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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 96:
Freeman Dyson died in 2020.

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.

Pages 112 and 134 (milestones), 128, 136-141, 152-3 (Scientist of the Decade), 222:
Murray Gell-Mann, winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the theory of subatomic particles including the prediction of quarks, died in 2019.

Page 126:
Kazuhiko Nishijima, who, independently of but at approximately the same time as Murray Gell-Mann, proposed a new quantum number to explain interactions of so-called strange particles, died in 2009. Gell-Mann called that property "strangeness," and eventually realized it corresponded to the number of strange quarks or antiquarks in a hadron or meson.

Page 127:
Geoffrey Burbidge, whose work on fusion in stars contributed to understanding the amount of each isotope in the universe, died in 2010.
Donald A. Glaser, inventor of the bubble chamber for detection of elementary particles, died in 2013.

Page 129:
Theodore Maiman, inventor of the laser, died in 2007.

Page 130, 221:
Charles Townes, winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize for inventing the maser and for work that led to the laser, died in 2015.

Pages 147, 223:
Steven Weinberg, winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize for the theory of the electroweak force, died in 2021.

Pages 158 (milestones), 159, 160, 223:
Burton Richter, winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize for the discovery of the J/Psi particle, died in 2018.

Pages 159 (milestones), 161, 191, 198-99 (Scientist of the Decade), 225:
Leon Lederman, winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for the discovery of the muon neutrino, died in 2018.

Pages 160, 226:
Martin Perl, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize for the discovery of the tau lepton, died in 2014.

Page 181:
Heinrich Rohrer, co-inventor of the scanning tunneling microscope, died in 2013.

Page 181, 223:
Philip W. Anderson, condensed matter physics pioneer and winner of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physics, died in 2020.

Page 204:
Vera Rubin, discoverer of dark matter in other galaxies, died in 2016. The book omits the earlier detection of dark matter in the Coma galaxy cluster (but not in individual galaxies) by Fritz Zwicky in 1933.

Page 206, with connection to pp. 183-85:
One of the book's final sentences, reflecting on the coming decades, asks, "Will 21st-century physics yield... a theory of high-temperature superconductivity...?" In 2008, Hideo Hosono of the Tokyo Institute of Technology published the discovery of a superconductor that--surprisingly--contains iron. That started a flurry of research activity into new superconducting materials that is reminiscent of the 1986-87 period. Whether this research provides insight into the mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity or produces a new record superconducting critical temperature remains to be seen. As of August 2009, the new class of materials has produced a critical temperature as high as 55K.

Page 219:
Willis Eugene Lamb, winner of the 1955 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2008.

Page 220:
Donald A. Glaser, winner of the 1960 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2013.

Page 223:
Aage Niels Bohr, winner of the 1975 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2009.
Philip Warren Anderson, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977, died in 2020

Page 224:
Val Logsdon Fitch, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2015.
Kai M. Siegbahn, winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2007.
Nicolaas Bloembergen, winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2017.
Kenneth G. Wilson, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2013.
Simon van der Meer, winner of the 1984 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2011.

Page 225:
Heinrich Rohrer, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Physics died in 2013.
Jack Steinberger, winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Physics died in 2020.
Norman F. Ramsey, winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2011.
Hans G. Dehmelt, winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2017.
Richard E. Taylor, winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2018
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2007.


Page 226:
Georges Charpak, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2010.




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

2008
Yoichiro Nambu (1921- ) USA
for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics

and
Makoto Kobayashi (1944- ) and Toshihide Maskawa (1940- ) Japan
for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature

2009
Charles K. Kao (1933- ) Hong Kong, China
for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication

and
Willard S. Boyle (1924- ) and George E. Smith (1930- ) USA
for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit - the CCD sensor

2010
Andre Geim (1958- ) Netherlands and Konstantin Novoselov (1974- ) UK and Russia
for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene

2011
Saul Perlmutter (1959- ) USA, Brian P. Schmidt (1967- ) USA, and Adam G. Riess (1969- ) USA/Australia
for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae.

2012
Serge Haroche (1944- ) France (born in Morocco) and David J. Wineland (1944- ) USA
for groundbreaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems.

2013
Francois Englert (1932- ) Belgium and Peter W. Higgs (1929- ) UK
for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider.

2014
Isamu Akasaki (1929- ) and Hiroshi Amano (1960- ) Japan and Shuji Nakamura (1954- ) USA citizen born in Japan
for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources.

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