Hans Bethe

Claimed and In Progress by Scott Millson

The life and work of renowned German nuclear physicist, Hans Bethe

Compiled by Scott Millson on December 5, 2015

Personal Life

Early Life and Family

Hans Albrecht Bethe was born on July 2, 1906 in Strasbourg, Germany. He grew up with his Mother and his Father, who was a physiologist. His Father taught in academia and when Hans was still very young, his Father accepted a teaching position at the University of Kiel. During his tenure at this school, Hans was privately taught along with a handful of other children. However, in 1916, he began attending Goethe-Gymnasium in Frankfurt, Germany. Unfortunately his time here was short lived as he contracted Tuberculosis within the year. Quickly becoming very sick, he was sent to away to a nearby city until he was able to fully recover. Once healthy again, he continued his schooling at several different schools until eventually finishing out secondary school at Goethe-Gymnasium again.

Academic Life

By 1924, Bethe was ready to further his education by attending a University; the University of Frankfurt, the same school where his Father once taught. His choice in major was decided by a process of elimination based upon his own perceived poor level of instruction in the mathematics and the physics departments. So, he majored in Chemistry. He grew to become friends with a certain professor who must have seen Bethe's potential in physics as he recommended he attended a school with a better theoretical physics department. Bethe listened to this advice and accepted this professor's specific recommendation to attend the University of Munich and study under Arnold Sommerfeld.

Bethe went on to closely follow the work of Sommerfeld over the next several years as Bethe eventually received his PhD under Sommerfeld's slight assistance.

Over the next 5 years, Bethe moved from place to place while interning and working for several different companies. He worked on subjects from writing articles for Sommerfeld to researching and discovering new equations in England while researching with several renowned physicists.

Bethe's own life in academia began in 1932 when he accepted an assistant professor job at the University of Tübingen. He then moved on to work for the University of Manchester in 1933, for the University of Bristol in 1934, and finally for Cornell University in 1935. He was one of several of the most advanced physicists in the world at Cornell and together he helped research take giant leaps in nuclear physics. He worked at Cornell until 1941 when he began his work on the Manhattan Project.

Scientific Contributions

Early Work

During his time at Cornell University, Bethe was able to publish three advanced articles which summarized all that was known about nuclear physics at the time. These research papers became known as Bethe's Bible. Following this publication, Bethe's name began to carry much more general recognition as he was invited to a very exclusive physics convention put on by the Carnegie Institute and George Washington University. With the instrumental help of Bethe, by the end of the conference, these physicist were able to come up with a series of nuclear reactions to explain how the sun shines. Following the conference, Bethe felt there was still room for improvement in the knowledge of these reactions, so he continued to research them until he discovered the Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen (CNO) Cycle.

References

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