Related papers: Women in Physics in Fermi's Time
Steven Weinberg was a giant of late 20th Century physics on whose shoulders we stand while groping for the science of the 21st Century. This article provides a too-brief summary of a selection of his many achievements -- eight decades of…
The aim of this article has been to put together various aspects of the personality of the Italian mathematician Francesco Severi: the mathematical, the political, the institutional, academic and philosophical one. We tried in particular to…
This contribution aims to give an overview of the historical context of neutrino physics. I will present the strong social trends that shaped physics and the way physicists worked, along the 20th century. First, we will see the background…
Gaining recognition as a physics person by peers is an important contributor to undergraduate students' physics identity and their success in physics courses. Previous research has separately demonstrated that women perceive less…
We present an overview of high energy transients in astrophysics, highlighting important advances over the past 50 years. We begin with early discoveries of gamma-ray transients, and then delve into physical details associated with a…
Lev Davidovich Landau was arguably one of the greatest and most versatile physicists. His work spans a very wide range and has had a considerable impact on all areas of physics including condensed matter physics, plasma, high energy and…
In the Italian education system, secondary students (ages 14-19) face the foundations of quantum physics during the final term of scientific high school (pre-university year). The Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research…
Some important topics from history of neutrino physics over the last fifty years are discussed. History of neutrinos is older, at 4th December 2010 it will be eightieth anniversary of the "neutrino birth". In that day W. Pauli wrote the…
After World War II, a hyper-pragmatic paradigm was established in physics in most of the western countries, within which foundations of quantum mechanics were vastly dismissed as pointless speculations. In this paper, we show that in Italy,…
The work of S. Kichenassamy (1926-2015) in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics covers the spectrum of Relativistic Physics: from the clarification of the postulational basis of the two theories of Relativity, to applications to the…
Studies examining gender differences in introductory physics show a consensus when it comes to a gender gap on conceptual assessments; however, the story is not as clear when it comes to differences in gendered performance on exams. This…
There is growing interest in the introduction of Einsteinian concepts of space, time, light and gravity across the entire school curriculum. We have developed intervention programs and measured their effectiveness in terms of student…
We present a panoramic view of the main scientific manuscripts left unpublished by the brightest Italian theoretical physicist of the XX century, Ettore Majorana. We deal in particular: (i) with his very original "study" notes (the…
We review the physics at the end of the nineteenth century and summarize the process of the establishment of Special Relativity by Albert Einstein in brief. Following in the giant's footsteps, we outline the scientific method which helps to…
The traditional Fermi function ansatz for nuclear beta decay describes enhanced perturbative effects in the limit of large nuclear charge $Z$ and/or small electron velocity $\beta$. We define and compute the quantum field theory object that…
This talk is dedicated to Alberto Sirlin in celebration of his seventieth birthday. I wish to convey my deep appreciation of his many important contributions to particle physics over 40 years and look forward to many more years of…
The life of Isaak Yakovlevich Pomeranchuk was short (20.05.1913 -- 14.12.1966). But the impact of his personality and his works on physics and physicists is remarkable. The talk describes the biography of I.Ya. Pomeranchuk, his major…
This paper takes James David Forbes' Encyclopaedia Britannica entry, Dissertation Sixth, as a lens to examine physics as a cognitive, practical, and social, enterprise. Forbes wrote this survey of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century…
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…
The World Year of Physics (2005) is an international celebration to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of Einstein's "Annus Mirabilis". The United Nations has officially declared 2005 the International Year of Physics. However, the…