Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T05:04:42.904Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

17.—Remarks on the Prehistory of the Discovery of Slow Neutrons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2012

Maurice Goldhaber
Maurice Goldhaber
Affiliation:
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Segrè in his recent book [1] on Fermi gives an interesting account of the discovery of slow neutrons at the Institute of Physics of the University of Rome on October 22, 1934. He quotes (p. 80) a statement Fermi made many years later in a conversation with S. Chandrasekhar on the process of discovery in physics:

‘I will tell you how I came to make the discovery which I suppose is the most important one I have made. We were working very hard on the neutron-induced radioactivity and the results we were obtaining made no sense. One day, as I came to the laboratory, it occurred to me that I should examine the effect of placing a piece of lead before the incident neutrons. Instead of my usual custom, I took great pains to have the piece of lead precisely machined.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Section A: Mathematics , Volume 70 , 1972 , pp. 191 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1972

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References to Literature

[1]Segrè, E., Enrico Fermi: Physicist, 1970. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
[2] See Fermi, E., Collected Papers, II, p. 926, footnote 4, 1965. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
[3] See, e.g., Shankland's, R. S. remarks in his review of Nucl. Energy, 106: Experimental Neutron Thermalization (by Egelstaff, P. A. and Poole, M. J., 1969, New York: Pergamon Press) in Physics Today, May 1971, p. 53.Google Scholar
[4]Lea, D. E., 1934. Nature, Lond., 133, 24.Google Scholar
[5]Chadwick, J. and Goldhaber, M., 1934. Nature, Lond., 134, 237.Google Scholar
[6]Bethe, H. and Peierls, R., 1935. Proc. Roy. Soc, A, 148, 146.Google Scholar
[7]Fermi, E., Amaldi, E., Pontecorvo, B., Rasetti, F. and Segrè, E., 1934. Rie. Sci., 5, 282. [(P)reprints were an ingenious innovation of the Fermi school; they were preprints rapidly produced in the format of reprints from Ric. Sci. (see ref. 1, p. 81).]Google Scholar
[8]Lea, D. E., 1935. Proc. Roy. Soc., A, 150, 653–4.Google Scholar