Richard H Dalitz – författare

This book is a collection of the major scientific papers of Sir Rudolf Peierls (1907-95), including the Peierls-Frisch Memoranda of 1940 on the feasibility, and the predicted human effects, of an atomic bomb made of uranium-235. His papers range widely in topic. They include much on the fundamentals of solid state physics, the thermal and electric conductivity of materials as a function of temperature T (especially T→0), the interpretation of the de Haas-van Alphen effect observed for a metal in a magnetic field, and the basics of transport theory. Many are on problems in statistical mechanics, including his constructive paper demonstrating the existence of a phase transition for Ising's model for a two-dimensional ferromagnet. In nuclear physics, they include the first calculations (with Bethe) on the photo-disintegration of the deuteron (made in response to a challenge by Chadwick), the Kapur-Peierls theory of resonance phenomena in nuclear reactions, the Bohr-Peierls-Placzek continuum model for complex nuclei (which first explained the narrow resonances observed for low energy neutrons incident on very heavy nuclei), and the Peierls-Thouless variational approach to collective phenomena in nuclei. Several of Peierls's wartime papers, now declassified, are here published for the first time.Brief commentaries on most of the papers in this book were added by Peierls, to indicate subsequent developments and their relationship with other work, or to correct errors found later on. A complete bibliography of his writings is given as an appendix.

Newtonian scholarship has taken great steps forward in the last half-century. The recent completion of critical editions of Newton's mathematical papers and of his scientific correspondence, as well as the publication of the first volume of his optical papers and of variant readings of the Principia in the original Latin, have made most of Newton's scientific work generally available for study and analysis for the first time. This has provided a better understanding of Newton's Principia and Optics especially regarding their origin and interpretation, much of which has remained obscure for several centuries. Some of the new developments and insights are presented in this book by several of the scholars who have made these primary sources accessible, and by others who are using them to elucidate Newton's work. Most of the papers included were presented at the Symposium on the Foundations of Newtonian Scholarship, held at the Royal Society in London in March 1997.