9 From de Broglie to Fermi
Our next five remarkable physicists were born in the ten years between 1892 and
1901. Two came from France and one from each of India, Italy and Russia.
Louis de Broglie (1892–1987)
The de Broglie family, one might almost say dynasty, is one of the most
illustrious in the history of France. Of Piedmontese origin (the name is
pronounced de Broy), they came to serve the French kings in the seventeenth
century. Some achieved military distinction; four became Marshals
of France. The first duc de Broglie was a warrior and diplomat in the first half
of the eighteenth century; his son was created a prince of the Holy Roman
Empire after leading the defeat of the Prussians in the Seven Years War.
The family remained prominent in French public life throughout the nineteenth
century, but, as well as politicians and soldiers, it ended the century
by producing two distinguished brothers, of whom the elder was a notable
experimental physicist and the younger a theoretical physicist of genius.
The family background of Louis Victor Pierre Raymond de Broglie is
an essential clue for the understanding of his long, prestigious and solitary
career. He was born in Dieppe on August 15, 1892, the youngest of a family
of five, by all accounts an adorable child, remarkably good-looking, as witnessed
by early photographs, bright, gay, overflowing with good spirits and
impish pranks. His elder sister gives the following description of him in her
memoirs:
this little brother had become a charming child, slender, svelte, with a
small laughing face, eyes full of mischief, curled like a poodle.
Admitted to the great table, he wore in the evenings a costume of blue
velvet, with breeches, black stockings and shoes with buckles, which
made him look like a little prince in a fairy tale. His gaiety filled the
house. He talked all the time even at the dinner table where the most
severe injunctions of silence could not make him hold his tongue, so
irresistible were his remarks. Raised in relative loneliness he had read
much and lived in the unreal . . . he had a prodigious memory and
308 From de Broglie to Fermi
knew by heart entire scenes from the classical theatre that he recited
with inexhaustible verve . . . he seemed to have a particular taste for
history, in particular political history . . . hearing our parents discuss
politics he improvised speeches inspired by the accounts in the
newspapers and could recite unerringly complete lists of ministers of
the Third Republic, which changed so often . . . a great future as a
statesman was predicted for Louis.
As befitted a member of the de Broglie family, the young prince was educated
at home by private tutors. In 1906, when he was aged fourteen, his father duc
Victor died. Maurice, then aged thirty-one, took a hand in the education of
his young brother.Onhis advice Louis was sent to the Lyc´ee Janson de Sailly,
where he spent three years before graduating in 1909, at the age of seventeen,
with both the baccalaur´eat of philosophy and that of mathematics.
We are fortunate in having an account of Louis’ formative years by
his brother duc Maurice: ‘Having experienced myself the inconvenience of a
pressure exercised on the studies of a young man I refrained from imparting a
rigid direction to the studies of my brother, although at times his vacillation
gave me some concern. He was good at French, history, physics, philosophy,
indifferent in mathematics, chemistry and geography, poor in drawing and
foreign languages.’ It is interesting to note that, although his sister, thanks
Louis de Broglie (1892–1987) 309
to an English nurse, was bilingual from an early age, the respectable clerics
who nurtured the young prince did not give him a taste for foreign languages.
This may help to explain his isolation from the foreign scientific
community in later years. By 1910 Louis de Broglie was a student at the
Sorbonne. He was not sure what he wanted to do; a military or diplomatic
career did not attract him. At first he read history but was repelled by the
uncritical way it was taught at that time. Next he spent a year studying law
in preparation for a career in the civil service, until he found his true vocation
through reading Poincar´ e’s epistemological masterworks, La valeur de
la science and La science et l’hypoth`ese; in the end it was physics, particularly
theoretical physics, he chose to devote his life to. However, as taught
at the Sorbonne, physics was not an intellectual adventure but a rigorous
discipline based on standard subjects such as rational mechanics and wave
optics, ignoring recent developments such as Maxwell’s electromagnetic
theory and statistical thermodynamics. Practically the only French source
for advanced theoretical physics was Poincar´ e, whose lectures on electrodynamics,
thermodynamics, celestial mechanics and other subjects Louis
de Broglie duly attended. Fortunately he could read English and German;
French translations of foreign textbooks were often of poor quality.
Louis de Broglie was deeply attached to his sister, the princess Pauline.
She was twenty years older than he was and already well known in literary
circles. Around his twentieth year she married the count Jean de Pange,
and this seems to have triggered some kind of emotional and psychological
crisis in her young brother. He experienced a change of personality, losing
the gaiety and high spirits of his youth. His self-confidence was badly shaken
when he failed an examination in general physics. He had begun to lose faith
in himself when he started reading the report of the first Solvay conference
on quantum theory. After he had studied it in depth, his confidence began
to return and he became convinced that his career would definitely be in
theoretical physics. He had now reached the age at which he needed to
discharge his obligation for military service. However, the First World War
broke out before he had been in the army for long and so he remained there
for the next six years. He began by serving as a sapper in the Corps du G´enie
and was sent to the fort at Mont Val ´ erien, where he was bored stiff. After
his elder brother Maurice had pulled strings, Prince Louis was transferred to
the radiotelegraphy section; he was based at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower,
on which a radio transmitter had been installed. Later he would say that
the practical experience he gained in this way was of value in his scientific
work.
310 From de Broglie to Fermi
As duc Maurice puts it, ‘he was able to serve his country while working
as an electrician, taking care of machines and wireless transmissions
and perfecting heterodyne amplifiers then in their infancy’. Louis did not
take lightly the waste of six of the best years of his life, but of course he was
fortunate not to have been sent to the trenches. As soon as he was demobilized
in August 1919, with the rank of ‘adjutant’ at the age of twenty-seven,
he attended a seminar given by Langevin on quantum theory and then a
course on relativity, which impressed him by its beauty. He recalled that
demobilized in 1919 I returned to the studies I had given up, while
following closely the work pursued by my brother in his private
laboratory with his young collaborators on X-ray spectra and on the
photoelectric effect. Thus I made my first steps towards research by
publishing a few results in the fields studied by my brother.
In a first series of publications I considered the absorption of
X-rays, its interpretation by the theory of Bohr, and its relation with
thermodynamic equilibrium . . . Some of the reasonings I used were
questionable but they led me to formulae which gave an acceptable
account of the facts. At the same time I had long discussions with my
brother on reinterpretation of the beautiful experiments that he
pursued on the photoelectric effect and corpuscular spectra. I
published, with him or separately, a series of notes on the quantum
theory of these phenomena which, although classical now, was not
well established then.
If Louis de Broglie had done nothing else during his long life, these notes
would be enough to immortalize his name. It is best to let him describe
the contents himself: ‘in the first, inspired by relativistic considerations,
I established the relation, well known today, between the motion of a free
particle and the propagation of the wave that I proposed to associate with it,
and showed how these new ideas gave a simple interpretation of the quantum
stability conditions for the motion of the intra-atomic electrons. In the
second I applied these ideas to photons and I sketched a theory of interference
and diffraction, compatible with the existence of photons. Finally in
the third, I showed how my conceptions led to Planck’s law for black-body
radiation and I established the now classical correspondence between the
Maupertuis principle of least action in analytical mechanics and the Fermat
principle, applied to the propagation of the associated wave . . .’
He expanded the three notes of 1923 the following year into a doctoral
thesis, and that document is the basis for what is known as wave mechanics.
Louis de Broglie (1892–1987) 311
The solitary genius whose ideas kindled those of de Broglie was undoubtedly
Einstein. It was by striving to understand, in the framework of relativity,
the dual wave–particle nature of the photon, inherent in the theory of the
photoelectric effect given by Einstein in termsof light quanta, that de Broglie
was led to the dual wave–particle nature of the electron. At the same time,
being in daily contact with the photo-electric effect, through his brother’s
laboratory, must have been a further stimulus in the search for the solution
of this riddle. The whole discovery could be summed up in the following
phrase: ‘Because the photon, which, as everyone knows, is a wave, is also
a particle, why should not the electron (or any material particle) also be
a wave?’ It is hard to overestimate the extraordinary daring and the farreaching
consequences of this simple idea, but at first it was not taken
very seriously. Ralph Fowler, the quantum expert at Cambridge, reported
on it in the British journals. Langevin gave an enthusiastic account of the
thesis to Einstein, who replied ‘Louis de Broglie’s work has greatly impressed
me. He has lifted a corner of the great veil. In my work I obtain results
which seem to confirmhis. If you see him please tell him how much esteem
and sympathy I have for him.’ Einstein reported on de Broglie’s thesis to
the Berlin Academy, thus ensuring its rapid acceptance in the scientific
world.
Heir to a rich and illustrious family Prince Louis, later duc, de Broglie’s
fame burst on him at the age of thirty-seven, with the Nobel prize for physics
rewarding one of the great discoveries of the twentieth century and bringing
fresh lustre to the de Broglie family. A new chair at the Sorbonne was
created in 1933 and occupied by him for thirty years. He was elected to the
Paris Academy in the same year, by an overwhelming majority, and became
permanent secretary at the age of fifty. He resigned at eighty-three, but continued
in an honorary capacity. He was also one of the few scientists to be
elected to the literary Acad´emie Franc¸ aise. Although he seldom left France,
he was elected a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences in
Washington and a foreign member of the Royal Society of London.
