On Wheeler and fission
DOI: 10.1063/1.3273000
John Wheeler’s 1967 article on the mechanism of fission, which was recently reprinted (Physics Today, April 2009, page 35 ), provided insight into the history of that exciting time that could only be related by one who was there. However, two aspects of that history tend to get overlooked. First, the liquiddrop model of the nucleus was conceived not by Niels Bohr but by George Gamow in late 1928 just before he left Copenhagen for a visit to Cambridge; 1 he briefly described it in early 1929 in a discussion, held at the Royal Society in London, that was opened by Ernest Rutherford. 2 Second, the perturbation coefficients Bohr and Wheeler used for investigating the question of the fission barrier were different from those defined in their paper, and their equation for the configuration energy contains a misprint. 3 Wheeler’s fellow postdoc in Copenhagen, Milton Plesset, gave a detailed analysis of the Bohr and Wheeler calculation 4 (which they characterized as “straightforward”!); I have prepared an upper-undergraduate-level treatment of the calculation. 5
References
1. R. H. Stuewer, Perspect. Sci. 2, 76 (1994).
2. E. Rutherford et al., Proc. R. Soc. London A 123, 373 (1929).https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.1929.0074
3. R. D. Present, J. K. Knipp, Phys. Rev. 57, 751 (1940);https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.57.751
57, 1188 (1940).4. M. S. Plesset, Am. J. Phys. 9, 1 (1941).https://doi.org/10.1119/1.1991623
5. B. C. Reed, Eur. J. Phys. 30, 763 (2009).https://doi.org/10.1088/0143-0807/30/4/009
More about the authors
B. Cameron Reed, (reed@alma.edu) Alma College, Alma, Michigan, US .
