Beta Decay [Series: Interscience Monographs And Texts In Physics And Astronomy, Volume Xvi]

Xiv, 394 Pp. Gray-Green Cloth Printed In Dark Green. First Printing. Near Fine, Previous Owner's Name. Dj With Slight Wear, Two Short Tears At Top Of Rear Panel. Remarkably Thorough Experimental And Theoretical History And Analysis. Definitive, For The Advanced Student And The Expert. Per Wikipedia, Chien-Shiung Wu (Chinese: 吳健雄; Pinyin: Wú Jiànxióng; Wade–Giles: Wu2 Chien4-Hsiung2; 1912 – 1997) Was A Chinese-American Particle And Experimental Physicist Who Made Significant Contributions In The Fields Of Nuclear And Particle Physics. Wu Worked On The Manhattan Project, Where She Helped Develop The Process For Separating Uranium Into Uranium-235 And Uranium-238 Isotopes By Gaseous Diffusion. She Is Best Known For Conducting The Wu Experiment, Which Proved That Parity Is Not Conserved. This Discovery Resulted In Her Colleagues Tsung-Dao Lee And Chen-Ning Yang Winning The 1957 Nobel Prize In Physics, While Wu Herself Was Awarded The Inaugural Wolf Prize In Physics In 1978. Her Expertise In Experimental Physics Evoked Comparisons To Marie Curie. Her Nicknames Include The "First Lady Of Physics", The "Chinese Madame Curie" And The "Queen Of Nuclear Research". After Work On The Manhattan Project During Wwii, Wu Accepted An Offer Of A Position As An Associate Research Professor At Columbia. She Would Remain At Columbia For The Rest Of Her Career, And Was First Named Associate Professor In 1952, Which Made Her The First Woman To Become A Tenured Physics Professor In University History. In November 1949, Wu Experimented With The Conclusions Of Einstein's Epr Thought Experiment, Which Called Quantum Entanglement "Spooky Action At A Distance". Wu Was The First To Establish The Phenomenon And Validity Of Entanglement Using Photons Through Observing Angular Correlation, As Her Result Confirmed Maurice Pryce And John Clive Ward's Calculations On The Correlation Of The Quantum Polarizations Of Two Photons Propagating In Opposite Directions. Specifically, The Experiment Carried Out By Wu Was The First Important Confirmation Of Quantum Results Relevant To A Pair Of Entangled Photons As Applicable To The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (Epr) Paradox. Her 1950 Letter To Physical Review Famously Identified Confirmation Of Wheeler's Ideas On Entanglement. Tsung-Dao Lee And Another Chinese Theoretical Physicist, Chen Ning Yang, Grew To Question A Hypothetical Law Of Elementary Particle Physics, The "Law Of Conservation Of Parity". Lee And Yang Worked Out A Pencil-And-Paper Design Of An Experiment For Testing Conservation Of Parity In The Laboratory. Because Of Her Expertise In Choosing And Then Working Out The Hardware Manufacture, Set-Up, And Laboratory Procedures, Wu Then Informed Lee That She Could Carry Out The Experiment. Wu Chose To Do This By Taking A Sample Of Radioactive Cobalt-60 And Cooling It To Cryogenic Temperatures With Liquid Gases. Cobalt-60 Is An Isotope That Decays By Beta Particle Emission, And Wu Was Also An Expert On Beta Decay. The Discovery Of Parity Violation Was A Major Contribution To Particle Physics And The Development Of The Standard Model. The Discovery Actually Set The Stage For The Development Of The Model, As The Model Relied On The Idea Of Symmetry Of Particles And Forces And How Particles Can Sometimes Break That Symmetry.The Wide Coverage Of Her Discovery Prompted The Discoverer Of Fission Otto Frisch To Mention That Those At Princeton Would Often Say That Her Experiment Was The Most Impactful Since The Michelson-Morley Experiment That Inspired Einstein's Theory Of Relativity. In December 1962, Wu Experimentally Demonstrated A Universal Form And More Accurate Version Of Fermi's Old Beta Decay Model, Confirming The Conserved Vector Current (Cvc) Hypothesis Of Richard Feynman And Murray Gell-Mann On The Road To The Standard Model.…