In 1928 his mother died without ever having realized that her son was
a genius; she took to her grave an image of him as a failure. After her death
the vast family palace in the rue de Messine was sold, with most of its contents,
and Prince Louis chose to live in a modest house in Neuilly-sur-Seine,
his home for the remaining sixty years of his life, removed from the crowds
and the noisy world. He never married but was attended by two faithful
retainers. He never owned a motor car, preferring to walk everywhere or to
take the metro. During the summers he stayed in Paris and never went on
312 From de Broglie to Fermi
holiday. When his brother Maurice died in 1960, he became duc Louis de
Broglie; before that he was known by his imperial title of Prince.
Nobody ever saw duc Louis angry or even heard him raise his voice.
Some said that he was actually a man of strong passions and dislikes but
there is no evidence for this. He was always exquisitely polite to all his visitors,
no matter who they might be. At a ceremony organized for his eightieth
birthday he said ‘I consider that the period which followed my seventieth
birthday may well have been, on the intellectual side, the most beautiful of
my life.’ He wrote copiously and well, rather like Poincar´ e, but his great
work was accomplished when he was young. He came to accept Bohr’s
notion of complementarity and Heisenberg’s indeterminancy principle.
Among the scientists of his time, Einstein was probably the only one whom
duc Louis admired unconditionally. It was Einstein’s special relativity and
his theory of light quanta that launched duc Louis on the path of his great
discovery. It was Einstein’s obstinacy in refusing the probabilistic implications
of quantum mechanics that encouraged duc Louis in his own, solitary
and in the long run fruitless, quest. If Maurice de Broglie had been for Louis
a friendly and protective elder brother, one may say that Einstein had been
his ‘spiritual elder brother’.
For thirty-three years duc Louis lectured at the Sorbonne. He took a
very exalted view of his duties as a teacher: the books that originated from
his lectures, beautifully written and carefully produced, brought instruction
and enlightenment. In his teaching he took great care when presenting his
own ideas to explain that they were not generally accepted. However, as a
lecturer in the classroom he was uninspiring. Starting scrupulously on time,
he read in his high-pitched voice and in a somewhat monotonous tone from
a sheaf of large sheets of paper written in long-hand. He always stopped
abruptly at the end of the hour and departed immediately. He also ran a
well-attended weekly seminar at which young and not-so-young theorists
could expound their ideas. A member of his seminar recalled meeting him
for the first time, when he was middle-aged:
he greeted me with great courtesy and invited me to take part in the
proceedings. I was terribly impressed. At the thought of shaking hands
with a man who was a prince of physics and a prince by birth I was
seized with an almost religious emotion. He was wearing a dark blue
suit which even then seemed slightly old-fashioned, with a wing collar
and a pearl in his neck-tie. He had a curiously high-pitched voice and
he seldom spoke. Strange as it may seem I thought this man covered
Satyendranath Bose (1894–1974) 313
with honours and glory was shy. The seminar did not start before he
had shaken hands with all the participants, numbering about twenty,
who were standing as he passed. In spite of their small number the
speaker was never interrupted, remarks and questions had to wait
until the end of the talk.
However, with a few exceptions the disciples who congregated around duc
Louis were not of the highest calibre and perhaps not always of the highest
intellectual honesty. One of the manifestations of this was the atmosphere
of admiration, not to say adulation, with which they surrounded
him. Although duc Louis never encouraged such behaviour in any way, he
never reacted against it sufficiently strongly to put it down once and for
all. Also, with advancing years, as the direction of research separated him
more and more from the mainstream, he may have felt some comfort in
being surrounded by disciples who agreed with his conceptions and devoutly
developed them in seminars and articles. Louis de Broglie died on March 19,
1987, in his ninety-fifth year.
Satyendranath Bose (1894–1974)
With the exception of Rutherford, so far all the subjects of these profiles have
been either European or American, because it seemed impossible to find
314 From de Broglie to Fermi
suitable subjects in other parts of the world. At the close of the nineteenth
century, however, the situation began to change. Outstanding individual
scientists began to emerge in other countries, and it is only to be expected
that their life-stories would be quite different from the others we have been
describing. I give one such example from India and another from Japan.
Today the contribution to science of countries such as India and Japan is
most impressive, but in many ways it is even more remarkable what was
achieved by the pioneers, who worked in such a very different milieu from
their European and American counterparts.
Satyendranath (or Satyendra Nath) Bose, generally known as S.N.
Bose in the scientific community and affectionately called Satyen Bose
in his native Bengal, was born on January 1, 1894 in Calcutta, then the
capital of British India. His father, Surendranath Bose, was an accountant
who held responsible posts in the executive engineering department of East
Indian Railways. Surendranath had an aptitude for mathematical thinking
and was interested in several branches of science; he became one of the
founders of a small chemical and pharmaceutical company. He was also
interested in philosophical studies, especially the Hindu scriptures such as
the Bhagwag-gita; at the same time he enjoyed the dialectical speculations
of Hegel and Marx. Surendranath Bose died in 1964 at the age of ninety-six,
having witnessed with pride the seventieth-birthday celebrations in honour
of his famous son the previous January. The mother Amodini Devi of
Bose, who had died twenty-five years earlier, often had to struggle against ill
health and inadequate resources to maintain a middle-class home. Although
she received no more than a nominal school education, she was a woman
of culture who showed considerable ability in managing domestic affairs.
She possessed a remarkable fortitude of will, a warm heart and a sense of
personal and family dignity.
Satyendranath was the only son and eldest child of his parents, who
also had six daughters. He inherited many good qualities and noble aspirations
from his parents and more than fulfilled their expectations of him.
Young Satyen Bose attended a neighbourhood elementary school in Calcutta
until he was thirteen years old and then went on to the excellent Hindu
school. His eyesight was very weak, but his intelligence and memory were
keen, and he had a great desire to study science. The headmaster and senior
mathematics master gave him every encouragement.
After passing out of high school in 1909, Bose entered Presidency
College, Calcutta, where he enrolled in the science courses, which were
being taught by a distinguished faculty. Among his contemporaries were
Satyendranath Bose (1894–1974) 315
several notable scholars, including Meghnad Saha, who became a close
friend. Whereas Bose came from a middle-class urban Bengali family, Saha
came from an obscure village where educational facilities were practically
non-existent. Bose came first both in the B.Sc. examination in 1913 and in
the M.Sc. two years later. He also got married during his final year in college,
to Ushabala Ghosh, the eleven-year-old daughter of a wealthy physician; as
was customary the marriage was arranged by the parents. The couple had
nine children; after two had died in infancy, two sons and five daughters
were left, all of whom received a good education.
It was a time of political unrest, and in many ways the career outlook
was not good. However, the Indianization of education was creating
opportunities for able youngsters like Bose and Saha. The University of
Calcutta, founded in 1857, was being transformed into a national institution,
free of British influence. The Vice-Chancellor and moving spirit behind
this development, Sir Asutosh Mookerji, was himself a mathematician. The
two friends decided to devote themselves to study and research in physics.
Unfortunately modern physics, such as relativity and quantum theory, was
not treated in the textbooks available to them, and they had no access to
scientific journals. Moreover, laboratories did not exist. Planck, Einstein
and Bohr were just names to them. However, Sir Asutosh was impressed by
the willingness and enthusiasm of the aspiring young scientists and agreed
to help them prepare to teach postgraduate courses in physics and mathematics.
He granted them scholarships and arranged facilities for procuring
scientific journals and working in laboratories.
Bose and Saha had already started to learn French and German in
order to be able to read the European scientific literature, but during the
First World War it was not easy for them to obtain what they needed. As
it happened, a visiting German possessed a good collection of advanced
texts and journals in German, which he lent to them. Saha chose to study
first thermodynamics, statistical mechanics and spectroscopy, while Bose
decided on electromagnetism and relativity.
In 1916 a professor of mathematics was appointed by the university,
who started postgraduate classes in applied mathematics and physics,
assisted by Bose and Saha; the following year they were both appointed
lecturers in physics. ‘We took upon ourselves the task of teaching postgraduate
students’, Bose recalled. ‘Saha taught thermodynamics and spectroscopy
in the physics department and hydrostatics and lunar theory in the
mathematics department. I was more ambitious, teaching both physics and
applied mathematics regularly. On my shoulders fell the task of teaching
316 From de Broglie to Fermi
general physics and giving all entrants a suitable introduction to mathematical
physics. I also taught elasticity and relativity.’ In 1918 a new physics
professor was also appointed, a magnetic personality who attracted many
students, most of whom worked in optics, his speciality.
Bose and Saha started to do research in statistical mechanics, publishing
their first paper in 1918. They published, in translation, an anthology
of Einstein’s papers on relativity and then went on to quantum theory.
Saha, who began to specialize in astrophysics, went to Germany on study
leave, as Bose was hoping to do one day. Some of the other younger scientists,
including Bose, decided that it was time to leave Calcutta, where the
physics department was becoming overcrowded. He secured a non-tenured
position, equivalent to assistant professor, at Dhaka, or Dacca, where there
was an enterprising Vice-Chancellor named Hartog in charge of a newly
founded university. Although it was in no sense an Islamic institution, its
students came mainly from the Muslim population, who were in the majority
in this part of Bengal. It was unusual in being residential in character,
so the students saw much more of their teachers than at other universities.
