In this lecture, held at MIT on January 13, 1977, Victor Weisskopf discusses his experiences as a physicist. Subjects include: Wolfgang Pauli’s character and the Pauli effect; Weisskopf’s early career path and his struggle as a Jewish German citizen; Efforts of scientists like Leo Szilard and Max von Laue to find jobs and help Jewish scientists; Nuclear fission and how it came to accepted and explored by scientists in the US; Secrecy surrounding the Los Alamos Mission; Development of Los Alamos Lab site and quality of life there; Studying plutonium; His experiences before, during, and after The Trinity Test; Health concerns after visiting the Trinity Test site; Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the end of his talk, Weisskopf presents a slideshow about CERN and takes questions from the audience.
This video recording contains the first lecture of two in the Quantum Mechanics series, held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1970s. The series was organized by Theodore Ducas, (Professor of Physics emeritus, Wellesley College). The series titles are as follows: Part 1: “My Life as a Physicist,” Victor Weisskopf, January 13, 1977; Part 2: “My Relation to the Early Quantum Mechanics,” Hans Bethe, November 21, 1977.
The video forms a part of the Niels Bohr Library & Archives Collections, AV 2022-2704. Please contact nbl@aip.org if you wish to use or quote.
Audio and video quality decrease at a few points in the video.
A catalog record can be found here:
libserv.aip.org/ipac20/ipac.j...
Acknowledgments by Theodore Ducas.