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Article

Problems of nuclear structure

JUL 01, 1961
The Retiring Presidential Address of the American Physical Society Delivered on February 2, 1961, at the APS Meeting in New York City
Victor F. Weisskopf

Only six‐and‐a‐half years ago an international conference on nuclear physics was held in Glasgow in which both the physics of elementary particles and the physics of nuclear structure were discussed. It was the last conference in which these two fields of physics were considered as one and the same. Since then, nuclear physics has split into two definite branches, one dealing with the nature and the properties of elementary particles and the other dealing with the structure and the dynamics of atomic nuclei. Today these two fields are as far apart as solid‐state physics and nuclear physics. The specialists in one field know very little about what is going on in the other field. This is a very deplorable state of affairs from the point of view of the specialists, since both fields are full of most exciting developments.

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References

  1. 1. Derrick, Mustard, and Blatt, Phys. Rev. Letters 8, 69 (1961).https://doi.org/PRLTAO

  2. 2. E. E. Salpeter, Annals of Physics 11, 393 (1960).https://doi.org/ANPYA2

  3. 3. n is counted such that it is never larger than half the occupation of a shell. If a shell is more than half occupied, n is the number of holes.

  4. 4. B. Cohen, Phys. Rev. 105, 1549 (1957).https://doi.org/PHRVAO

  5. 5. J. S. Blair, G. W. Farwell, and D. K. McDaniels, Nucl. Phys. 17, 641 (1960); https://doi.org/NUPHA7
    M. Crut and N. S. Wall, Phys. Rev. Letters 3, 520 (1960).https://doi.org/PRLTAO

  6. 6. See, for example, Fallieros and Farrell, Phys. Rev. 116, 660 (1960); https://doi.org/PHRVAO
    Mottelson’s contribution, Kingston Conference on Nuclear Structure, 1960.

  7. 7. H. Cranwell, R. Helm, H. Kendall, J. Oeser, and M. Yearian (to be published).

More about the authors

Victor F. Weisskopf, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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This Content Appeared In
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Volume 14, Number 7

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