Nuclear Physicists at the Crossroads
Nuclear Physicists at the Crossroads
The Nazi Civil Service Law of April 7, 1933, prompted the establishment of refugee organizations to cope with the greatest intellectual migration in history, a difficult task in the Great Depression. It was in full swing in October when the seventh Solvay Conference was convened to address fundamental questions in nuclear physics. Foremost was the exact value of the mass of the neutron. Chadwick, Curie and Joliot, and Lawrence advanced very different values, and Lawrence soon had to admit that his very low value was mistaken. In January 1934, Fermi published his far-reaching theory of beta decay, which assumed that an electron and a neutrino are created when a neutron in the nucleus is transformed into a proton, which obviated the need to assume that electrons are present in nuclei. In August 1934, Chadwick and Goldhaber proved experimentally that the neutron is an unstable elementary particle.
Keywords: Nazi Civil Service Law, refugee organizations, Great Depression, seventh Solvay Conference, neutron mass, Fermi beta-decay theory, nuclear electrons, neutron elementary particle
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .