物理化学电子教案第九章统计热力学基础.ppt

ENRICO FERMI ENRICO FERMI (1901-1954) Italian physicist, was actively engaged in many branches of physics during his career. His trip to Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize in physics in 1938 was used as a cover to flee Italy, and his intention not to return was known only to a few of his most intimate friends. He came to the United States, where he accepted a position on the faculty of columbia University. Later developments in the Axis nations rendered this decision a very fortunate one, especially since his wife was Jewish. ENRICO FERMI It was also lucky for the United States, since Enrico Fermi directed the research that led to the first successful chain reaction at the University of Chicago in 1942 and pointed to the feasibility of the atomic bomb. His Nobel Prize was for “ the discovery of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for the discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow electrons.” Fermi had devoted the years before 1938 to studying radioactivity induced by neutron bombardment. ENRICO FERMI He thought that he had produced transuranic elements by bombarding uranium,and all workers in the field at that time accepted this explanation. It remained for Hahn and Strassman to show that the measured radioactivity was produced because of isotopes of much lighter eldments, and that Fermi had actually produced nuclear fission instead of nuclear transmutation. It was a case of the right man getting the Nobel Prize, but for the wrong reason. PAUL ADRIEN MAURICE DIRAC PAUL ADRIEN MAURICE DIRAC (born 1902) British physicist, began his studies in the oretical physics after failing to get work as an electrical engineer, the field in which he had taken his undergraduate degree. Dirac introduced Einstein’s theory of relativity into quantum mechanics and was one of the originators of relativistic quantum mechanics and also of the quantum theory of radiation. PAUL ADRIEN MAURICE DIRAC One anomalous result of his relativistic quantum