The Joy of Discovery: Great Encounters Along the Way

207 Pages·2010·3.43 MB·English

by  Walter Thirring

The Joy of
Discovery
Great Encounters Along the Way
The Joy of
Discovery
Great Encounters Along the Way
Walter Thirring
University of Vienna, Austria & CERN, Switzerland
World Scientific
NEW JERSEY • LONDON • SINGAPORE • BEIJING • SHANGHAI • HONG KONG • TAIPEI • CHENNAI
Published by
World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore 596224
USA office: 27 Warren Street, Suite 401-402, Hackensack, NJ 07601
UK office: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This English edition is a translated version of the German edition Lust am Forschen. Lebensweg und
Begegnungen.
Copyright © 2008 Seifert Verlag GmbH, Wien.
THE JOY OF DISCOVERY
Great Encounters along the Way
Copyright © 2011 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval
system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher.
For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright
Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to
photocopy is not required from the publisher.
ISBN-13 978-981-4322-96-6
ISBN-10 981-4322-96-2
Typeset by Stallion Press
Email: [email protected]
Printed in Singapore.
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Dedicated to
my sons Klaus and Peter
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Contents
Preface ix
Family Background/Childhood (1927–1938) 1
The Thirrings 2
My Mother 5
My Brother 7
My Father 9
My Wife 15
Stolen Youth (1938–1945) 19
In the “United” Third Reich 19
In the Army 24
The Horrors of War 32
Training and Education (1945–1959) 35
The Theory of Relativity 39
Excursus on the special theory of relativity 41
Dublin and Glasgow (1949–1950) 47
At Glasgow University 51
Göttingen and Zürich (1950–1952) 56
The Essence of Matter 60
Berne (1952–1953) 69
Princeton (1953–1954) 73
Quantum Field Theory 82
Berne (1954–1956) 84
Curved Space 86
MIT and the University of Washington (1956–1958) 88
Excursus on Parity 91
Berne (1958–1959) 94
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The Joy of Discovery
Master Years (1959 and After) 101
Vienna (1959–1968) 101
Geneva (1968–1971) 111
Return to Vienna (1971) 123
Stability of Matter 123
Doing Physics with Walter By Elliott Lieb 134
Unforgettable Characters 136
Arnold Sommerfeld 137
Guido Beck 140
Felix Ehrenhaft 143
Contemporary Mathematics in Physics 148
The Erwin Schrödinger Institute 157
Entropy 164
Du holde Kunst, A Hymn to the Art of Music 171
The Computer 174
The Cardinal König Encounters 181
What has Scientific Research Achieved? 185
Picture Credits 189
Index of Names 191
Subject Index 195
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The days of your years are threescore years and ten;
and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,
yet is their strength labor and sorrow;
for it is soon cut off,
and we fly away.
(Psalm 90)
Preface
The 20th century was both a horrible as well as wonderful time. After
the insanity of the Nazi dictatorship, the voice of reason prevailed and
presented Central Europe with the longest period of peace in its his-
tory. As soon as the human spirit has the opportunity to grow and
develop, it will begin to notice the secrets of the world we live in. It
will hone its perception so that it can break down matter in an inter-
play of exactly balanced parts and let the firmament become a horde
of escaping galaxies. It uses all of this knowledge to improve itself and
its abilities until they reach immeasurable heights. And this not only
in the material sense where everything is constantly getting bigger and
faster, but also with regard to intellectual questions. The human spirit
developed ways to conduct calculations in fractions of a second which
would ordinarily take decades, and can store the information found in
entire libraries on chips the size of a trouser button. It is well on its way
to deciphering the secrets of life itself, and before we know it the
species homo sapiens will have undergone a metamorphosis.
As I have had the privilege not only to experience this turning point
firsthand, but also to get to know personally the main protagonists of
this development from Einstein to Hawking, I felt I had to tell this
story of successful human endeavor.
Of course, my memoir contains only my own point of view, or
rather snippets of thought that have gathered over time. I hope that
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