Edward Teller - University and the Eötvös prizes (12/147) скачать в хорошем качестве

Edward Teller - University and the Eötvös prizes (12/147)

To listen to more of Edward Teller’s stories, go to the playlist:    • Edward Teller (Scientist)   Hungarian-American physicist, Edward Teller (1908-2003), helped to develop the atomic bomb and provided the theoretical framework for the hydrogen bomb. He remained a staunch advocate of nuclear power, calling for the development of advanced thermonuclear weapons. [Listener: John H. Nuckolls] TRANSCRIPT: I wanted to go to stu-study mathematics. My father disagreed- As a mathematician you never will get a job in Hungary, you must do something more practical. After a lot of discussion, we settled on chemistry. But that was the second question, where? My mother wanted me to stay at home. My father thought I'd better go to a good university abroad. Compromise: I got my final examination done in June 1925. For the fourth semester that started earlier in Hungary than in Germany, I stay in the technical high school in Hungary. Then, by New Year, with the first term over, I go to a good university in Germany. That's what happened and in that period I had one not so little challenge which had a very agreeable and fortunate outcome, that was the competition in physics and mathematics for a prize named after a famous Hungarian physicist by the name of Eötvös. I even want to tell you why he was famous. He looked into Galileo's observation that all objects fall in an entirely similar way. A heavy one no farther than a light one, if you eliminate resistance of air or whatever. This, Galileo observed. This, Eötvös, quite a few years ago, measured with very, very great accuracy and this turned out to be the foundation of Einstein's second great discovery, general relativity, which essentially says: if you put yourself and a falling object in a cage and you fall together, then you don't notice at all that there is gravitation. And that is a way- the way how to approach the rules of gravitation. At any rate, the prize was named after Eötvös, and the mathematics prize was divided by three of us- between three of us. One of them was my good friend, Tisza, about whom I have much more to tell later. The physics prize I won alone.