Lawrence Bragg for "services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of x-rays (Nobel Prize page)." Apparently he was the youngest noble prize winner (he shared the nobel prize with his father) up to date at the age of 25. Bragg's Law is probably one of the most famous laws in physics which according to wiki, he derived it during his first year as a research student.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
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I'll support Bloch since Pt 9 from our 10 key ideas lecture was Bloch rocks!
ReplyDeleteWikipedia lists Humphry Davy as conducting one of the first studies in condensed matter physics.
I would mention Wilhelm Röntgen for the discovery of x-ray, although I suppose the work done in crystallography was later than him.
One could argue that Bragg's law is really an analogy to Snell's law. Although, one would also need to draw a similarity in the behaviour of light and matter.
Sidenote: Lawrence Bragg is an Australian
I very briefly brought him up in a previous post, but Linus Pauling definitely deserves recognition here. Although he might only just qualify, being more a chemist than a physicist!!
ReplyDeleteHis work was more related to the bonding in materials, but he also performed many x-ray diffraction experiments which helped determine crystal structure.
There's a brief biography of him here http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/lpbio/lpbio2.html from the Linus Pauling Institute. Not surprising from an institute that is named after him, it's very flattering!!!!
I find this divide between the chemists and the physicists quite perplexing...
ReplyDeleteAll pretty good contributions, but what about those who made it possible, i.e. Planck, Dirac, Fermi and those before them like Borh, Rutherford and Dalton. Without those people the field as we know it now would probably not exist.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think that we must consider the quantum physicist contributions here because the Bloch model is essentially solving the Hamiltonian of a crystal lattice—although this is pretty noteworthy, modern condensed matter would be nowhere without those who developed quantum theory and classical wave theory!
ReplyDeleteIn fact, perhaps the developers of classical field theory should be viewed as the 'fathers of modern physics', because of the ubiquity of field theory for describing the universe :).
Also, to help de-perplex you Ann: chemistry is essentially the simplified version of quantum that is usable in everyday life! I think the biggest divide comes from the origins of chemistry and physics (although one could argue that by definition chemistry is a 'field' of physics, no pun intended :) ): long before the idea of quantum physics came along, people were already modelling these effects using chemistry! And since many chemists spend their lives trying to synthesise compounds (and generally failing most times!), they can be allowed to get grumpy when some guy in the School of Maths and Physics takes credit for all the work! :)
ReplyDeleteSo although not all chemistry is as rigorously analysed as physics, I find it pretty interesting to think about the effects being modelled by non-mathematicians long before physics got to them (not by physics' fault, of course: those problems are really hard!).
Of course, you can always ask Dave what it's like to be a cross between a physicist and a chemist! :)
One could then argue that Maths is the grounds to all of this...
ReplyDeleteWhere would physics be if there was no established formalism for anyone to communicate their ideas?
Although this is true, the maths is just the framework for manipulating the ideas contained within these fields, rather than the description of the ideas themselves. So, while saying maths is the grounds to all of this may be a little far, I certainly agree that for the topic of the question, many mathematicians are very important figures in condensed matter by virtue of their analysis techniques.
ReplyDeleteBut really, a lot of chemistry is just quantum physics that is greatly simplified into a usable form! Just as molecular biology is very chemical in nature.
I think I saw a a poster about this on one of the office doors in the physics department. But the general joke is if it's one molecule, you're a physicist. Two, and you're a chemist. Three molecules, urgh! You're a biologist!!!
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