Herman Feshbach : what it meant to be a physicist in the twentieth century
Name
920473207-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
5.13 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
221b7e2bd4aa65d25c785f945fa86929
Author(s)
Becerra, Juana C
Advisor(s)
David Kaiser.
Alternative Title
What it meant to be a physicist in the twentieth century
Date Issued
2015
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
This thesis is a biographical snapshot of physicist Herman Feshbach (1917-2000). Herman Feshbach was a nuclear physics that spent over three-quarters of his life at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His life is a window through which I analyze the changes experienced by the physics community throughout World War II and the postwar era. The events that I narrate are centered in New York, where Feshbach's early life unfolds, and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Feshbach matured as a scientist. There are two recurring themes throughout this work.The first theme deals with the ways in which politics, wartime, and government funding place strains and provoke change in scientific practices. The second theme pertains to how scientists accommodate to the aforementioned strains, either through open political activism or changes within scientific institutions. Herman Feshbach's life is an excellent example of how these themes weave into each other, making the boundary between science and society more permeable and porous than it is usually presented.
Description
Thesis: S.B. in Science, Technology and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Physics, 2015.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 89-92).
Subjects
Physics.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
Persistent DSpace Link
