Bethe, Hans Albrecht

Bethe, Hans Albrecht (bā`tə), 1906–2005, American physicist, b. Strassburg, Germany (now Strasbourg, France), educated at Frankfurt and Munich universities. Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933, he came (1935) to the United States to teach at Cornell Univ., where he became a professor (1937–75). He was director (1943–46) of the theoretical physics division of the Los Alamos Atomic Scientific Laboratory and in 1958 was scientific adviser to the United States at the nuclear test ban talks in Geneva. During the 1980s and 1990s, Bethe campaigned vigorously for the peaceful use and international control of nuclear energy. He is noted for his theories on atomic properties and in 1967 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the origin of solar and stellar energy (see nucleosynthesis). He wrote The Road from Los Alamos (1991) and, with R. W. Jackiw, Intermediate Quantum Mechanics (3d ed. 1997).

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Bethe, Hans Albrecht 

Born July 2, 1906, in Strassburg, Germany. Theoretical physicist.

Bethe graduated from the University of Munich in 1928 and taught in German universities. He emigrated to England in 1933 and to the USA in 1935. A professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, since 1937, he worked at the Los Alamos Laboratory from 1943 to 1946. His primary works are in quantum mechanics and its applications to atomic theory, the theory of metals, the interaction of particles with the electromagnetic field, the theory of elementary particles, and the theory of the atomic nucleus. Bethe contributed an important formula for determining the energy loss of a charged particle moving through matter. The Bethe-Salpeter equation, which describes a system of two interacting particles, is widely applied in the theory of elementary particles. Bethe pointed out the most probable concrete cycle of nuclear reactions that are the source of intrastellar thermonuclear energy. He received the Nobel Prize in 1967.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
Kvantovaia mekhanika prosteishikh sistem. Leningrad-Moscow, 1935.
Elektronnaia teoriia metallov. Leningrad-Moscow, 1938. (With A. Sommerfeld.)
Lektsii po teorii iadra. Moscow, 1949.