The Discovery of Subatomic Particles

by Steven Weinberg

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In this absorbing commentary on the discovery of the atom's constituents, Steven Weinberg accomplishes a brilliant fusion of history and science. This is in effect two books, cleverly interwoven. One is an account of a sequence of key events in the physics of the twentieth century, events that led to the discoveries of the electron, proton and neutron. The other is an introduction to those fundamentals of classical physics that played crucial roles in these discoveries. Physical concepts are show more introduced where needed to understand the historical story, and each new concept builds on physics already explained. Throughout the book, connections are shown between the historic discoveries of subatomic particles and work today at the frontiers of physics. A final chapter describes the discoveries of new elementary particles up to the present day. show less

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2 reviews
Nobel winner's authoritative "physics history for poets" effort, with quantitative precision and metric units.
This entry is for two different books. "The Discovery of Subatomic Particles" was published by Scientific American and has gorgeous illustrations. "The Discovery of Subatomic Particles: Revised Edition" was published by Cambridge University Press in 2003 and has virtually no illustrations.

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Born in New York City, Steven Weinberg was a high school and college classmate of Sheldon Glashow; both attended the Bronx High School of Science and Cornell University. Although Weinberg has made contributions as a theoretical physicist in cosmology, quantum scattering, and the quantum theory of gravitation, he is most widely known for his work show more with Sheldon Glashow and Abdus Salam, with whom he shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics. Weinberg received a share of this honor for his formulation of the theory that unifies the relationship between the weak force and the electromagnetic force, including the capability to predict the weak neutral current. After receiving a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1957, Weinberg held postdoctoral positions at Columbia University from 1957 to 1959, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory from 1959 to 1960, the University of California at Berkeley from 1960 to 1966, Harvard University from 1966 to 1967, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1967 to 1969. He is married to a law professor, and they have one daughter. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

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Common Knowledge

Canonical title
The Discovery of Subatomic Particles
Original publication date
1983

Classifications

Genres
Science & Nature, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, History
DDC/MDS
539.7Natural sciences & mathematicsPhysicsModern physicsAtomic and nuclear physics
LCC
QC793.2 .W44SciencePhysicsPhysicsAtomic energy.Elementary particle physics
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265
Popularity
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Reviews
2
Rating
(4.13)
Languages
7 — Dutch, English, German, Italian, Romanian, Spanish, Turkish
Media
Paper
ISBNs
13
UPCs
1
ASINs
4