Gautam Gangopadhyay – författare

This popular science book offers a history of nuclear astrophysics starting from the identification of the elements in the stars and traces how our present ideas emerged out of clashes of opinions, experimental developments and refining of concepts.Stars have fascinated man from immemorial times. The apparently inexhaustible source of the energy of the stars had been a mystery ever since humans understood that the laws of physics forbid creation of energy from nothing. Over centuries, our ideas about the composition of the stars went through two revolutions. Several prominent scientists - including Kirchoff, Saha, Eddignton, Payne, Gamow,  Hoyle, Margaret and Geofrey Burbidge and many others - proposed seemingly opposing ideas about abundances and formation of elements in the Universe. The book narrates how the ancient ideas were replaced by modern concepts that led to the developments in nuclear astrophysics.This book is meant for general readers and avoids complicated mathematics.

In view of the rapid growth in both experimental and theoretical studies of multiphoton process and multiphoton spectroscopy of atoms, ions and molecules in chemistry, physics, biology, materials science, etc., it is desirable to publish an advanced series that contains review papers readable not only by active researchers in these areas, but also by those who are not experts in the field but who intend to enter the field. The present series attempts to serve this purpose. Each review article is written in a self-contained manner by the experts in the area so that the readers can grasp the knowledge in the area without too much preparation.

This book provides a brief and pedagogic introduction to a variety of topics, with a common motif that they all occur, in some way or other, in “the sky”, and involve some sort of “rhythm”.