The ABC’s of Science PDF
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’ The ABC s of Science Giuseppe Mussardo ’ The ABC s of Science 123 Giuseppe Mussardo SISSA Trieste, Italy ISBN978-3-030-55168-1 ISBN978-3-030-55169-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55169-8 ©SpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG2020 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpart of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission orinformationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilar methodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publicationdoesnotimply,evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesareexemptfrom therelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse. 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ThisSpringerimprintispublishedbytheregisteredcompanySpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG Theregisteredcompanyaddressis:Gewerbestrasse11,6330Cham,Switzerland Preface There is a passage in Isaac Asimov’s Guide to Science for Modern Man that has alwaysstayedwithme,eversinceIreaditmanyyearsago:Itisoneofthosedamn perfect phrases that push you to look beyond the usual horizons and that made Asimov the great writer that he was: Nobody can really feel comfortable in the modern world and evaluate the nature of his problems—andtheir possible solutions—withouthavinganexact ideaofwhat scienceis doing. Furthermore, initiation into the wonderful world of science is a source of great aestheticsatisfaction,inspirationforyoungpeople,fulfillmentofthedesiretoknowanda deeperappreciationoftheadmirablepotentialandcapacityofthehumanmind. Iwouldliketoaddthatthemostauthenticandgenuinespiritofscienceemergesnot only from its direct study—the effort to understand the thousands of theorems that formthearchitectureofmathematicsorthosefiveorsixfundamentalphysicalideas that shape our world view—but also directly from the history of its protagonists, fromtheirvoices,fromthatcombinationofcharacters,scenes,andstoriesthatform the complexity and beauty of the scientific enterprise, made of laboratory papers, notebooks full of chunks of formulae, ideas written on the margins of books, peaceful discussions, and fierce rivalries. Obviously, there is no single scientific personality: every scientist, on the con- trary,isgenuinelywacky,unpredictable,exalted,andbizarreinhisorherownway. As in art, painting or music, so in science can we find those who are driven by instinct, some by passion, some by caution, some by precision, some by love of numbers, and some by the beauty of theories. To these thousands offacets of the humansoul,andtotherigorandsharpnessofintelligence,wemustaddcuriosity— therealwellspringofallscience—andalsothethrillofthenewchallengestoone’s knowledge, the litmus test of the true scientist. The extraordinary thing is that, alongside the justifiably most famous figures— AlbertEinstein,EnricoFermi,GalileoGalilei,etc.—thereisanincrediblecrowdof otherscientists,who,althoughunknowntomost,havetakengreatstepsforwardin our knowledge with their incurable curiosity. Some of them have also posed great v vi Preface questions,evensomeofamoralnature:asamatteroffact,separatingsciencefrom thedizzyingflowofhistory,withallofitsanxieties,itsdramasanditsparadoxes,is an unrealistic exercise, though perhaps fascinating from a philosophical point of view. Here, in this book, the reader can find twenty-six of these characters, a number certainlytoosmalltofullyconveythebeautyofthefascinatingjourneymadeover the centuries in search of the truth, but hopefully large enough to reveal the more authentic and polymorphic spirit of the world of science. We will talk about great topicsandgreatscientificideas—thearrowoftime,thebirthanddeathofstars,the absolute zero of temperatures, the beauty of mathematics, and the transmutation of the elements, just to name a few—but we shall also talk, above all, about those people,men andwomen,who haverevealedthemysteriesofNaturetous:Infact, thereseemstobeagracefulandmysteriousdualitythathasalwayslinkedpeopleto the world of ideas, and vice versa. Trieste, Italy Giuseppe Mussardo Contents Abel. An Elliptic Thriller. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Boltzmann. The Genius of Disorder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Chandra. The Journey of a Star . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Dirac. Beauty Is Truth, Truth Beauty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Erdös. The Wandering Mathematician . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Faraday. An Electric Discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Germain. Sophie’s Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Harriot. Down the Spiral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Ising. A Magnetic Modesty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Joliot-Curie. The Dream of the Alchemist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Kepler. Cannonballs and Honeycomb Cells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Landau. The Ten Commandments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Maxwell. Fiat Lux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Nucleus. My Name Is Lise Meitner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Oppenheimer. An Explosive Plan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Pauli. An Odd Couple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Quantum. Erwin’s Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Rasetti. From Atomic Nuclei to Cambrian Trilobites. