The Physical Tourist A Science Guide for the Traveler John S. Rigden Roger H. Stuewer Editors Birkhäuser Basel · Boston · Berlin Editors John S. Rigden Roger H. Stuewer Washington University University of Minnesota Dept. Physics Program in History of Science & Technology 1 Brookings Drive Tate Laboratory of Physics St. Louis, MO 63130 116 Church Street SE USA Minneapolis, MN 55455 USA Library of Congress Control Number: 2008936305 Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.ddb.de ISBN 978-3-7643-8932-1 Birkhäuser Verlag AG, Basel – Boston – Berlin This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustra- tions, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in data banks. For any kind of use, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained. © 2009 Birkhäuser Verlag AG Basel · Boston · Berlin P.O. Box 133, CH-4010 Basel, Switzerland Part of Springer Science+Business Media Printed on acid-free paper produced from chlorine-free pulp∞ Cover illustrations: see pages 50 and 89 Printed in Germany ISBN 978-3-7643-8932-1 e-ISBN 978-3-7643-8933-8 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii United Kingdom The Whipple Museum and Cavendish Laboratory,Cambridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Sir Brian Pippard Scientific Travels in the Irish Countryside . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Thomas B.Greenslade,Jr. Physics in Edinburgh:From Napier’s Bones to Higgs’s Boson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 John Henry Denmark Historical Sites of Physical Science in Copenhagen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Felicity Pors and Finn Aaserud France A Parisian Walk along the Landmarks of the Discovery of Radioactivity . . . . . . 73 Ginette Gablot Germany Physics in Berlin I:The Historical City Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 II:Through the Western Part of the City:Charlottenburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Dieter Hoffmann Some Historical Points of Interest in Göttingen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Klaus Hentschel Switzerland Peripatetic Highlights in Bern. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Ann M.Hentschel vi Contents Austria Vienna:A Random Walk in Science. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Wolfgang L.Reiter Hungary Budapest:A Random Walk in Science and Culture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 László Kovács,Sr. United States Physics and New York City. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Benjamin Bederson Preface Travelers differ.At one extreme are random travelers who see what they accidentally bump into.At the other extreme are the lock-step travelers who follow a banner (or a red umbrella) and look when and where a voice tells them to look. Between these extremes are the guide-book travelers who identify the whereabouts of those sites that interest them and they plan their sightseeing accordingly. If a traveler’s interests are captivated by the arts,guide books can be very helpful. For example,the table of contents of a current guide book for travelers going to Ger- many has sections on architecture,art,literature,music and cinema.The index gives page references for famous writers,musicians,and artists.Yet,while Germany was a dominate force in physical science during the 19th and into the 20th centuries and while the names and photos of prominent German physical scientists who worked in this period are sprinkled through the pages of textbooks, only one scientist is men- tioned by name:Albert Einstein is identified as the most famous citizen of Ulm. The Physical Tourist is a regular feature of the journal Physics in Perspective.This journal,while it is a scholarly journal,features articles designed to be read by nonspe- cialists; that is, technical jargon is deliberately avoided and ordinary words are employed.Readers report that they read it “cover-to-cover.”In the “Physical Tourist” section,scientific sites in major cities (not nations) are highlighted.Since the number of general-interest sites vary from one city to the next,some entries are short while oth- ers are long.Detailed directions are given that enable tourists to go to sites and,once there,appreciate the significance of what they are seeing. As an example,let us consider the city of Berlin.Dieter Hoffmann,a research schol- ar in the History of Science at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin and a Professor at Humboldt University (formerly the University of Berlin),has written a guide to Berlin. It is detailed; it is delightful.Walk along Am Kupfergraben to number 7 (which the author tells the reader is just opposite the famous Pergamon Museum) and there is the Magnus Haus,the site of one of the most important schools of physics of the 19th cen- tury. Since 1990 it has been the location of the German Physical Society.“Ring the doorbell”says the author,and inside you will find information on the history of this site and its place in the physics in Berlin. One block away lived the philosopher G.W. Hegel.A few steps away is the entrance to Berlin University (on Unter den Linden) where Max Planck founded the quantum theory.Plaques inform tourists where Ein- stein lived and where he gave one of his early talks on the General Theory of Relativ- ity. Across from Humboldt University is the August-Bebel-Platz where the Nazis burned Einstein’s books and many other books on May 10,1933.And there is more. Radioactivity was discovered in Paris.Ginette Gablot,formerly Curator of the Insti- tut du Radium and the Joliot-Curies Archives,guides a tour that begins at the Muséum viii Preface National d’Histoire Naturelle (le Muséum) where Henri Becquerel,the discoverer of radioactivity, worked. Across the garden is Georges Cuvier’s house on which is a plaque that