Hans Bethe Before I Knew Him - The Los Alamos Years

            This portrait of Professor Hans Bethe is displayed in Los Alamos. In those days, he was the head of the Manhattan Project's theoretical group. He was a Noble Prize winning physicist who determined the nuclear source of the sun's energy. The sun is mainly composed of hydrogen nuclei. Hans Bethe identified the process by which the sun synthesizes the elements of ascending atomic numbers greater than that of hydrogen. He showed it was based on a catalytic cycle involving nuclear elements up through carbon nuclei. I was fortunate to have him review my work in later years.

After I received my Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from M.I.T. in 1965, I worked for a company in a town near M.I.T.. The founder, Arthur Kantrowitz, was a Professor at Cornell, as was Hans Bethe. Hans came each month as a consultant. He reviewed significant work and gave his thoughts and recommendations. I presented work at Committee meetings for him to review. He was pleased with my group's results. I spoke with him again a few years later when he gave a lecture at The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. His lecture was about the creation of the elements above hydrogen in the sun that are observed in the discrete spectral lines in the sun's continuous light spectrum. The nuclear creation process involves a catalytic nuclear cycle from hydrogen up through carbon. That was the work for which he had received the Nobel Prize in Physics years earlier. Needless to say, it was a wonderful presentation. 

Afterwards, I went up to talk to him. I told him that I was struck with the similarities between his presentation and the work we were doing, that he had reviewed at AERL. He said “I was often struck by the very same thought.”

Needless to say, I was pleased, actually thrilled, that he had good memories of me.

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Taken on: August 18, 2017

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