Related papers: Between Pacifism and Nuclear Energy (1930-1955)
Late in October 1911, eighteen leading scientists from all over Europe met to the first of a famous sequence of Solvay conferences in Brussels. This historical meeting was mainly devoted to "The Theory of Radiation and the Quanta", at a…
Einsteinian physics represents a distinct paradigm shift compared to Newtonian physics. There is worldwide interest in introducing Einsteinian physics concepts early in school curriculum and trials have demonstrated that this is feasible.…
In recent centuries the world has become increasingly dominated by empirical evidence and theoretic science in developing worldviews. Advances in science have dictated Roman Catholic doctrine such as the acceptance of Darwinian evolution…
We study influence of gravitational field on the mass-energy equivalence relation by incorporating gravitation in the physical situation considered by Einstein (Ann. Physik, 17, 1905, English translation in ref. [1]) for his first…
A novel recovery of some important documents related to the Fermi course on neutron physics, held at Los Alamos in 1945, is announced. Its relevance for the effective launch of a British nuclear programme in the early postwar period,…
The Equivalence Principle (EP) is not one of the ``universal'' principles of physics (like the Action Principle). It is a heuristic hypothesis which was introduced by Einstein in 1907, and used by him to construct his theory of General…
In 1939 Albert Einstein wrote a technical article that argued against the possibility that a star can be contracted to a single point: particles making up the star would end up rotating at velocities that were too high. In the same year,…
We analyse the "Einstein box" thought experiment and the definition of the momentum of light inside matter. We stress the importance of the total energy-momentum tensor of the closed system (electromagnetic field plus material medium) and…
Dark Energy is currently one of the biggest mysteries in science. In this article the origin of the concept is traced as far back as Newton and Hooke in the seventeenth century. Newton considered, along with the inverse square law, a force…
Einstein's distinction between principle theories and constructive theories is methodological rather than metaphysical. Principle theories such as thermodynamics and relativity articulate empirically distilled constraints that delimit…
An ab-initio description of atomic nuclei that solves the nuclear many-body problem for realistic nuclear forces is expected to possess a high degree of predictive power. In this contribution we treat the main obstacle, namely the…
On the basis of his `Z\"urich Notebook' I shall describe a particularly fruitful phase in Einstein's struggle on the way to general relativity. These research notes are an extremely illuminating source for understanding Einstein's main…
We critically revisit Einstein's 1905 heuristic argument for lightquanta, considering its internal coherence and the scope of its applicability. We argue that Einstein's reasoning, often celebrated for its originality, is ambiguous because…
With his General Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein produced a revolution in our conception of reality and of the knowledge we can obtain from it. This revolution can be viewed from philosophy as leading to one of the great paradigms in…
Einstein's thesis ``A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions'' was the second of his five celebrated papers in 1905. Although it is -- thanks to its widespread practical applications -- the most quoted of his papers, it is less known…
100 years ago Einstein discovered $E=mc^2$, the secret energy stored in ordinary mass. $\Delta H = D(H-H)$ is the chemical energy released in chemical bond formation between two H atoms. The failure to recognize the enormously different…
On October 22, 1934, in a famous experiment, Enrico Fermi and his colleagues discovered that a significant increase in induced radioactivity can be obtained when neutrons are slowed down by means of hydrogen atoms. This discovery and its…
We present a first English translation and analysis of a little-known review of relativistic cosmology written by Albert Einstein in late 1932. The article, which was published in 1933 in a book of Einstein papers translated into French,…
The first comprehensive overview of the final version of the general theory of relativity was published by Einstein in 1916 after several expositions of preliminary versions and latest revisions of the theory in November 1915. A historical…
The article below is based on lectures delivered to new students remotely in the course of orientation. It presents the quantum theory tree from its inception a century ago till today. The main focus is on the nuclear physics - HEP branch.