Analogies in Physics and Life: A Scientific AutobiographyAnalogies play a fundamental role in science. To understand how and why, at a given moment, a certain analogy was used, one has to know the specific, historical circumstances under which the new idea was developed. This historical background is never presented in scientific articles and quite rarely in books. For the general reader, the undergraduate or graduate student who learns the subject for the first time, but also for the practitioner who looks for inspiration or who wants to understand what his colleague working in another field does, these historical circumstances can be fascinating and useful. This book discusses a series of analogy effects in subatomic physics, the prediction and theory of which the author has contributed to in the last 50 years. These phenomena are presented at a level accessible to the non-specialist, without formulae but with emphasis on the personal and historical background: memoirs of meetings, discussions and correspondence with collaborators and colleagues. As such, besides its scientific aspects, the book constitutes an absorbing witness account of a holocaust survivor who subsequently illegally crossed the Iron Curtain to escape communist persecution. |
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Analogies in Physics and Life: A Scientific Autobiography Richard M. Weiner No preview available - 2008 |
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analogy Anti-Semitism applications asked atomic Bose-Einstein correlations bosons Bucharest Bukowina Carruthers CERN coherence collaboration collisions communist considered Czernowitz density Dubna E. M. Friedlander effect Einstein electron energy equation equilibrium existence experimental fact France French G. N. Fowler German gluon hadronic matter Hagedorn happened heavy ion reactions Heisenberg hot spot hydrodynamics initial Institute intentionally left blank isomeric shift isomers isotopic Jewish Jews Landau later leptons LESIP Lett Marburg mentioned Mössbauer Mössbauer effect multiparticle production multiplicity distributions Nazi Nucl nuclear isomer nuclear physics nuclei nucleon observed paper particle physics particular phase transition Phys physicists Physics Department pions Plümer predicted published quantum optics quark matter quark-gluon plasma R. M. Weiner Raha reasons regime role Romanian Soviet Union statistical strong interactions superfluidity superfluidity of hadronic surprise symmetry temperature theoretical theory things transverse momentum University Unsöld velocity of sound Vienna visa weak interactions World Scientific