Look Who it Was Random video

Hans Bethe - Hoping high energy physics would be the key to nuclear forces (114/158)

1,211 views · Published 26 June 2017 · 2:12 · Indexed 26 October 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Science & Technology

Watch on YouTube

To hear more of Hans Bethe’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvgLyzTEmJk&list=PLVV0r6CmEsFyUDSroBQVEcbnNud7I9xom

German-born theoretical physicist Hans Bethe (1906-2005) was one of the first scientists to join the Manhattan Project, later strongly advocating nuclear disarmament. In 1967, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. [Listener: Sam Schweber; date recorded: 1996]

TRANSCRIPT: [SS] But while engaged in this high energy work, you still have a love for nuclear physics and in fact...

I do.

[SS] And it's low energy nuclear physics.

Yes. I was hoping that high energy physics and especially the investigation of the pi meson interaction with the nucleon would give us the key to nuclear forces. I was most interested in finding out what are the nuclear forces, and how are they related to the fundamental interaction between the pion and the nucleon. Well, theoretically the key paper was done not here, but by Goldberger and Chew showing that...

[SS] Chew and Low.

No, Chew and Low, that is correct, Goldberger came in a little later. By Chew and Low showing, well that essentially you could treat the nucleon non... as nonrelativistic and the pion as relativistic and you could get a good theory of the pion nucleon interaction in this manner, treating the nucleon nonrelativistically, and I got... was very interested in that theory and how that could give us the basis of a theory of nuclear forces.

More from this channel