NYU Washington Square College - Album Yearbook (New York, NY)

Page 33 text:

the fruitful fields of investigation for the pres- ent and the near future. ,-Xt the close of the nineteenth century, Becquerel in France had discovered the phen- omenon of natural radioactivity, that is, that radium and other related atoms spontaneously emit particles. Some of these particles were later identified as the nuclei of helium atoms, the element disintegrating becomes a different element, the process being a natural alchemy. The emitted particles come out of the nucleus of the atom, so that it appears that the nuclei are not single entities, but have some sort of structure. Beginning with the discovery of Rutherford, shortly after the war, that nuclei of different elements can be disintegrated arti- ficially by bombarding them with fast-travel- ling helium nuclei, a new held of investiga- tion of nuclear structure and of the artificial transmutation of elements, was thrown open? The advances in the last five years have been spectacular, but the field has only been scratched. XVC do not understand how it is possible for the particles composing a nucleus to hold together, just as we did not under- stand until recently how it was possible for electrons to remain in an atom or atoms to keep together to form stable molecules. XVe can confidently expect that entirely new laws of motion will have to be found to explain this, just as the quantum mechanics replaced Newtonian mechanics before. Also, it has been found that the theory of light developed by Maxwell in England in the nineteenth century, and which was so cor- rect that it predicted accurately the existence and properties of wireless waves, breaks down when applied to the light emitted by nuclei. And so a new theory of light will have to be developed. New tools for the investigation of chemical and biological processes are being forged from the materials of nuclear re- searches: for example, the intermediate meta- bolism of many substances is now being fol- lowed in the body through the knowledge of atoms supplied by modern nuclear physics. Prediction of the discoveries that will be made is bound to fall short of actualityg all one can be sure of is that to nuclear physics of the near future belongs one of the most exciting per- iods in the history of human understanding and discovery. ifflre lead in this work of induced radioactiv- ity had been taken by Curie and Ioliot in France. Enwakn O. S,-xI,AN'1' 29

Page 32 text:

IV The Field of Physics In attempting to assess the trend of the physics -of the day, it is an aid to look at the physics of the years just passed. To the physicists of the early twentieth century, particularly the school of Rutherford in England, belongs the credit of establishing the fact that atoms at their centers, are com- posed of nuclei, around which are circulating electrons. The nuclei were found to be charged with positive electricity, to contain all but one twentieth of a per cent of the mass of the atom, to be about one hundred-thou- sandth the size of the atom, and to increase in charge and mass as one passes to higher atomic numbers in the periodic table. The electrons are still smaller, are extremely light. making up the remaining one twentieth per cent of the atomic weight, have all the same weight and all the same electric charge, but negative. and move around the peripheral portions of the atom. It remained for Niels Bohr of Copen- hagen to discover the fundamental empirical laws which govern the behavior of electrons in atoms and of nuclei considered as single particles, that is, as small structureless enti- ties. ln considering, then, how it was possible for the moving electrons to obey these funda- mental laws, Bohr found that it was necessary to impose a severe restriction on the laws of motion developed by Newton, the so-called Newtonian Mechanicsf, which are certainly completely verified for bodies large enough to 28 be seen, and heavy enough to weigh on micro- balances. By the end of the Iirst quarter of the cen- tury, the Bohr laws had been so extended by the physicists of lVestern Europe and the United States that a complete theory of the Periodic Table of all the elements in Nature was developed. At the same time accumula- tion of work in this period brought out clearly that the restriction on Newtonian mechanics were inadequate for a formulation of the cor- rect laws of electronic and nuclear motions. Beginning, then, with the work of de Broglie in France, Heisenberg and Schrodinger in Ger- many, and Dirac in England a new theory of motions of light-weight particles developed, the quantum mechanics, one of the great revolutions in human thinking. The accom- plishments of this theory were so remarkable and rapid that one can say that by about 1930 all fundamental problems in atomic structure were solved. One of the important successes of the quantum theory was the explanation of how two atoms can unite to form a mole- cule, it is curious to realize that up to less than ten years ago, we had no understanding whatever of this, probably the most funda- mental problem of chemistry. There is a host of problems arising from the quantum theory of molecular formation whose solutions are yet to be found, physicists and chemists are working together on these problems, which certainly constitute one of

Page 34 text:

l ll ICDYY.-XRD U. S1Yl.1YN'l' YV.-XI,IAC1i S. SAYRE YV. A. SCHNEIDER .ls.s'or'i11If' Pl'Ilf'f'55lIl' of Pl'1'si1 .I.s.1'i1'In11l Pmfraxsor' of ci!lZf!'I'lIllII'IIlL :1x.Sr1cir1I1' Professor of Pllvsfts YB.. C1ol11111l1i11, 1922: l'h.lJ. Lo.11lo11, lEl27'i AJS., Nlnrshzrll College, 19273 XXI.. New York Se.B., Grey Ulliversily, College of South Africa ll11iversily. 1928: l'l1.lJ., New York l'11ix'ersi1y. 1920: SQM., University of Michigan. 1922: 19911 l'l1.D., New York lf11ix'e1'sily, 19271 E.E,, Brook lyn Polyleeh11ic I11s1il11le, 1936 '36 LICSLIE E. SPOCK ICMANUEL STEIN IOSEPHINE SIIRIANO Associate Professor of Geology III.Yfl'1lC'fUl' in f'i!'07IUIIll!'S I11.s'I1'u1'101' in linglislz A.B., Cornell, 19233 AAI., Columbian, 192.11 Sc.B., New York lfuiversily, 19281 A.NI., New BS., New York Ifniversily, 19273 AAI., New Ph.D., Columbia, 1929 York IT11iversily, 19305 Pl1.D., New York Uni- York ll11ivcrsi1y, 1928 versity, 1933 MYYRIIC COLLINS SYYKYIRICY RIXI-2H,YR'l' QI. SYYENSOX AIVI HU! FILLEY ,4s.1'or'i11tw l'r'of1'.s.vo1' of Plzilosojalq' Prgfggggy gf Ggygynml-ng, Chairman gf fhg dp- ,fIs,0.111!e Professor of Mzzthemalics A.l3.,WelIesle1. 1913: YM.. Kz111sz1s. 191 1: llllliflllfflf, 1ixz'1'11lizff,' SI'f'I'f'Ifl?'Y of Ihr' Co111n1il- M.E.. Nfwv York lfriiversily, 19235 M.S., Xe Ph.ll., Co1'11ell, 1919 tn' of ll'r1sl1i11glm1 .S'q11arff l.iIn'1n'y York Lriiversily, 19251 Ph-D., New York UI! AJS.. University of Nli1111esolz1, 1915: AAI. Nlin- versity, 1933 nexola, 19163 Pl1,D.. Wisco11si11, 1918.