Related papers: Physics, scientific investigation and society in A…
On the occasion of a symposium honoring my collegue Adrian Melissinos, I gave an informal, personal review of bottom quark physics. This paper is a writeup of that talk. I first summarize the early days, the decade from the discovery…
Considered one of the founding fathers of integral geometry, Luis Santal\'o has contributed to various areas of mathematics. His work has applications in number theory, in the theory of differential equations, in stochastic geometry, in…
Quantum physics is considered as one of the most remarkable discoveries of contemporary physics grown during previous century and gradually manifested to the scientific world such as inventions of laser, the transistor, the electron…
This article is an attempt to review 50 years of high-energy cosmic particle physics at the Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It is written by an outsider whose scientific career, to a large part, was formed…
The radical changes in the concepts and approach in Physics at the turn of the Nineteenth century were so deep, that is acknowledged as a revolution. However, in 1970 Thomas Kuhn's careful reconstruction of the researches on the black body…
Many instruments of the Historical Collection of the Physics Instruments of the University of Palermo date back to the early nineteenth century, when experimental Physics begun to be taught in university studies by using instruments and…
The American Physical Society recently released a statement calling on all university physics departments to provide or facilitate access to research experiences for all undergraduate students. In response, we investigated the current…
The history of the Institute of Physics at the University of Florence is traced from the beginning of the 20th century, with the arrival of Antonio Garbasso as Director (1913), to the 1960s. Thanks to Garbasso's expertise, not only did the…
The discovery of cosmic rays, a milestone in science, comprised scientists in Europe and the US and took place during a period characterised by nationalism and lack of communication. Many scientists that took part in this research a century…
In 1932 Ettore Majorana published an article proving that relativity allows any value for the spin of a quantum particle and that there is no privilege for the half integer spin. The Majorana idea was so innovative for the time that the…
The experimental study of gravity became much more active in the late 1950s, a change pronounced enough be termed the birth, or naissance, of experimental gravity physics. I present a review of developments in this subject since 1915,…
As it is well-known, the year 2005 has been the centenary of the "annus mirabilis" (1905) during which Albert Einstein published four fundamental papers of his. But already in 1979, for the centenary of Einstein's birth, the world…
We give a detailed account of the recent retrieval of a consistent amount (about 600 pages) of documents written by Enrico Fermi and/or his collaborators, coming from different sources previously unexplored. These documents include…
This agile small "book" (in Italian) is an introduction to the life and work of Ettore Majorana, the brightest Italian theoretical physicist of the XX century, regarded by Enrico Fermi as the best theoretician of his time in the world. It…
This is the first paper of a series aiming to present a new teaching sequence for Particle Physics in high school. We propose a systematic discussion of the subject, covering not only the understanding of its key concepts, but also of the…
A personal account of work on the Manhattan Project in Chicago by one of the few remaining survivors of the war-time project is given, illustrating, among other things, how absurd things can happen at a time of great stress and concern.. As…
Being aware of the motivation problems observed in many scientific oriented careers, we present two experiences to expose to college students to environments, methodologies and discovery techniques addressing contemporary problems. This…
In 1926 Emil Rupp published a number of papers on the interference properties of light emitted by canal ray sources. These articles, particularly one paper that came into being in collaboration with Albert Einstein, drew quite some…
After reviewing the present experimental constraints on the unitarity triangle, I discuss the various ways in which new physics can manifest itself in measurements of the parameters of the unitarity triangle. Apart from one exception, which…
The year 2023 marks three anniversaries: the 150th anniversary of the French Physical Society, the 100th anniversary since the publication of Louis de Broglie's articles (the first fundamental articles of Quantum Mechanics) and the 50th…