moments of Discovery: Superconductivity." Available online. URL: http://www.aip.org/history/mod/superconductivity/. Accessed November 14, 2007. A special on-line exhibit on the remarkable history of superconductivity.
Page 49:
In timeline for 1926, the name G. P. Thomas should be G. P. Thomson.
Page 93:
John Archibald Wheeler, mentor of 1940s Scientist of the Decade Richard Feynman, died in 2008.
Willis Lamb, whose work on the spectrum of hydrogen (the Lamb shift) was instrumental in the development of Quantum Electrodynamics, died in 2008.
Page 107:
Ralph Alpher, who with George Gamow calculated the relative abundance of hydrogen and helium in the early Universe, providing a key support for the Big Bang theory, died in 2007.
Page 129:
Theodore Maiman, inventor of the laser, died in 2007.
Page 219:
Willis Eugene Lamb, winner of the 1955 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2008.
Page 224:
Kai M. Siegbahn, winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2007.
Page 225:
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2007.
Winners of the Nobel Prize for Physics in the 21st Century
NOTE: A new set of prizes, the Kavli Prizes for Astrophysics, Nanoscience, and Neuroscience were first awarded in 2008. These may rival the Nobel Prize for prestige. Click the link for details about the prize and its winners.
2001
Eric A. Cornell (1961- ) USA
Wolfgang Ketterle (1957- ) USA
Carl E. Wieman (1951- ) USA
for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates
2002
Raymond Davis, Jr. (1914-2006) USA
Masatoshi Koshiba (1926- ) Japan
for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos
and
Riccardo Giacconi (1931- ) USA
for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources
2003
Alexei A. Abrikosov (1928- ) USA and Russia
Vitaly L. Ginzburg (1916- ) Russia
Anthony J. Leggett (1938- ) United Kingdom and USA
for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids
2004
David J. Gross (1941- ) USA
H. David Politzer (1949- ) USA
Frank Wilczek (1951- ) USA
for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction
2005
Roy J. Glauber (1925- ) USA
for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence
and
John L. Hall (1934- ) USA
Theodor W. Haensch (1941- ) Germany
for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique
2006
John C. Mather (1946- ) USA
George F. Smoot (1945- ) USA
for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation
2007
Albert Fert (1938- ) France
Peter Gruenberg (1939- ) Germany
for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance
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Text copyright 2007 by Alfred B. Bortz, all rights reserved
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