The head of department, who had been instrumental in attracting Bose to
Dhaka, was an expatriate, a Cambridge graduate who seemed to have been
appointed professor of physics mainly on the strength of his prowess on
the football field. Bose was left to lead the postgraduate work of the department;
he began by teaching thermodynamics and electromagnetism, while
increasingly becoming interested in relativity and quantum theory for his
own research.
For Bose Dhaka was an alien land, another world culturally from the
Calcutta where he grew up, but for Saha Dhaka was his homeland. Although
Dhaka is only a few hundred miles from Calcutta, the journey was an arduous
one before the days of air travel. When Saha returned from Germany
he came over to see Bose, and the discussions he had with Bose on this
visit seem to have been the catalyst for what happened next. Around 1924
Bose wrote two important papers on the statistics of radiation. The first,
called ‘Planck’s Law and the Light-quantum Hypothesis’, he submitted to
the Philosophical Magazine, which had published his earlier work. When
he heard nothing from the editor, he took the bold step of sending a copy
to Einstein. His only previous contact with Einstein had been when he
wrote for his permission to translate some of the relativity papers into
Bengali. He then wrote a sequel, ‘Thermal Equilibrium in the Radiation
Field in the Presence of Matter’, and sent a copy of that to Einstein as well,
asking whether he would recommend both papers for the Zeitschrift fu¨ r
Satyendranath Bose (1894–1974) 317
Physik, or some other German journal, and arrange for them to be translated.
Einstein replied on a postcard: ‘I have translated your work and sent it to the
Zeitschrift fu¨ r Physik for publication. It signifies an important step forward
and I like it very much. In fact I find your objections against my work not
correct . . . However, this does not matter . . . It is a beautiful step forward.’
Bose had applied to Dhaka University for two years’ leave to study
in Europe. His application was being considered when the postcard arrived.
Such words of approval from the highest authority made all the difference.
His application was promptly granted, with generous financial support, and
Bose arrived in Paris in October 1924. Just why he then remained there
instead of continuing to Berlin is something of a mystery. He contacted
Einstein, who invited Bose to come and see him, but Bose waited a whole
year before doing so. He explained afterwards: ‘I wanted to go directly to
Berlin, but I didn’t venture to go straight on because I was not sure of my
knowledge of German. I came out thinking that perhaps after a few weeks
in Paris I should be able to go to Berlin to see Einstein. However, two things
happened: (1) friends, (2) a letter of introduction to Langevin. My friends
in Paris, who received me on arrival there, took me to this boarding house
where they were staying. Then they all insisted that I should stay there.
Well, I found it convenient to be among friends.’ It appears that these friends
were Bengali nationalists, and that Bose was becoming increasingly involved
in their activities. In 1905, when Satyen was eleven years old, the autocratic
viceroy Lord Curzon had declared the partition of Bengal, an act that had
grave political consequences, arousing Bengalis to rebel against the British
political and economic domination and spurring the nationalistic Swadeshi
movement into action.
Initially Bose had planned to spend the first year of his study leave in
England and the second in Germany. Hartog had written to both Rutherford
and Bragg on his behalf; Bragg’s answer is not known, but Rutherford replied
that he could not accommodate Bose in the Cavendish. In Dhaka, it should
be recalled, Bose had to teach both theoretical and experimental physics,
and one of his main objectives was to improve his experimental skills.
He could do this in France almost as well. Langevin suggested that he
should pursue the possibility of working in Madame Curie’s laboratory,
perhaps with la patronne herself. At the interview, conducted in English, the
‘great elderly lady’ said that Bose should first improve his French, apparently
because she had had another Indian in her laboratory who, unlike
Bose, did not know much French. Later Bose spent a short while at
the Radium Institute learning about experimental work in radioactivity.
318 From de Broglie to Fermi
Meanwhile Langevin provided him with an introduction to Maurice de
Broglie, who gave him some useful experience of experimental work in X-ray
spectroscopy.
It was not until October 1925 that Bose moved to Berlin. Einstein had
written to say that the second paper, which he was not entirely happy with,
had also appeared in the Zeitschrift; Bose had replied that he had written
a third paper, which he believed met some of Einstein’s criticisms of the
second. This third paper was never published and no copies seem to have
survived. Langevin read it with approval, but apparently Bose did not ask
him to communicate it to a French journal. In the course of time it emerged
that the ideas Bose put forward in the second paper were quite valid, but by
then Bose had ceased to be active in research.
When Bose arrived in Berlin, Einstein was on his annual visit to
Leiden. As soon as he returned they met and continued to do so all the
time Bose was in Germany. Yet it should not be assumed that they talked
about physics; it might well have been politics. Bose might have asked
Einstein for his views on nationalism in India. During this period Zionism,
rather than physics, was Einstein’s preoccupation, and of course he was a
primary target of anti-Semitic propaganda. Bose also met the other leading
physicists in Berlin at that time and made a visit to Go¨ ttingen as well.
While Bose was in Europe the head of physics at Dhaka University
left and Bose was encouraged to apply for the vacant chair. Einstein gave
him a reference: ‘the recent works of Mr S.N. Bose, especially his theory
of radiative equilibrium, signify in my opinion an important and enduring
progress of the physical theory. Also in personal discussion with Mr Bose,
I have got the impression that he is a man of unusual gifts and depth, from
whom science has much to expect. He has also at his command an extensive
knowledge and certain ability in our science. As university teacher he
will certainly develop a successful and prosperous activity.’ Other referees,
including Langevin, also supported his candidature but, even so, Bose was
not offered the position until another candidate had turned it down.
So Bose became head of physics and was soon caught up in the usual
round of duties that goes with such a post. He reorganized his department,
to make it a research centre on the European model. As for his own research,
with no proper programme, his interest kept shifting from one problem to
another. He had written nothing while he was in Europe and, as he said, ‘on
my return to India I wrote some papers. I did something on statistics, and
then something on relativity theory . . . they were not important. I was not
really in science any more. I was like a comet, a comet which came once and
Satyendranath Bose (1894–1974) 319
never returned again.’ Bose also kept up an interest in experimental physics,
especially thermoluminescence and crystal structure. However, his creative
period for research was essentially over.
After the end of the Second World War, which had come close to
Dhaka, the tension between the Hindu and Muslim communities which
led to the separation of East Bengal from the rest of India was disrupting the
work of the university to such an extent that many of the faculty, including
Bose, decided that it was time to leave. In 1945 he moved back to Calcutta,
as successor to Vankata Raman as professor of physics. He wrote some
research papers on his ideas for a unified field theory and had some correspondence
with Einstein about it. In 1954 he was given a seat in the
Rajya Sabha, the upper chamber of the national parliament, but did not play
a very active role in Delhi. Two years later, after retiring from Calcutta
University, he became Vice-Chancellor of the new central university of
Visva-Bharati, which was closely associated with the ideas of the poet
Rabindranath Tagore. Earlier Tagore had invited Bose to Santiniketan and
dedicated to him his Visva-parichaya, a book giving an elementary account
of the cosmic and microcosmic world in Bengali, in recognition of Bose’s
efforts to popularize science through the mother tongue. However, Bose
gave up the Visva-Bharati post after two years, saying that he wanted to go
back to research. In 1959 he was appointed to one of the prestigious national
professorships, which left him free to work as he pleased, and he held this
for the rest of his life, dying on February 4, 1974, shortly after the celebration
of his eightieth birthday.
After he returned to India in 1926 it was twenty-five years before Bose
went abroad again, but then he travelled extensively and was often seen at
scientific conferences. A visit to Japan confirmed his belief that, even in
science, university education in India should be in the mother tongue of
the students, not in English. The great inspiration of Bose’s life was the
work and personality of Albert Einstein. To him Einstein’s personality was
‘beyond comparison’, and he was forever grateful to Einstein for the timely
encouragement he had received from him. He hoped to see Einstein again
before he died but, because of his reputation as a political radical, Bose was
refused an American visa.
It was given to Bose to make just one important discovery and to write
a four-page paper about it. The Bose–Einstein statistics continue to have farreaching
consequences in modern physics. Einstein and Bose independently
predicted that, at extremely low temperatures in a dilute, non-interacting
gas, atoms would condense to the point where they fall into the same
320 From de Broglie to Fermi
quantum state, essentially behaving like a single atom. The Bose–Einstein
condensate, predicted by theory, has recently been produced experimentally,
and its properties are being investigated. Among the elementary particles,
the boson commemorates the name of Bose, a name that has an honoured
place in the annals of physics.
Piotr Leonidovich Kapitza (1894–1984)
Piotr Leonidovich Kapitza, later known as Peter Kapitza to the world of
science, was born in Kronstadt, the island fortress on the river Neva near
St Petersburg, on July 8, 1894. His father, Colonel (later General) Leonid
Petrovich Kapitza, was a military engineer involved in modernizing its fortifications.
The Kapitzas had been landed gentry with Polish antecedents
and the family was well represented in the professions. His mother, Olga
Ieronimovna, to whom he was very close until her death in 1937, was a
specialist in children’s literature and folklore and an important figure in
the literary world of St Petersburg. Her father, General Ieronim Ivanovich
Stebnitski, was a geographer of international repute, a corresponding member
of the St Petersburg Academy and an ardent world traveller. Unusually
for his time, he arranged for his daughters to have higher education, Olga in
the humanities and Alexandra in mathematics and science.
