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 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.
Page 129:
Theodore Maiman, inventor of the laser, died in 2007.
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 223:
Aage Niels Bohr, winner of the 1975 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2009.
Page 224:
Kai M. Siegbahn, winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2007.
Simon van der Meer, winner of the 1984 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2011.
Page 225:
Norman F. Ramsey, winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize for Physics, died in 2011.
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.
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