Hans Bethe
Nuclear physicist
Died when: 98 years 247 days (1184 months)Star Sign: Cancer
Hans Albrecht Bethe (German pronunciation: ['hans 'be?t?];July 2, 1906 – March 6, 2005) was a German-American theoretical physicist who made major contributions to nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum electrodynamics, and solid-state physics, and who won the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis.
For most of his career, Bethe was a professor at Cornell University.During World War II, he was head of the Theoretical Division at the secret Los Alamos laboratory that developed the first atomic bombs.
There he played a key role in calculating the critical mass of the weapons and developing the theory behind the implosion method used in both the Trinity test and the "Fat Man" weapon dropped on Nagasaki in August 1945.
After the war, Bethe also played an important role in the development of the hydrogen bomb, although he had originally joined the project with the hope of proving it could not be made.
Bethe later campaigned with Albert Einstein and the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists against nuclear testing and the nuclear arms race.
He helped persuade the Kennedy and Nixon administrations to sign, respectively, the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (SALT I).
His scientific research never ceased and he was publishing papers well into his nineties, making him one of the few scientists to have published at least one major paper in his field during every decade of his career, which in Bethe's case spanned nearly seventy years.
Freeman Dyson, once his doctoral student, called him the "supreme problem-solver of the 20th century".
Related People
.jpg?width=300)
Nuclear physicist
Nuclear physicist
Nuclear physicist