82 research outputs found
The invisible businessman: Nuclear physics, patenting practices,and trading activities in the 1930s
In the 1930s the production of patents for the protection of intellectual rights became central to the research activities of Enrico Fermi and his group, consistently with a research policy emerging within the Italian Fascist Regime. Behind their work was an international network consisting of businessmen, industrialists, and multinationals who helped them patent their method for the production of artificial radioactive elements and to promote its industrial exploitation. The lack of research funding combined with a more aggressive foreign policy of the regime made it impossible for the group to continue these activities in Rome, and in 1938 the promulgation
of racial laws forced them to migrate abroad
Majorana: from atomic and molecular, to nuclear physics
In the centennial of Ettore Majorana's birth (1906-1938?), we re-examine some
aspects of his fundamental scientific production in atomic and molecular
physics, including a not well known short communication. There, Majorana
critically discusses Fermi's solution of the celebrated Thomas-Fermi equation
for electron screening in atoms and positive ions. We argue that some of
Majorana's seminal contributions in molecular physics already prelude to the
idea of exchange interactions (or Heisenberg-Majorana forces) in his later
workson theoretical nuclear physics. In all his papers, he tended to emphasize
the symmetries at the basis of a physical problem, as well as the limitations,
rather than the advantages, of the approximations of the method employed.Comment: to appear in Found. Phy
Discovery of the Isotopes with 11 <= Z <= 19
A total of 194 isotopes with 11 Z 19 have been identified to
date. The discovery of these isotopes which includes the observation of unbound
nuclei, is discussed. For each isotope a brief summary of the first refereed
publication, including the production and identification method, is presented.Comment: to be pubslihed in At. Data Nucl. Data Table
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