Jagdish Mehra
Indian-American physicist and historian of science born in Meerut, India on April 8, 1937. He came to the United States in 1957, and was educated at Neuchâtel, Switzerland, where he received his Ph.D. in 1963. He subsequently was appointed assistant professor of physics at Purdue University (1964-65), assistant professor of physics at University of Massachusetts, North Dartmouth (1965-67), program director of the Science Research Association at IBM Chicago (1967-69), special research associate at the University of Texas, Austin (1969-73), and professor at the Solvay Institute Brussels (1973-88). Mehra served as UNESCO-Sir Julian Huxley Distinguished Professor of History of Science in Paris, and Trieste, Italy (1989-93), and was the Citadel Distinguished Professor of Physics in Charleston, South Carolina (1993-96). He has held distinguished visiting appointments in Houston, Texas, and Geneva, Switzerland, and as Regent's Professor in the University of California at Irvine. He now lives in Houston, Texas where he has been professor of science and humanities at the University of Houston since 1996. Jagdish Mehra was trained as a theoretical physicist in the schools of Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli. He came into close personal contact with all the creators of quantum mechanics, and has used these interactions to great advantage in The Historical Development of Quantum Theory (a six-volume work co-authored with Helmut Rechenberg). Mehra has published extensively on the historical and conceptual development of modern physics. Taken from: http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biogr...
1 Books Written
The Beat of a Different Drum: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
by Jagdish Mehra
Rating: 4.2 ⭐
• 2 recommendations ❤️
This definitive book deals with the life & scientific work of arguably the greatest American-born theoretical physicist of the 20th century. He was a great teacher, a born showman, bongo drummer, buffoon & iconoclast; a scientific magician capable of transcendental leaps of the imagination. During his career he was drawn into research on the atomic bomb before working out his path-integral formulation of quantum mechanics & quantum electro-dynamics. Subsequently he developed the diagrammatic technique, as a result of which Feynman diagrams became ubiquitous in quantum field theory, elementary particle physics & statistical mechanics. From 1950 he was based at the California Institute of Technology, where he worked on the superfluidity of liquid helium, the theory of polarons, the theory of weak interactions, the quantum theory of gravitation, partons, quark jets & the limits of computation. He'd a unified view of physics & nature. He took the whole of nature as the arena of his science & imagination. Jagdish Mehra personally knew Feynman for 30 years. In 1980 Feynman suggested he might do what he had already done for Heisenberg, Pauli & Dirac, that is write a definitive account of his life, science & personality. Mehra instantly agreed & subsequently spent several weeks talking to him. After Feynman's death Mehra interviewed almost 80 people who'd known him & aspects of his work. This book draws on this unique material & on Feynman's remarkable writings. It covers his childhood, his three marriages, his extraordinary range of interests. But most important, it deals with his scientific work in far greater detail than in any other biographical work. What has emerged is an authoritative account of Feynman's life & achievements.