A Thumbnail History of Electronics
Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (1844 - 1906) was born and
educated in Vienna, and held positions at Vienna, Graz, Munich and Leipzig.
Boltzmann’s work in statistical mechanics used the concepts of probability to
determine physical properties and contributed to the development of quantum mechanics. His
work was met with hostility by many scientists: depressed and ill, Boltzmann committed
suicide.
until his retirement in 1928. In 1900 he
"guessed" the correct form for the blackbody radiation function and attempted to
justify the formula by assuming that radiation consists of quanta of energy. Using the
formula, Planck was able to deduce the value of h, the Boltzmann constant k,
Avogadro’s number and the charge of the electron; he received the Nobel Prize in
1918. Plank, whose career was marked by its devotion to the highest ideals, died broken by
a series of personal tragedies: his elder son was killed in World War I, his daughters
both died in childbirth in the next decade, and his second son was implicated in the plot
against Hitler and executed horribly by the Gestapo in 1945.
(Prince)
Louis-Victor de Broglie (1892-1987) and his
elder brother, members of the French nobility, broke with family tradition and became
physicists. His interest in conceptual problems in physics led to a doctoral thesis which
evoked the astonishment and skepticism of the examining committee. He proposed that
electrons had wave properties; this duality of matter and waves offered an explanation of
the restricted motion of electrons around atomic nuclei. A copy of his thesis reached
Einstein, whose enthusiastic response led in turn to Schrödinger’s invention of wave
mechanics.
first in the Vatican and, later, in Ireland. Schrödinger’s
theory replaced the definite atomic particles of classical theory with an equation for a
wave function which is related to the probability of physical events. Oddly, Schrödinger
was unhappy with his own invention and spent great effort in formulating objections to his
theory. Schrödinger was a widely talented individual who not only wrote popularizations
of science, but also contributed works on genetic structure, ancient Greek philosophy, and
the history and philosophy of science.
Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), was the son of an
Italian railroad employee. He received his doctorate from the University of Pisa at age
21. In 1926 he developed the statistical method which predicts the behavior of electrons
and, shortly thereafter, was made a full professor at the University of Rome at age 26. In
1938, he left Italy with his family to receive the Nobel Prize and did not return; his
known distaste for the Fascist regime and the fact that his wife was Jewish had led to
vicious attacks in the rightist press. Fermi emigrated to the United States where, as part
of the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago, he led the team that achieved the
first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction
P.A.M. Dirac (1902-1984) received
a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Bristol, England, but failing to
find work, went on to graduate study in Physics. He became one of the founders of quantum
mechanics, predicted the existence of the positron, developed the theory of the spinning
electron and introduced the quantum theory of radiation. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in
1933.
Felix Bloch (1905-1983) was at the University of
Leipzig in 1928 when his doctoral thesis provided the theory of electrons in lattices
which is the basis for the quantum theory of electrical conduction. Bloch was a Swiss Jew
who left Germany and emigrated to the United States when Hitler came to power. He worked
on the Manhattan Project during World War II. In 1952 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for
his work on nuclear magnetic resonance. Bloch has been called "the Father of
Solid-State Physics". In the Bloch theory, electrons exist as waves in the
solid lattice. Interference between the waves and the lattice results in the
exclusion of certain energy bands for the electrons in the solid.
(Sir) Rudolph Peierls (1907-1995),
the son of a Jewish businessman, was born and educated in Germany but sought a post in
Britain after Hitler came to power. He became a naturalized citizen and a professor of
Physics, first at Birmingham and later at Oxford. In 1929 Peierls conceived the theory of
positive carriers, electron defects or "holes", to explain the thermal and
electrical conductivities of semiconductors and their negative Hall coefficients. In 1940,
Peierls and Frisch alerted the British government of the possibility of producing an
atomic bomb. There was some initial security difficulties, created, oddly, because of
Peierls’ German background, but Peierls was eventually sent to work at Los Alamos.
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