Piotr Leonidovich Kapitza (1894–1984) 321
Aunt Alexandra played an important part in the upbringing of her
nephew Piotr Leonidovich and it was she who discovered that, although he
was somewhat backward in other respects, he had an unusually quick grasp
of arithmetic. He never overcame a certain indirectness and sloppiness of
speech and never learned to spell correctly in any language. He was admitted
to the classical gymnasium in 1905 but was transferred after a year to
the more scientifically oriented Realschule, which was much more appropriate
to his developing talents. Six years later he graduated with honours
and entered the electrochemical faculty of the St Petersburg polytechnic –
without Latin and Greek he could not enter the more prestigious university.
Kapitza’s studies were interrupted by the First World War. After serving
for two years as an ambulance driver on the Polish front, he returned
to the polytechnic and graduated in 1918. After the chaos of war and the
upheaval of the revolution, the economy of the country was in a disastrous
state. Nevertheless, a new physico-technical institute was established under
the leadership of Abraham Joff ´ e, the grand old man of Russian physics, who
recruited Kapitza to join his group of enthusiastic young scientists. There
were great shortages of food and fuel and practically no scientific equipment,
so experimental research could be carried out only on a ‘do it yourself’
basis. In spite of these difficulties, however, a surprising amount was
achieved.
Following a romantic trip to Harbin in China, soon after he had been
demobilized, Kapitza married Nadezhda Kyrillovna, daughter of General
Chernosvitov, and their son, Ieronim, was born in 1917. A second child
was expected towards the end of 1919, but disaster struck the family.
Epidemics were rife in the dreadful conditions following revolution and
civil war. Ieronim died from scarlet fever. Nadezhda was devastated by the
loss of her first child; soon afterwards she gave birth to a daughter, only
for both mother and child to succumb to the pandemic Spanish flu. Then
Kapitza’s father also died of this, and Kapitza himself caught it but survived.
Naturally he was overwhelmed by these tragic events and unable to
continue working.
Then something happened that not only distracted him from his grief
but changed the course of his life. This was the setting up, on Joff ´ e’s initiative,
of a commission of the Soviet Academy of Sciences for renewing
scientific relations with other countries. Besides Joff ´e himself, an important
member of the commission was the naval engineer and applied mathematician
Admiral A.N. Krylov, later to become Kapitza’s second father-in-law.
Both Joff ´e and Krylov formed a high opinion of Kapitza’s scientific gifts and
322 From de Broglie to Fermi
wanted to help in his difficult personal situation; appointing him to join the
commission seemed a good way to do this.
Travel abroad at that time was not easy for Soviet citizens because
few other countries maintained diplomatic relations with theirs. The commission
set out early in 1921 and, as soon as they had travelled as far as
Berlin, began procuring scientific equipment. Kapitza wanted to go further
west, but neither France nor the Netherlands was prepared to risk admitting
someone who might prove to be a Communist agitator. However, Britain
was more accommodating and Joff ´e succeeded in obtaining the necessary
visas.
So Kapitza and Joff ´e arrived in England and early in June started a
round of scientific visits, which culminated in a most significant visit to
Cambridge in July. They were received very cordially by Rutherford but,
when Kapitza asked whether he might work in the Cavendish for a few
months, Rutherford was rather discouraging, saying that the laboratory was
already very crowded and it would be difficult to find room for another
person. Rutherford was rather taken aback when Kapitza replied by asking
what accuracy he aimed at in his experiments. The answer to this seemingly
irrelevant question was two or three per cent and Kapitza then pointed out
that, since there were about thirty researchers in the Cavendish already, one
more would hardly be noticed since it came within the experimental error.
This ingenious approach persuaded Rutherford to admit Kapitza after all. As
a postscript, it may be mentioned that a year later Kapitza asked Rutherford
why he had agreed to take him on and Rutherford laughed and said
‘I can’t think why but I’m very glad that I did.’ Later he came to regard
Kapitza almost as a surrogate son.
Kapitza joined the Cavendish in July 1921 and, although the original
plan was for him to stay only over the winter, he remained for thirteen years.
His introduction to Cambridge life and his impressions of Rutherford and
the Cavendish are vividly described in the letters he wrote at frequent intervals
to his mother Olga. The usual initiation of new research students was
a month or two of practical work in the Cavendish attic under Chadwick’s
supervision; in fact, Kapitza’s skill and assiduity were such that Chadwick
was satisfied after only two weeks. By early August Kapitza, at Rutherford’s
suggestion, was studying how the energy of the alpha particle falls off at the
end of its range. This project was brought to a successful conclusion with
amazing rapidity.Within nine months of the conception of the idea, he was
already drafting a paper for publication and by June it was sent off. He wrote
to his mother that ‘Today the Crocodile summoned me twice about my
Piotr Leonidovich Kapitza (1894–1984) 323
manuscript . . . it will be published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society
which is the greatest honour a piece of research can achieve here. Only now
have I really entered the Crocodile’s school, which is certainly the most
advanced school in the world and Rutherford is the greatest physicist and
organizer. It is only now that I have felt my strength. Success gives me wings
and I am carried away by my work.’
Crocodile was a nickname Kapitza invented for Rutherford. As he
explained: ‘in Russia the crocodile is a symbol for the father of the family
and is also regarded with awe and admiration because it has a stiff neck
and cannot turn. It just goes forward with gaping jaws – like science, like
Rutherford.’ He wrote again to his mother: ‘the Crocodile is taken with
my idea and thinks it will succeed. He has a devilish feeling for experiment
and if he thinks something will come out of it that is a very good
omen. His attitude towards me gets better and better’ and then, ‘the preliminary
experiments were completely successful. I am told that the Crocodile
speaks of nothing else now and I shall remember my last conversation with
Rutherford as long as I live. After a whole lot of compliments he said:
“I should be very happy if I could have the possibility of creating a special
laboratory for you in which you could work with your own students.”’
Meanwhile Kapitza’s official position in Cambridge was rapidly being
consolidated. In June 1923 he received the degree of doctor of philosophy
and soon afterwards he was awarded a Clerk Maxwell scholarship. Eighteen
months later he was appointed assistant director of magnetic research, a
university post. He was elected a research fellow of Trinity College, which
enabled him to live in college up to the time of his second marriage. In the
spring of 1927 Kapitza went to Paris and wrote to Rutherford: ‘I am going
to be married. What do you think about it? I feel you are rather angry. This
is why I propose to have no honeymoon and bring my wife in a few days
time after my wedding to Cambridge.’ His bride was Anna Alekseyevna
Krylova, daughter of the Admiral Krylov mentioned earlier. Although her
father stayed in Russia after the revolution, her mother emigrated to Paris
and it was there that Anna completed her training as an archaeologist. The
marriage was a very happy one. Anna was not only a charming hostess
to their many friends and an accomplished artist, but also a great support
to her husband in the difficult times which lay ahead. Two children were
born in their Cambridge period: in 1928 Sergei, who became a distinguished
physicist and successful popularizer of science for Soviet television, and
three years later Andrei, who became a well-known Antarctic explorer and
geographer.
324 From de Broglie to Fermi
In 1929 Kapitza was elected to the Royal Society, at a time when
it was relatively closed to foreigners, and almost simultaneously to corresponding
membership of the Soviet Academy. The following year he was
appointed to a Royal Society Messel professorship, and the special laboratory
Rutherford had said he would like to create for him took shape as
the Royal Society’s Mond laboratory. At the opening of the building by
Stanley Baldwin, as Chancellor of the University, a bas relief of Rutherford
just inside the main entrance and another of a crocodile just outside, both
sculpted by Eric Gill, were revealed. Speeches were made by Baldwin,
Rutherford, Kapitza and Lord Balfour, the former prime minister. Baldwin’s
speech duplicated Rutherford’s almost word for word, owing to his having
picked up an advance copy of Rutherford’s under the impression that it was
his own.
Kapitza had many interests and skills outside his scientific work. One
of his early enthusiasms was the internal combustion engine. Soon after his
arrival he bought a motor cycle and managed to crash it, without serious
injury. Before long he moved up to a car and acquired a reputation for reckless
driving. One of his hobbies was repairing watches and clocks, another
was conjuring. He was fond of boasting and exaggeration and had boundless
self-confidence, which was usually justified. Cheerful and outgoing, a great
charmer and excellent company, he loved an argument, found something
interesting or amusing to say on almost any subject. He frequently dined in
the college hall during his time as a fellow, but at Cambridge he missed the
lively discussions of the Joff ´e seminars and started something similar of his
own, a scientific circle that soon became known as the Kapitza Club. This
continued for twelve years after he had left Cambridge, but he organized a
similar one in Moscow. It is time to explain how he came to be back there.
Kapitza was rather proud of his unusual situation of directing a prestigious
laboratory in Cambridge while remaining a Soviet citizen and being
able to go in and out of the Soviet Union at will. From 1926 on he visited
Moscow nearly every summer, taking care that his permission to return to
Cambridge was underwritten by people high up in the Soviet political and
scientific establishment. During these visits he gave lectures, spent time
with his mother and usually managed to have a good holiday in the Caucasus
or Crimea as well. Although his friends wondered whether his exclusive
status could continue indefinitely, Kapitza laughed off any warnings and in
1934 made his usual summer visit, accompanied by his wife Anna. When
they were preparing to return to England Kapitza was informed that his permission
to leave the Soviet Union had been revoked. He thought that the
Piotr Leonidovich Kapitza (1894–1984) 325
problem might have arisen because the authorities had developed exaggerated
ideas of the technological relevance of his work, a situation for which
he was partly to blame.
