The Scientific Odyssey

A discussion of the life and scientific work of Erwin Schrodinger.  Specific attention is paid to the "gedankenexperiment" known as "Schrodinger's Cat" and the implications for the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.

A discussion of the creation of the Standard Model including the work of Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg.

A discussion of the process of beta decay, the Fermi Interaction and the work of Lee and Yang, Wu and Leon Lederman.

In this episode, we follow the development of the strong force from Yukawa through to the work of Murray Gell-Mann and Georg Zweig and the first quark-gluon model of matter.

A discussion of the development fo renomalization to save quantum field theory from the problem of the various infinties that arise in it.  Particular focus is devoted to the work of Hans Bethe, Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger, Richard Feynamn, Freeman Dyson and Ernst Stueckelberg.

A discussion of the physics of creating a self-sustaining fission reaction and building the first atomic weapon.

Part #2 of the biography of Enrico Fermi tracing his work on developing nuclear energy technologies.

Part one of a biographical sketch of Italian physicist Enrico Fermi.  The episode discussed Fermi's childhood, education and Nobel Prize winning work prior to his fleeing to the United States.  Also discussed is the ride of the Italian Fascist party including personal accounts from Enrico and Laura Fermi.

A discussion of the developments in nuclear physics that led to the discovery of fission.  These include Francis Aston's development of the mass spectrometer, George Gamow, Neils Bohr and Charles Weisacker and the development of the Liquid-Drop Model of the nucleus, the work of Otto Hahn at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch in discovering nuclear fission and both H. G. Wells and Leo Szilard's prophetic predictions of the development of atomic weapons.

A discussion of both the theoretical and experimental work of Enrico Fermi in the field of nuclear physics.  Additional material on the invention of the cyclotron by Ernest O. Lawrence and the first creation of artificial radioactivity by Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie.

In this episode we discuss the development of the first quantum field theories including quantum electrodynamics for the electromagnetic interaction, quantum flavordynamics for the weak interaction and quantum chromodynamics for the strong interaction.  We also touch on the work of Enrico Fermi and Hideki Yukawa.

Part Two of the scientific biography of Paul Dirac.  This includes a discussion of the development of the Dirac Equation, work in quantum field theory, a theory of magnetic monopoles and the first ideas of string theory.

In this episode we take a look at the early life and education of engineer, mathematician and physicist Paul Dirac.

A discussion of the work of Paul Dirac to produce the relativistic wave equationand the discovery of anti-matter as he theorized by Carl David Anderson.

The final part of a three episode biography of Werner Heisenberg.  In this podcast, I focus on the life and work of the Nobel Prize winner from the time of the ride of the Nazis to power in Germany to his death in 1976.