Biographical Memoirs Volume 45 (1974) / Chapter Skim
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Paul Sophus Epstein
Paul Sophus Epstein
Pages 133-160
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From page 134... ...
M DuAlOND PAUL SOPHUS EPSTEIN was one of the group of prominent and very gifted mathematical physicists whose insight, creative originality, and willingness to abandon accepted classical concepts brought about that veritable revolution in our understanding of nature which may be said to have created "modern physics," i.e., the physics which has been widely accepted during the Twentieth Century.
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From page 135... ...
By 1916 Epstein had become deeply interested in problems of the quantum theory of atomic structure based on classical mechanics, and he shared the early development of this branch of physics with Niels Bohr and Arnold Sommerfeld. His most important paper in this connection was "Zur Theorie des Starkeffektes" (1916~.
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From page 136... ...
The Stark effect had been well known for three years and in fact, as chance would have it, at the very time of which we are speaking, Wagner, one of Rontgen's assistants in Munich, put on a demonstration of the Stark effect using a so-called "canal ray" tube. This was a vacuum electrical discharge tube in which the negative electrode or cathode was provided with holes.
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From page 137... ...
Epstein only saw Sommerfeld infrequently, owing to restrictions imposed on him because of his "enemy alien" status in Munich, but at one of the meetings which he was permitted to attend through Sommerfeld's intervention, the latter told Epstein, "I wrote Schwarzschild that he should work on this article " (meaning the Stark effect)
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From page 138... ...
It was the same order of magnitude, but didn't agree on the positions of the lines. So Sommerfeld wrote Schwarzschild, 'This morning Epstein brought me the formula of the Stark effect, and this afternoon we got your letter.
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From page 139... ...
Paul Epstein's intimate knowledge of those exciting times and gifted scientists at the turn of the century was a source of great inspiration to us younger men who attended his classes in theoretical or mathematical physics a little later after he had come to Caltech (in 1921~. I shall never forget his account of von Laue's accidental learning of the hypothesis (first clearly formulated by Ludwig A
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From page 140... ...
At that time the only way of getting the high voltage electrical power to operate a Ront<,en ray tube was with a "spark coil" or "Ruhmkorff coil." Public electrical power (for lighting the university) was only of the constant voltage, direct current variety.
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From page 141... ...
Fortunately the experiment started during vacation, but before the two scientists got any diffraction photographs, classes started and the nuisance of the "talking arc lamps" drowning out all the lectures can be readily imagined. Quoting from von Laue's account: "Due to some psychological law this primitive music was contagious to the students.
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From page 142... ...
When at last they tried placing the photographic plate on the far side of the crystal (copper sulfate) , they obtained on the plate a central spot, produced by the direct beam going through the crystal, and, forming a pattern around the central spot, a group of symmetrically arranged spots of lesser intensity whose arrangement and symmetry depended on how the crystal was oriented relative to the beam.
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From page 143... ...
On a certain beautiful warm spring day in the Easter holidays of 1912 van Laue arrived a few minutes late at the accustomed table. Paul Epstein, P
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From page 144... ...
It was while walking home from the Cafe Lutz, van Laue related, that the idea came to him of the theory of three dimensional space-lattice interference with which his name will be associated as long as our physics and chemistry of the Twentieth Century are remembered. I have told this story to illustrate how Paul Epstein's arrival at Caltech in 1921 brought to this campus all the intellectual excitement and drama of what had been taking place in the great scientific centers of Europe.
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From page 145... ...
At these seminars one of the graduate students usually would be asked to report on recently published developments in physics. For example, I recall clearly being asked by "Eppie" to report on certain papers of Louis de Broglie, in which the future Nobel Laureate developed, in its original and most elementary form, his famous idea of the waves associated with the electron.
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From page 146... ...
with the Los Angeles Institute for Psychoanalysis. In fact Professor Epstein was one of a number of members of the group who provided affidavits for prominent foreign psychoanalysts invited to immigrate in order to help build up a Psychoanalytic Institute in Los Angeles.
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From page 147... ...
delegates to the seminar conducted by the Congress in Strasbourg, France. The writer was fortunate to have been one of some half dozen or more graduate students in physics, the first group who attended Professor Epstein's three-term course, Partial Differential Equations of Mathematical Physics, given when he first arrived at Caltech.
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From page 148... ...
The story of the discovery of x-ray diffraction from crystals, which I have recounted here, is only one of dozens with which his lectures were seasoned. When Professor Epstein arrived at Caltech to teach, the advent of so celebrated a scientist from the cultural centers of Europe received considerable newspaper publicity.
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From page 149... ...
In 1930, nine years after his arrival at Caltech, Paul Epstein married Alice Emelie Ryckman. Their home at 1484 Oakdale Avenue in Pasadena was the scene of many a warm and hospitable festivity, treasured in the memory of his students and associates.
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From page 150... ...
Examples are "Zur Theorie des Radiometers" (1929) , "Reflection of Waves in an Inhomogeneous Absorbing, Medium" [the Heaviside Layer]
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From page 151... ...
It was written long before de Gaulle made the wise decision to withdraw France from its military commitments, first in Southeast Asia and later in Algeria. Other nations could well "profit by this example." It is a pity that these two articles, splendidly exemplifying Paul Epstein's remarkable scholarship, erudition, and prescience in humanistic matters well outside his own fields of specialization, should be lost from the far wider circulation they deserve.
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From page 152... ...
. He was beloved of many students and colleagues, and his long and useful life stands as a splendid tribute to his brilliant mind and his altruistic sharing of it with others.
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From page 153... ...
Kraftliniendiagramme fur die Ausbreitung der Wellen in der drahtlosen Telegraphie bei Berucksichtigung der Bodenbeschaffenheit. In: Jahrbuch der drahtlosen Telegraphie und Telephonie, pp.
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From page 154... ...
Sitzungsberichte der Koniglich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 23:435~46. 1919 Uber die Interferenzfahigkeit von Spektrallinien vom Standpunkt der Quantentheorie.
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From page 155... ...
·— Uber das Vorzeichen des Lichtdruckes auf kleine Teilchen. Mitteilungen der Physikalischen Gesellschaft, Zurich, Nr.
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From page 156... ...
(A) 1929 Zur Theorie des Radiometers.
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From page 157... ...
Rev., 41:91-109. 1933 La resistance de Fair sur les projectiles.
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From page 158... ...
Rev., 70:915-22. 1947 Radio-wave propagation and electromagnetic surface waves.
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From page 159... ...
journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 25:553-65. Dialektischer Materialismus und die modernen physikalischen Theorien.
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