However, another explanation seems more likely. The distinguished
physicist George Gamov decided not to return to the Soviet Union after the
Solvay conference of 1933 and when he settled in the USA he was stripped of
his Soviet citizenship. His case may well have influenced the treatment of
Kapitza, who was utterly devastated by his inability to return to Cambridge.
At first the problem was kept secret, so that the Soviet authorities could
retreat without loss of face, while all kinds of efforts were made behind
the scenes. Although Kapitza had contacts at high level, these efforts led
nowhere because, he suspected, it was Stalin himself who had decided that
he must remain in the Soviet Union. Anna was allowed to return to the
children in Cambridge and begin the difficult task of winding up their affairs
there, but it was not until the end of 1935 that the family could be reunited
in Moscow.
Meanwhile Kapitza, after a period of feeling very frustrated and miserable,
began to cooperate in the planning of a new institute, like the Mond,
of which he would be director. Life for the family became easier; they were
assigned a comfortable and central flat, a good car and other privileges. The
Institute for Physical Problems was in part modelled on the Mond laboratory,
but it was on a larger scale; the director’s office was immense, there
was a spacious lecture theatre and there was ample office accommodation,
essential for the paperwork generated by the formidable Soviet bureaucracy.
The building was attractively situated on the Lenin hills, with gardens and
parks around it. There was a magnificent house nearby for the Kapitzas
to live in. The institute was provided with staff of high quality. He had
to convince the authorities that his work lay primarily in pure rather than
applied physics and that he could do nothing useful unless he had equipment
and other facilities comparable with those he had enjoyed in Cambridge.
Negotiations were begun to bring him what he required.
So Kapitza settled down to research again and within a year made his
greatest discovery, the superfluidity of liquid helium. However, he lacked
the freedom he had enjoyed in Cambridge. From the mid 1930s Soviet scientists
found themselves increasingly cut off from their colleagues in other
countries. They were barred from going abroad for any length of time and
forbidden to publish outside the Soviet Union, even private correspondence
was not free of risk. However, Kapitza was able to take liberties that other
Soviet scientists were not. Notably, he was able to use his influence to
326 From de Broglie to Fermi
protect at least a few of his colleagues during the purge of the late thirties,
as in the case of Lev Davidovitch Landau, the head of the department of theoretical
physics at his institute. Landau was arrested in 1938, like so many
others during the Great Terror. He was held in the Lubyanka prison for a
year, after being accused of being a German spy, and would not have survived
much longer. Kapitza bravely went to the Kremlin and announced that he
would resign unless Landau was released, and eventually his intervention
was successful.
In 1939 Kapitza was elected a full academician, but there were signs
of trouble in store. Officials kept arriving to inspect the activities of the
institute, and eventually he was informed that ‘P.L. Kapitza, having shown
a cavalier attitude to both Soviet and foreign achievement in the technology
of oxygen production, and having failed to meet the scheduled dates for
introducing new installations into the metallurgical industry . . . is relieved
of his duties as Director of the Institute of Physical Problems.’ The underlying
reason for this action was probably Kapitza’s refusal to work in the organization
set up under Beria, the head of the NKVD, to develop the Soviet
atom bomb. Kapitza is said to have written to Stalin that Beria was ‘like the
conductor of an orchestra with the baton in his hand but without a score’.
Beria wanted to arrest Kapitza for such insubordination, but Stalin, in his
unpredictable way, perhaps because he admired Kapitza’s courage, vetoed
this proposal and said that dismissal would be sufficient.
Although he was no longer head of the Institute of Physical Problems,
Kapitza retained his position and salary as a full academician and went to
live at his country house at Nikolina Gora, where he managed to carry on
scientific work while virtually under house arrest. Most of his effort went
into building up a laboratory in various outhouses where, aided by his sons,
particularly Sergei, he could continue experimental work, albeit only on
relatively unexciting projects. While atomic physics elsewhere was moving
rapidly ahead using particle accelerators and other new equipment, he was
unable to contribute to this. Even after he had been reinstated in 1954 and
could return to Moscow, he was still without the facilities he needed for the
kind of experimental work at which he excelled. Nevertheless, he began to
think about the possibility of developing a defence against atomic bombs
using extremely powerful microwave emissions. Later he transferred his
attention to the problem of generating energy through nuclear fusion.
For thirty years Kapitza was denied the opportunity to accept invitations
to travel beyond the countries of the eastern bloc, until in 1965
he was allowed to travel to Copenhagen to receive the Niels Bohr gold
Jean-Fr´ed´ eric Joliot (1900–1958) 327
medal of the Danish Engineering Society. The next year he was awarded
the Rutherford medal of the Institute of Physics and returned to England
after a lapse of thirty-two years. He received a particularly warm welcome
in Cambridge; many friends of his youth were still there. He returned to
England twice more, in 1973 to receive the Simon Memorial prize of the
Institute of Physics and three years later to give the Bernal Lecture at the
Royal Society. He was also able to visit other countries to receive honorary
degrees and other distinctions. The culminating event was the Nobel prize
in 1978 for his work in low-temperature physics, especially the discovery
of superfluidity.
The Kapitzas continued to lead an active social life, enjoying the company
not only of their extended family but also of a wide circle of friends.
On his eightieth birthday the Soviet intelligentsia flocked to Nikolina Gora
for a huge celebration. Five years afterwards he suffered a severe stroke and
died on April 8, 1984 after a few days in hospital. The announcement of
his death in Pravda was signed by all the members of the politbureau as
well as all the leading Soviet scientists. A memorial meeting took place at
the institute, a moving occasion with many personal recollections by close
colleagues and friends.
As the years passed, Kapitza had become more and more accustomed,
or at least reconciled, to life in his homeland. No matter how muted his
criticism, however, he insisted on freedom to criticize. Being neither an
oppositionist nor a political opportunist, he based his collaboration with
the most unsavoury political authorities on the principle of compromise.
He did not find it easy to establish and maintain this kind of compromise.
By withholding fervour from his arguments, Kapitza would have acted
against his conscience and dignity. By saying too much, he would have
had to confront the powers he was trying to placate. He did not enjoy the
game, but, with only a few exceptions, he succeeded in avoiding its dangers.
He knew enough to restrict his comments to very specific topics of science
and science policy. The authorities awarded him Stalin prizes in 1941
and 1943, the Order of Lenin in 1943, 1944 and 1945, and, amongst other
marks of distinction, the Soviet Union’s highest civil title: Hero of Socialist
Labour.
Jean-Fr´ed´eric Joliot (1900–1958)
In dealing with husband-and-wife partnerships it seems necessary, for a satisfactory
profile, to choose one or other as the principal subject. In the case
of the Curies, Marie rather than Pierre was chosen; in the next generation
328 From de Broglie to Fermi
this is balanced by choosing Fr´ed´ eric rather than Ir `ene Joliot-Curie. Jean-
Fr´ed´ eric Joliot was born on March 19, 1900, in a small house in the smart
sixteenth arrondissement of Paris. Earlier in his life his father Henri, the son
of a steelworker from Lorraine, had been a soldier. He was called up during
the war of 1870, at the age of twenty-seven, and took an active part in the
Paris Commune, after which he was forced to leave France until an amnesty
was declared. Fr´ed´ eric’s mother Emilie, whose maiden name was Roederer,
came of an Alsatian family. Her father had been sauce-cook to Napoleon III
and as such the only servant permitted to be present at the Emperor’s meals
and, quite frequently, converse with him. She retained the austere manner
of her Protestant background but was fundamentally liberal. Her great good
nature and deep sense of justice had a profound influence on her son.
Fr´ed´ eric, the youngest of six children, was born when his mother
was already forty-nine. Two of his brothers died young and a third was to
be killed in the course of one of the first engagements of the First World
War. At the age of ten Fr´ed´ eric was sent to boarding school at the Lyc´ee
Lakanal in Sceaux. He was more interested in sport, particularly football,
than in academic school-work. He was not a well-behaved child: ‘I caused
my poor mother a great deal of worry, particularly when I went shopping
Jean-Fr´ed´ eric Joliot (1900–1958) 329
with her and stole the sweets and fruit which were on display.’ His father
owned a successful wholesale business in dry goods, which was entrusted
to a manager. Fr´ed´ eric often accompanied his father in shooting, fishing
and other such pursuits, becoming an excellent shot and fisherman in the
process. There was also music at home; his father performed on the French
hunting horn.
The death of Henri Joliot and changes in the family fortunes caused
the Joliot family to leave the affluent sixteenth arrondissement and set up
house in the fourteenth, the Montparnasse quarter near the ‘Lion of Belfort’,
that symbol of the Paris Commune. The Lyc´ee Lakanal was replaced by a
municipal school at which Fr´ed´ eric prepared himself for the higher-level
Ecole de Physique et de Chimie. He failed the entrance examination in
1918, at the end of the First World War; when he tried again the next year
he was successful, but a major illness delayed his admission until October
1920. At the end of the first year students had to choose between physics and
chemistry. The director of studies, as we know, was the charismatic physicist
Langevin, whose lectures on electricity were a revelation to his pupils.