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Spallanzani. Priest Jokes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Touschek. The Lord of the Rings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 vii viii Contents Ulam. The Art of Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Venus. The Cruel Goddess. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 Weil. The Brahmin of Mathematics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 X-Rays. Seeing the Invisible. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 Yang-Lee. The Puzzle of the Mirror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 Zero. Someone Likes Cold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 Abel. An Elliptic Thriller Königsberg,acityontheeasternborderofPrussia,wasoneofthemostflourishing portsintheBalticSeainthenineteenthcentury.Withinthecirclesofphilosophers, it was known as “the city of Immanuel Kant”: the great German thinker was born and had lived there, and he had always led an extremely regular and habitual life; the locals used to set their clocks when they saw him passing by. Contrastingly, withinmathematicalcircles,Königsbergwasinsteadknownas“thecityoftheseven bridges”:placedattheconfluenceoftworivers,thetownwasdividedintofourparts, connected to each other by seven bridges. According to a legend, there was a bet aboutthepossibilityoffindingaroutethat,startingfromoneofthefourareasofthe city and crossing each bridge only once, would allow one ultimately to be able to returntothestartingpoint.But,nomatterhowtheytried,nobodywaseverableto comeupwithasolution:theproblemtrulyseemedtobeimpossible… The Prussian style of the city led to a rigid, punctual and meticulous way of life, with people being careful about money and paying attention to the details of things:forexample,onOctober4,1827,thelibrarianoftheUniversityofKönigsberg sent a letter to August Leopold Crelle, a Berlin publisher, complaining that the latestissueofthescientificjournalthatheeditedhadbeensenttotheUniversityby courierandnotbyregularmail,causinganadditionalcostofathalerforthelibrary coffers!Thiswas,ofcourse,apurelyPrussianzeal,butitisperhaps thanks tothe diligenceofthatlibrarianthatwecanshedlightononeofthemostcontroversialand compellingscientificcompetitionsinMathematics:thecompetitionbetweenNiels HenrikAbelandCarlGustavJacobi,bothintheirearlytwenties.Thethornyquestion ofthepriorityoftheirdiscoveriesinaveryfascinatingfieldofmathematics—thatof ellipticfunctions—seemsalmostaspystory,soromanticandcomplicatedthattime hashelpedtoburyitor,atleast,admirablyhideitwithintheintricatechronologyof eventsorbetweenthelinesofdiariesorepistolariesoftheperiod.Indeed,atragic story. ©SpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG2020 1 G.Mussardo,TheABC’sofScience, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55169-8_1 2 Abel.AnEllipticThriller OntheStreetsofParis According to Honoré de Balzac, “Paris is in truth an ocean: you can plumb it but you’llneverknowitsdepths.”NielsAbelhadarrivedthereforthefirsttimeinJuly 1826,thehottestmonthoftheyearandinthemiddleoftheholidays.Theuniversities wereclosedandmostofthescholarsandprofessorswereenjoyingthefreshairinthe countryhousesoutsideofthecity.Itwastheidealtimetocalmlycometogripswith hismanyprojectsandtoimprovehisFrench,sothathewouldbereadytodiscuss anytopicwithallofthewiseandfamousmenwhofilledthecity:Laplace,Cauchy, Legendre,Fourier…Hewastwenty-fouryearsoldandhadenormousexpectations forthemeetingwithallofthosegreatmathematicians,allofwhoseoriginalworkshe hadavidlystudiedwhenhewasinhighschoolandattheUniversityofChristianiain Norway:“Learnfromthemastersandnotfromthedisciples,”thiswashisprinciple. AbelwasthesonofaProtestantpastorandhadgrownupinthevillageofFinnøy, surroundedbyfrozenlakesandacountrysidealmostalwaysblanketedwithsnow: hisfacewasasbeautifulashismother’s,withlargeblueeyesandatuftofhairthat fellacrosshisforehead.Hischildhoodhadbeenmarkedbypovertyandmelancholy, dinnersbasedonpotatoesorherring,butalsobyaboundlesspassionformathematics, whichhehadapproachedataveryyoungagethankstothesuggestionsandstimuliof BerntMichaelHolmboe,hishighschoolprofessor:hehadreadtheworksofNewton, thoseofEuler,Gauss’sDisquisitionesArithmeticae—thefamousbookaboutnumber theory—andmanyothertexts. Povertywasalsosoonfollowedbytragedy:hisfatherdiedwhenhewasjusteigh- teenyearsold,andhewasforcedtotakecareofhismotherandhissixbrothers,a taskthatabsorbedalotofhisenergy,butwhichhealwayscarriedonwithasmile thatilluminatedhisbeautifulface.Duringhisfewfreemoments,hewasabsorbedby averyinterestingmathematicalproblem:findingthegeneralsolutionformulatoa fifth-degreealgebraicequation,aproblemthathadfascinatedmanymathematicians sincetheRenaissance.Althoughhedidnothavemuchtimetothinkaboutit,hewas neverthelessabletocometoanamazingconclusion,namely,thatfindingageneral solutiontothefifthdegreeequationmightbeanimpossibletask!Itwasanexcep- tionalresult,andlaterbecameoneofhistory’smostfamousmathematicaltheorems. Just as the great Euler, at the end of the eighteenth century, had demonstrated the impossibilityofsolvingtheproblemoftheKönigsbergbridges,soAbelhadcome to the conclusion that even the world of algebraic equations can be ruled by some strangeimpossibilities:thisdiscoveryonlyincreasedhisadmirationformathematics, adisciplinesopowerfulthatitevenmanagestoidentifyitsownlimits. Thisresulthadgivenhimsomenotorietyathomeandhadearnedhimuncondi- tional support from all of the professors at the University of Christiania, where he hadbeenenrolledsince1821,andofHolmboe,who,inthemeantime,hadbecome hisgreatfriend.Itwas,infact,thankstotheireffortsthathehadwonagrantfromthe MinistryofEducation—amodestone,tobehonest—totourtheEuropeancontinent inordertomeetwiththebestGermanandFrenchmathematiciansofthetime.Abel
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