identifies the house as the place where Becquerel made his discovery. Located near the Muséum is 16 rue Cuvier where Pierre Curie was born.Enter 12 rue Cuvier.This building,currently part of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie,was the first annex of the Sorbonne.Go to the lecture hall (between classes) and down a hall- way to a courtyard housing the pavilion in which radium was discovered.Pierre Curie gave lectures here and,after his death,Marie got her first true lab.Again,there is more. Vienna is the city of music and without doubt any tourist visiting this Austrian city will have travel guides that identify sites connected with Mozart,Beethoven,Schubert, Brahms,Strauss,Mahler,Schönberg,and others.It is unlikely,however,that any travel guide will call attention to Christian Doppler who first understood why a train whistle changes pitch as it passes by.Nor will available guides take the tourist to plaques iden- tifying the school that Lise Meitner and Erwin Schrödinger attended,to the residence of Sigmund Freud,to the house where Einstein lived,or to the burial place of Ludwig Boltzmann. A tourist is guided to a courtyard at the University of Vienna where plaques and busts celebrate the university’s outstanding scholars Josef Loschmidt, Boltzmann, Josepf Petzval, Schrödinger, Doppler, Johann Radon, Freud, Friedrich Hasenöhrl,and Franz Exner. The description of scientific sites in the cities of Berlin,Paris,and Vienna are just three examples of the many articles from “The Physical Tourist”that have appeared in the journal Physics in Perspective.The collection in this book offers many significant science-related sites to supplement and expand the more traditional focus of current travel guides.These science sites will enrich your travel experience and give you more to talk about when you return home. August 2008 John S.Rigden Roger H.Stuewer The Physical Tourist.A Science Guide for the Traveler edited by John S.Rigden and Roger H.Stuewer © 2009 Birkhäuser Verlag Basel,Switzerland The Whipple Museum and Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge Sir Brian Pippard* The Whipple Museum is part of the History and Philosophy of Science Department in the University of Cambridge.It is on your right as soon as you enter Free School Lane from Pembroke Street,and is normally open between 1:30 and 4:30 P.M.on weekdays. The main room, a hall with hammer-beam roof, is a relic of Stephen Perse’s school (1624) now flourishing elsewhere in the city.It houses a large collection of mathemat- ical,physical and astronomical instruments – abaci,Napier’s bones,slide rules;sextants and other surveying instruments;telescopes,compasses and pocket sundials (especial- ly of ivory from Nuremberg 1500–1700);and a Grand Orrery by George Adams (1750). The gallery of a second room is used for special exhibitions,often of items from the well-stocked store.Some specialist catalogues have been compiled and are on sale. At the other end of Free School Lane is the original building for the Cavendish Lab- oratory,opened in 1874 by the donor,the Duke of Devonshire,Chancellor of the Uni- versity.Much of the design was inspired by James Clerk Maxwell,the first Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics who was appointed in 1871.In 1973–4 the laborato- ry moved to new quarters;the building was taken over by Social and Political Sciences, and so subdivided that nothing of interest remains of the rooms where J.J.Thomson discovered the electron and Chadwick the neutron.Other changes to buildings on the site hide where Cockcroft and Walton disintegrated light nuclei,and where detailed structures of proteins and of the double helix DNA were first found.The office from which Rutherford controlled the great activities in the 20 years after World War I now serves a humble purpose as a lavatory.A slate plaque on the wall in the Lane records 100 years of Cavendish Professors from Maxwell to Mott,1874–1974. The oak door from the Lane to the enclosed site carries an inscription in Latin which is repeated in English at the entrance to the new laboratory,‘‘The works of the Lord are great,sought out of all them that have pleasure therein.’’ Beyond the short covered way you will see,a little to the right,the round front of the Royal Society Mond Lab- oratory which was built for Peter Kapitza in 1932 to house his work on high magnetic * Sir Brian Pippard is a former Cavendish Professor of Physics,Cavendish Laboratory,Univer- sity of Cambridge. 1 2 Sir Brian Pippard fields and his helium liquefier.After his detention in Russia (1934) the laboratory was devoted to low temperature physics until 1973, and saw the discovery (1936) of the fountain effect in liquid helium II and the post-war exploitation of the de Haas-van Alphen effect to determine the Fermi surfaces of metals.The crocodile on the front (symbolising Rutherford) was carved for Kapitza by Eric Gill.The building is now the home of Aerial Photography.Kapitza’s arrangement of central hall with small labora- Fig.1. The Old Cavendish Laboratory from Free School Lane.This photograph was taken before 1900,and little has changed since.Credit:The Cavendish Laboratory. The Whipple Museum and Cavendish Laboratory,Cambridge 3 Fig.2. The crocodile,by Eric Gill,on the front of the Royal Society Mond Laboratory.Credit:The Cavendish Laboratory. tories around it inspired the layout of the new Cavendish laboratory in West Cam- bridge. To reach this greatly enlarged Cavendish by foot (about 2 km) you can take a quiet stroll along Senate House Passage,Garret Hostel Lane,Burrell’s Walk,Adams Road and the Coton footpath;or by road,take Silver Street,Queen’s Road (where you will see the famous view, across the Backs and the river, of King’s College Chapel) and Madingley Road.Enter the Bragg building where Reception will provide a badge giv-