Fr´ed´ eric chose physics and became a life-long disciple of Paul Langevin.
All those who were taught by Langevin were in some degree affected
by the experience, since he was no ordinary teacher. They tended to copy his
characteristic tricks and attitudes, such as moving the hand slowly backwards
and forwards over the chair, or leaving the blackboard and insistently
going to make a white mark with the chalk on the radiator. He taught them
that science was something living, that a teacher must convey the value and
importance of what has already been achieved, while making the audience
realize that everyone can make an original contribution to the edifice that
is being constructed. ‘When he talks about science’, said Marguerite Borel,
‘about literature, about philosophical theories – he understands everything
and is interested in everything – his very beautiful chestnut eyes and his
whole face light up.’
After graduating in 1924, Fr´ed´ eric underwent six months of full-time
training as an officer cadet in the artillery reserve, at the end of which
he became an assistant in Marie Curie’s laboratory. It was there that he
began his professional career in physics and met Marie’s daughter Ir `ene.
Ir `ene was green-eyed with short cropped hair and rather awkward in her
movements. She had inherited her father’s noble brow and her mother’s
bright and limpid eyes. She also inherited the shyness of both parents as
well as their abilities, and had great difficulties in greeting and dealing with
strangers. Even more than her mother, remarked Einstein, the main way
330 From de Broglie to Fermi
she expressed her feelings was by grumbling, just like a grenadier. Ir `ene
became more sure of herself as she grew up, but people found her excessively
self-centred. Her imperturbable calm and her direct manner in replying to
questions made her seem cold and somewhat haughty.
Marie Curie was a firm believer in the prime importance of education.
In France, at that time, the quality of school education was not outstanding.
It was mainly for Ir `ene’s sake that Marie organized a co-operative
with a group of like-minded academics from the Sorbonne, where each gave
some time teaching the ten boys and girls who belonged to it. This lasted
only two years, partly because the teachers were too overworked to give it
the necessary share of their attention and partly because too much of the
children’s time was spent travelling from place to place. Ir `ene obtained her
basic scientific education from the cooperative. After it closed she was sent
to the Coll`ege S´evign´ e, a private school, for two years’ study towards the
baccalaur´eat. When the war broke out, she was ready to enter the Sorbonne.
The girls were at l’Arcouest, where they were joined by their mother. ‘You
and I’, she told Ir `ene, ‘will try to make ourselves useful.’ To start with, both
girls helped to gather in the harvest. Later Ir `ene supported her mother’s
radiological work and, once the war was over, she became her laboratory
assistant. Eve, still just a teenager, was able to gain more of her mother’s
personal attention. She was more approachable than her sister, but she wrote
that ‘in spite of the help my mother tried to give me, my young years were
not happy ones’. Both their mother and grandfather Curie were closer to
Ir `ene than to Eve. In 1921 the daughters accompanied their mother on a
strenuous visit to the USA. In 1925 Ir `ene took her doctorate with a thesis
on the alpha rays of polonium, and that was the year in which she met
Fr´ed´ eric Joliot.
Ir `ene’s position in the laboratory was a special one, as daughter of
la patronne; moreover, she had great knowledge of radioactivity. She was
three years older than Fr´ed´ eric and seemed at first to be his opposite in
everything. She was as calm and serene as he was impulsive. Being by nature
very reserved, she found it difficult to make friends, while he was able to
make social contact with everyone. She took little interest in her appearance
and dress, while he was good-looking, elegant and always a great success
with the opposite sex. In argument Ir `ene was incapable of the least deceit or
artifice or of making the smallest concession.With an implacable obstinacy
she would present her thesis, confronting any opposition head on. Fr´ed´ eric,
on the other hand, without conceding a point, had a wonderful ability to put
his opponents in a frame of mind where they could accept his arguments.
Jean-Fr´ed´ eric Joliot (1900–1958) 331
As well as science, Ir `ene enjoyed French, English and German poetry.
From childhood she had also been keen on sport; she excelled chiefly at
swimming and skiing. She had a love of the natural world, especially the
mountains, where she several times had to stay because of pulmonary infections.
Her exterior, which tended to be cold, concealed a passionate nature. It
was in the course of long walks through the forest of Fontainebleau, talking
of physics, art and religion, that she and Fr´ed´ eric realized that they were
meant for each other.
They were married on October 9, 1926. Out of respect for Ir `ene’s
famous parents, they adopted the name Joliot-Curie. Although there was
nothing unusual in doing this, Marie was not pleased, and both professionally
and academically the young couple called themselves the Joliots
most of the time. Like her mother, Ir `ene never learned to cook, but Fr´ed´ eric
could be quite a competent chef on occasion. Their daughter H´ el `ene, born
in 1926, and son Pierre, born in 1932, also became physicists of distinction.
Owing to pleurisy, Ir `ene was slow to recover her strength after the birth of
H´ el `ene. Except for taking vacations in the mountains, she tried not to let
poor health affect her life. She carried on with her scientific work as before,
working straight through her second pregnancy, but after the birth of Pierre
she always felt tired and was never able to regain her previous weight. It
is generally believed that at this stage she was solely suffering from the
tuberculosis which was latent in her mother.
Just like Marie and Pierre, Ir `ene and Fr´ed´ eric worked together on
research. Quite soon they obtained some exciting experimental results but,
because they were not so interested in the theoretical side of physics, they
failed to interpret them correctly. As early as 1920 Rutherford had speculated
on the existence of the neutron. What the Joliots had found essentially
verified his conjecture, but they did not realize this and it was left to Rutherford’s
colleague Chadwick to establish the connection. This was not to be
the only time when the Joliot-Curies just missed making a fundamental discovery.
In 1932, they went off for a fortnight to the scientific station at the
Jungfraujoch, high in the Bernese alps. Here they combined research into
cosmic rays with a certain amount of skiing. Shortly afterwards American
researchers announced the discovery of the positron, and, when the Joliots
came to analyse more closely the results they had just obtained, they saw
that they too had found evidence of its existence without realizing it.
They had been invited to give a report on their latest experimental
work at the forthcoming Solvay conference in Brussels, where Langevin
was to be chairman. Fr´ed´ eric made the report, but in the subsequent
332 From de Broglie to Fermi
discussion the interpretation he gave of their results was strongly attacked,
particularly by Lise Meitner. It was generally believed that they must be
mistaken. After returning to Paris the Joliots set about vindicating themselves.
On a historic January day in 1934 they found conclusive evidence.
Artificial radioactivity had been created, and a new era had begun. Almost
at once the news spread around the world. For the Joliots the immediate
consequence was the award of the Nobel prize in chemistry for their synthesis
of new radioactive elements (the physics prize went to Chadwick).
They used some of the prize money to move out of central Paris to Sceaux;
and they also acquired a chalet in the Alps, where they used to go skiing.
Sadly, Marie Curie was no longer alive to hear of their success.
Both the Joliots were active in left-wing politics. Ir `ene had been influenced
by the radical politics and anticlericalism of her grandfather Curie
and, like her mother, she took a keen interest in the social and intellectual
advancement of women. In Fr´ed´ eric’s case it was his liberal-minded
mother who was more influential, while as a student he had been strongly
influenced by the left-wing views of Langevin. The Joliots firmly supported
the republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. While strongly disagreeing
with its policy of non-intervention, they joined the French Socialist Party.
In 1936 Ir `ene served briefly as Under-Secretary of State for national education
in L´eon Blum’s Popular Front government. Friends were surprised that
she was prepared to do so, but the fact that this was the first time women
had ever been included in a French government gave it a special significance.
In France, women still did not have the right to vote in elections.
She explained: ‘Fred and I thought I must accept it as a sacrifice for the
feminist cause in France, although it annoyed us very much.’ Attendance at
any sort of committee meeting was anathema to her, but the position gave
her the opportunity to link science and national development. It was agreed
that she would hold the office only for a short while, after which her friend
Jean Perrin would take over and she could return to her scientific work, but
before this could happen L´eon Blum’s government was forced out of office
in the aftermath of severe economic distress and social unrest.
In 1935 Fr´ed´ eric was made professor of nuclear chemistry at the
Coll`ege de France; two years later Ir `ene was appointed professor at the
Sorbonne. Fr´ed´ eric designed the first cyclotron built in western Europe and,
by the start of 1939, was using it to demonstrate fission by physical means,
proving that many neutrons are produced by fission, that such reactions
can be developed in explosive chains and that nuclear reactions can be controlled
to release great quantities of energy. However, during the same year,
Jean-Fr´ed´ eric Joliot (1900–1958) 333
fearful of Hitler’s power and the misuse of the chain reaction, the Joliots
suddenly ceased publishing their research.
After the Second World War had broken out, Fr´ed´ eric placed the principle
of the nuclear reactor on record and deposited it in a sealed envelope at
the Paris Academy, where it remained until it was opened in 1949. During
the war he, as a captain in the artillery, was responsible for coordinating the
war-effort of various French scientific laboratories. When he heard that
the Germans were trying to acquire the Norwegian stock of heavy water,
the world’s largest, he realized that it must be for use in atomic research. In
a remarkable coup he negotiated the loan of the heavy water for the duration
of the war and organized its transport to France, under the eyes of the
Germans. The consignment arrived at the Coll`ege de France, but events
were moving rapidly. The German army had broken through and was about
to enter Paris. The material was promptly sent on to England for safety, thus
seriously impeding the German project to build a nuclear reactor. He also
thwarted German efforts to seize the cyclotron and the stock of radium.
In June 1940, certain French scientists were told to hurry to Bordeaux and
await further orders. When they had arrived in Bordeaux they were taken
to a British ship, which was ready to evacuate 150 scientists and engineers.
However, some of them did not get the message in time; others came without
their families and, realizing only on arrival that the order meant evacuation,
did not wish to leave alone, so that only fifty sailed in the end; most
of those who remained were in non-occupied France. All efforts to convince
Joliot that he had better take the opportunity to leave for England were in
vain, but two leading members of his research group did so and resumed
their work in the Cavendish, where they played a vital role.
Unlike Ir `ene, Fr´ed´ eric joined the French Communist party, to which
many of the scientific left belonged. ‘I was impressed’, he said, ‘by the generosity,
courage and hope for the future that these people in my country
had. They seemed willing to do the most to give France social reform.’
Until then it had been difficult to be a Communist in France because of the
pact between Hitler and Stalin, but now the Germans repudiated this and
invaded Russia. As a leader of the National Front, centred at the university,
Fr´ed´ eric stood in the forefront of the Resistance movement. Pretending to
be still busy with theoretical investigations of the atom, he was actually
directing the manufacture of explosives and radio equipment for the Resistance,
and he also hid the staff of a clandestine newspaper in the laboratory.
When the Germans became suspicious, he sent Ir `ene and the two children
to Switzerland, while he remained in Paris under an assumed name.
334 From de Broglie to Fermi
As we shall see, scientists in other countries had by then taken the lead
in nuclear research. Ten years previously, however, it was France that led the
world in research on the possible liberation and utilization of atomic energy.
Only two days after the liberation of Paris Fr´ed´ eric was appointed director of
the National Centre for Scientific Research. He was promoted to the rank of
Commander of the Legion of Honour, decorated with the Croix de Guerre
and elected to the Paris Academy. Then President de Gaulle named the
Joliots as members of the French Atomic Energy Commission. Fr´ed´ eric, the
High Commissioner, stated that ‘French science does not want to have anything
to do with atomic research except for peace. All our efforts are being
utilized in the development of this tremendous energy for the advancement
of humanity.’ Ir `ene, speaking of her mother, said that, like Pierre Curie, she
had strongly believed that science should resolve human problems in the
sense of making happier lives possible. ‘Its use for destruction seemed to her
a desecration’, she continued, ‘In her eyes no political consideration would
have justified the use of the atomic bomb.’
In the same year of 1946 Ir `ene was appointed director of the Radium
Institute, founded by her mother and endowed by Carnegie. She was now
forty-nine years old and failing in health, but nothing could keep her away
from her work. Chadwick has given a picture of her at this time:
her parents were both persons of strong and independent mind, and
Mme. Joliot-Curie inherited much of her character as well as her
scientific genius. She knew her mind and spoke it, sometimes perhaps
with devastating frankness, but her remarks were informed with such
regard for scientific truth and with such conspicuous sincerity that
they commanded the greatest respect in all circumstances. In all her
work, whether in the laboratory, in discussion or in committee, she
set herself the highest standard and she was most conscientious in the
fulfilment of any duties she undertook.
In 1949 Ir `ene proudly watched Fr´ed´ eric direct the construction and
successful demonstration of France’s first atomic pile. By now, however,
the war-time alliance with the Soviet Union was over, and their outspoken
left-wing views were creating problems. The Joliots supported uncritically
the policies of Stalin, while being highly critical of the USA. On a visit to
America during the Cold War, Ir `ene was briefly detained on Ellis Island;
when she applied for membership of the American Chemical Society, her
application was rejected. In 1950, French science was shocked when Fr´ed´ eric
was removed from his post on the Atomic Energy Commission. Ir `ene served
Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) 335
her full term of five years but was not included in the reorganization in
1951. Time and again she denounced scientific secrecy and appealed for
the free circulation of scientific ideas and discoveries. In the 1950s she had
to undergo surgery repeatedly; her health was deteriorating rapidly. ‘I’m
getting lazy’, she told her friends, but she was wasting away from too much
radiation, contracted during her war work. On March 17, 1956 she died of
leukaemia in the hospital named after her parents. So controversial were
the Joliots that Ir `ene, the second most famous French woman scientist, was
given a state funeral only after heated debate.
Fr´ed´ eric’s devotion to science was accompanied by an outspoken dislike
of many traditional institutions (clerical and political) and a deep concern
for world peace. He was first president of the World Federation of
Scientific Workers and of the World Council for Peace. He also played
an active part in the formation of the Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization and the Atomic Energy Commission of the United Nations.
Fr´ed´ eric succeeded Ir `ene at the Sorbonne, while keeping his chair at the
Coll`ege de France, but on August 14, 1958 he too succumbed to radiation
sickness. He was also given a state funeral and was buried at Sceaux, next
to the grave of Ir `ene. Various memorials were dedicated to his memory in
France; the Soviet Union named one of its warships after him, also a mountain
that had just been climbed for the first time and a crater on the far side
of the moon, which had been observed by one of its satellites.
Enrico Fermi (1901–1954)
The Fermis came from a rich agricultural region near Piacenza, in the Po
valley of northern Italy. Stefano Fermi, Enrico’s grandfather, was the first
member of the family not to work the soil with his own hands. He had
obtained a modest position in the service of the duke of Parma, one of
a number of minor princes who ruled in the Po valley after Napoleon’s
downfall. The reactionary princelings were under strong Austrian influence,
but they seem to have been close to their subjects. At his death in 1905 at
the age of eighty-seven, Stefano owned a small house and some land in
Caorso, near Piacenza. His wife Giulia (n ´ee Beronzi) was an example of
the type of Italian countrywoman often described by nineteenth-century
Italian novelists. With a large family, she worked long hours in the home
and possessed all the domestic virtues. She could read but not write. She
was devoted to the church and brought up her children in the Catholic faith;
only Alberto, Enrico’s father, left it.
336 From de Broglie to Fermi
Alberto Fermi, the second son of Stefano, was born at Borgonure,
near Piacenza, in 1857. Probably he attended one of the technical high
schools which were instituted shortly after the unification of Italy. These
were intended to prepare young people of limited means for useful careers.
Certain private railway companies later taken over by the state employed
him in various supervisory and administrative capacities until, by the time
he retired in 1921, he was a divisional chief inspector of the Italian State
Railways. His wife Ida (n ´ee de Gattis) was born in the Adriatic city of Bari
in 1871. She was the daughter of an army officer and had studied electrical
engineering at university, after which she taught in elementary schools until
she married. She was fourteen years younger than her husband, unusually
intelligent and able. They were living in Rome when their three children
were born in successive years: Maria in 1899, then Giulio and finally Enrico,
on September 29, 1901.
As babies, all three were sent out to nurse in the country. Because
of his delicate health, Enrico did not return home until he was two and a
half years old. His mother taught him to read and write; soon he began to
show an unusual mathematical ability and a prodigious memory. At the
Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) 337
local high schools, first the ginnasio for five years, then the liceo for two
more, he was much the best pupil of his year, with an excellent scholastic
record. Because of the habits of order and discipline he had learned from his
mother, he enjoyed considerable free time, most of which he seems to have
devoted to scientific studies. In 1915 his parents were devastated when their
eldest son Giulio died in hospital before a minor operation.
While Enrico received encouragement in his studies from members
of the family, the influence of a colleague of his father’s, Adolfo Amidei,
was more important. Amidei lent him books on mathematics and, after
becoming convinced that he was a prodigy, advised him to apply to enter
the highly selective Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, the best place in the
country for physics. Fermi spent four years in Pisa studying the classics of
physics, works that he could quote almost verbatim years later. Because
he knew some French and German, he could also read the latest papers on
the subject. His exceptional abilities were soon recognized; he understood
the old quantum theory better than anyone else in Italy at the time. He also
proved competent in experimental work, although the physics laboratory of
the university was in a deplorable state of neglect. In 1922 Fermi obtained his
doctorate, and the following year wrote his first important research paper,
showing that, in the vicinity of a world line, space-time is Euclidean. This
impressed Tullio Levi-Civit` a, the main Italian relativist.
The post-doctoral career of a young scientist in Italy at this time often
began by his becoming an assistant to a professor and then obtaining the
libera docenza, the right to give lectures, equivalent to the venia legendi.
After a few years in this lowly state, the next stage was to apply for a professorship
in a national competition called a concorso; usually three of the
candidates were chosen and assigned to vacancies at different universities.
The candidates submitted publications, but influence was important too.
Subsequent promotion was usually by seniority, from one university to a
better. The ultimate accolade was election to the venerable Accademia dei
Lincei.
After Mussolini’s march on Rome in 1922, Fermi considered the possibility
of emigrating, but first he needed to establish a reputation outside
Italy. He won a fellowship for post-doctoral study in natural sciences offered
by the Italian Ministry of Education and used it to spend a year inGo¨ ttingen,
at the Institute where Born was professor of theoretical physics. Despite
receiving a warm welcome from the Borns, he did not enjoy the experience,
feeling isolated and foreign. The faculty, he found, assumed an attitude of
omniscience while, despite his quite adequate knowledge of German, he was
338 From de Broglie to Fermi
not welcomed into the group around Heisenberg and Pauli. Although they
became more friendly later, it meant that his year at the Georgia Augusta
was not as valuable as it might have been. When he returned from Germany
Fermi obtained a temporary position as assistant to Senator Orso Mario
Corbino, the senior physicist at the University of Rome. He was then
awarded a three-month fellowship from the International Education Board
to visit Leiden and work with Ehrenfest in 1924.
From his student years onwards Fermi used to return to the family
home whenever he could. His mother never really got over the loss of her
eldest son; she died in 1924, and his father died three years later. That left
only Enrico’s sister Maria; they lived together until 1928, when Enrico married.
His bride was Laura Capon, the daughter of a highly cultured and
respected family of non-observant Jews; her father was an admiral in the
Italian navy.
Fermi was obliged to publish in Italian, but he also published the
same work in German translation, to make it more accessible. Later, after
the Nazis had come to power, he published in English instead. The senior
Italian physicists had agreed on a scheme to provide junior positions for
their able youngsters, which resulted in Fermi going to Florence. When a
chair fell vacant at the University of Cagliari in Sardinia, Fermi applied for
it but was unsuccessful. However, the following year he entered a concorso,
which resulted in him being appointed professor of theoretical physics at
the University of Rome, a far more important post.
Now twenty-six, Fermi was determined to do all he could to modernize
the study of physics in Italy. He gave semi-popular lectures at the
annual meetings of the Italian Society for the Advancement of Science. At
the university the seminar he ran attracted many young physicists. One of
them was Ettore Majorana, a theoretician of outstanding ability, who later
mysteriously disappeared; he was excessively modest about his research
but the little he published has proved to be of great importance. Fermi also
wrote an Introduzione alla fisica atomica, which was published in 1928, and
with Corbino he set about strengthening the experimental side of physics
in Rome. Unfortunately Fermi antagonized the professor in charge of that
side, who had the power to block any reform. In 1929 Fermi was the only
physicist appointed to the new Accademia d’Italia, created by Mussolini to
replace the Lincei which he believed was too much a focus of opposition to
fascism. The appointment gave Fermi the title of Excellency and put him in
a better position to obtain support for his research, but the process of making
university appointments remained under the control of the old guard.
Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) 339
Fermi crossed the Atlantic for the first time during the summer of
1930, to collaborate with Ehrenfest in teaching during a summer school at
the University of Michigan. Someone who met him then described him as
‘a very young and pleasant little Italian, with unending good humour, and
a brilliant and clear method of presenting what he has to present in terrible
English’. This was such a success that he returned twice more and increasingly
came to appreciate the American way of life. On one such visit he
bought a car, named it ‘the flying tortoise’ and, when it broke down, Fermi,
who was a capable mechanic, repaired it in a garage so efficiently that the
manager offered him a job on the spot. In the summer of 1934 he went on
a lecture tour of South America sponsored by the Italian government, stopping
in London on the way back to report on the latest research of his team
in Rome at an international physics conference. They had been bombarding
all kinds of elements with neutrons and had found some puzzling results
in the case of uranium. The suggestion was made at the time that the uranium
nucleus was being split, but other interpretations seemed much more
likely. Some believe that this experimental work was the cause of the cancer
which led to Fermi’s death twenty years later.
By 1937 Fermi’s influence in Italy was on the wane. He was unsurprised
to find that he had not been chosen to succeed Corbino in Rome and
began to think more and more seriously about the possibility of emigrating
to the USA. The subjugation of Austria by Germany two years later was a
sign that Italy was powerless to stand in Hitler’s way. In 1938 Mussolini,
having signed the Italian–German alliance, promulgated the Manifesto della
razza, on the German model, which classified the Jews as aliens. The
racial laws did not affect Fermi or his two children directly, but his wife’s
family was Jewish and it was not clear what the consequences would be
for her.
Fermi had previously received offers of positions from several American
universities and he now decided that the time had come to follow these
up. Before long he had accepted an appointment to a chair at Columbia University
in New York City. Only a few people knew that he was leaving Italy
permanently; in order to avoid trouble with the fascist authorities it was necessary
for him to pretend that it was just another visit to America. Towards
the end of the year, he was awarded the Nobel prize in physics ‘for his
demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by
neutron radiation, and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought
about by slow neutrons’. Shortly afterwards the family left for Stockholm
to attend the Nobel ceremonies and then went to Copenhagen to spend a
340 From de Broglie to Fermi
few days with Bohr, before sailing for New York. Once Fermi had made a
decision he never looked back.
Like his father, Fermi’s nature was that of a loyal and efficient public
servant. In his last years in Italy he had served in a few high-level advisory
posts in the Ministry of Education and as consultant for a few industrial
firms, but he avoided controversy. His interests outside science were rather
limited. Physically he was strong and had plenty of stamina. He was, after
all, of peasant stock. He would challenge younger physicists to play tennis
in the heat of a New York summer day and, after an exhausting hour or
so under the broiling sun, would remark on their lack of vigour. When he
lectured, he did so with a strong Italian accent.
In 1939 Fermi was at the midpoint of his career and about to become
involved in events he could hardly have foreseen. The news of the discovery
of nuclear fission, brought to America by Bohr, reached him soon after
he had landed in New York. Then Germany invaded Poland and the Second
WorldWar began, although the USA was not a participant until later. At first
the development of radar had top priority among leading scientific administrators
in the USA; research into atomic energy received no more than the
ordinary level of support. Fermi was concerned about this and, together with
the ´emigr´e Hungarian physicists Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner, drafted an
important letter for Einstein to send to President Roosevelt pointing out
the dangerous military potentialities offered by nuclear fission and warning
him that Germany might be developing these weapons. This letter helped
to initiate the American efforts that eventually produced the nuclear reactor
and the fission bomb. Until there was a change of research priorities, a
large proportion of the physicists involved in America’s earliest efforts to
release nuclear energy came from Europe, and Fermi was one of them.
The first step was to try to produce a chain reaction. Work on this
project was concentrated in Chicago but ironically Fermi, being an enemy
alien, was confined to New York, and his mail was subject to censorship.
However, in 1942 Roosevelt announced that Italians would no longer be
considered enemy aliens, and Fermi was able to join the other scientists
working in Chicago, although his mail was still being censored. One of the
other physicists involved described how Fermi played a leading part in the
work:
Fermi possessed a sure way of starting off in the right direction, of
setting aside the irrelevances, of seizing all the essentials and
proceeding to the core of the matter. The whole process of wresting
Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) 341
from nature her secrets was for Fermi an exciting sport which he
entered into with supreme confidence and great zest. No task was too
menial if it sped him towards his goal. He thoroughly enjoyed the
whole of the enterprise. The piling of the graphite bricks, the running
with the short-lived rhodium foils, and the merry clicking of the
Geiger counter which effected the measurement, all was done with
great energy and with obvious pleasure, but by the end of the day, in
accordance with his plan, the results were neatly compiled, their
significance assessed, and the progress measured, so that early in the
morning of the following day the next step could begin.
It was a feature of the Fermi approach never to waste time – to keep
things as simple as possible, never to construct more elaborately or to measure
with more care than was required by the task at hand. In such matters
his judgement was unerring. In this way, step by step, the work sped forwards
until, in less than four short years, Fermi had reached his goal. A
huge pile of graphite and uranium had arisen in the football stadium of the
University of Chicago. When Fermi stood before that silent monster, he
was its acknowledged master. Whatever he commanded it obeyed. When
he called for it to come alive and pour forth its neutrons, it responded with
remarkable alacrity; and when at his command it quietened down again, it
had become clear to all who watched that Fermi had indeed unlocked the
door to the neutron. Early in the afternoon of December 2, 1942, the chain
reaction was demonstrated successfully.
Soon further research on the project was transferred to the Los Alamos
National Laboratory, where Fermi became a sort of oracle to any physicist in
trouble, as was the ´emigr´e Hungarian mathematician von Neumann. Three
years later the war in Europe was over, and the race to develop the atomic
bomb before the Germans could do so had been won decisively. Although
some of the other physicists on the project remained at Los Alamos, Fermi
decided to return to normal academic work. He accepted the offer of a professorship
at the University of Chicago, which was developing a promising
science programme. The teaching aspect of the position appealed to
him very much, as did the experimental facilities at the Argonne National
Laboratory, including the powerful cyclotron. He served as president of the
American Physical Society and helped to defend Oppenheimer at the notorious
security-clearance hearing, of which more later.
Fermi liked to spend the summer away from the university, but at first
only within the USA. It was not until 1949 that he returned to Europe and,
342 From de Broglie to Fermi
after attending some important conferences, went back to his homeland for
the first time since 1938. The new generation of physicists who had emerged
in Italy after his departure saw and heard the almost-legendary Fermi.
In the summer of 1954 he made what proved to be his last visit to
Europe. His health was failing; an insidious illness had attacked him and
resisted diagnosis. With great strength of will he tried to carry on as before,
but, when the disease was finally diagnosed, it proved to be incurable, caused
by a malignant stomach tumour. He died on November 28, 1954 in Chicago,
just after his fifty-third birthday, survived by his wife Laura and their two
children. There is a memorial in the Florentine church of Santa Croce, alongside
those in honour of other great Italian scientists.