This volume contains a discriminating selection of papers with commentaries by one of the most creative theoretical physicists of our century, Nobel Laureate Sir Nevill Mott. His pioneering contributions (1928 - 1993) include Fermi liquid theory, metal-insulator transition, the theory of noncrystalline materials, high-temperature superconductivity and many other discoveries.

This volume contains a discriminating selection of papers with commentaries by one of the most creative theoretical physicists of our century, Nobel Laureate Sir Nevill Mott. His pioneering contributions (1928 – 1993) include Fermi liquid theory, metal-insulator transition, the theory of noncrystalline materials, high-temperature superconductivity and many other discoveries.

For a brief period during the latter part of World War II, Nevill F. Mott led a theoretical group at Fort Halstead in the United Kingdom that tackled scientific issues related to pressing war-time concerns. Among later awards and honors, Mott was knighted and a recipient of the Nobel Prize. While at Fort Halstead, he undertook an effort to theoretically describe the statistical fragmentation of munitions subjected to intense explosive loading. Mott`s original internal reports contain seminal theoretical concepts on the physics and statistics of dynamic fracture and fragmentation, which have provided the inspiration for numerous later modeling efforts and engineering formulae. Some of his most forward-looking thoughts on the micromechanical and molecular aspects of fracture are included in these publications. The present book surveys the theoretical analysis put forth by Mott with particular focus on his efforts to characterize the size and distribution of fragments resulting from a dynamic fragmentation event. Copies of the original internal reports of Mott and his co-workers are included. The book also pursues additional theoretical analysis with the intent of delving further into the physical ideas and unfinished analysis implicit in Mott`s original studies. This book will be of interest to all scientists and engineers concerned with the dynamic fracture and fragmentation of solid bodies subject to intense transient loads imparted by explosive detonation and high-velocity impact from both the historical and modern perspective.

Sir Nevill Mott was Britain's last Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics. This is a tribute to the life and work of Nobel Laureate Nevill Mott, a hugely admired and appreciated man, and one of this countries greatest ever scientists. It includes contributions from over 80 of his friends, family and colleagues, full of anecdotes and appreciations for this collossus of modern physics.

This book is a collection of the major scientific papers of Sir Rudolf Peierls (1907-95), including the Peierls-Frisch Memoranda of 1940 on the feasibility, and the predicted human effects, of an atomic bomb made of uranium-235. His papers range widely in topic. They include much on the fundamentals of solid state physics, the thermal and electric conductivity of materials as a function of temperature T (especially T→0), the interpretation of the de Haas-van Alphen effect observed for a metal in a magnetic field, and the basics of transport theory. Many are on problems in statistical mechanics, including his constructive paper demonstrating the existence of a phase transition for Ising's model for a two-dimensional ferromagnet. In nuclear physics, they include the first calculations (with Bethe) on the photo-disintegration of the deuteron (made in response to a challenge by Chadwick), the Kapur-Peierls theory of resonance phenomena in nuclear reactions, the Bohr-Peierls-Placzek continuum model for complex nuclei (which first explained the narrow resonances observed for low energy neutrons incident on very heavy nuclei), and the Peierls-Thouless variational approach to collective phenomena in nuclei. Several of Peierls's wartime papers, now declassified, are here published for the first time.Brief commentaries on most of the papers in this book were added by Peierls, to indicate subsequent developments and their relationship with other work, or to correct errors found later on. A complete bibliography of his writings is given as an appendix.

This invaluable volume is a collection of conference talks by James D Bjorken, who has made a huge impact on particle physics and the development of the Standard Model. The earliest of these talks was given in 1965, and the latest in 1990. The book provides, from a personal perspective, a glimpse of the complex evolution of the field over those highly productive decades.In Conclusion: A Collection of Summary Talks in High Energy Physics is aimed at a broad spectrum of particle physicists and students, both experimental and theoretical.

This book is a collection of the major scientific papers of Sir Rudolf Peierls (1907-95), including the Peierls-Frisch Memoranda of 1940 on the feasibility, and the predicted human effects, of an atomic bomb made of uranium-235. His papers range widely in topic. They include much on the fundamentals of solid state physics, the thermal and electric conductivity of materials as a function of temperature T (especially T→0), the interpretation of the de Haas-van Alphen effect observed for a metal in a magnetic field, and the basics of transport theory. Many are on problems in statistical mechanics, including his constructive paper demonstrating the existence of a phase transition for Ising's model for a two-dimensional ferromagnet. In nuclear physics, they include the first calculations (with Bethe) on the photo-disintegration of the deuteron (made in response to a challenge by Chadwick), the Kapur-Peierls theory of resonance phenomena in nuclear reactions, the Bohr-Peierls-Placzek continuum model for complex nuclei (which first explained the narrow resonances observed for low energy neutrons incident on very heavy nuclei), and the Peierls-Thouless variational approach to collective phenomena in nuclei. Several of Peierls's wartime papers, now declassified, are here published for the first time.Brief commentaries on most of the papers in this book were added by Peierls, to indicate subsequent developments and their relationship with other work, or to correct errors found later on. A complete bibliography of his writings is given as an appendix.

Little do we reliably know about the Mott transition, and we are far from a complete understanding of the metal --insulator transition due to electr- electron interactions. Mott summarized his basic ideas on the subject in his wonderful book Metal--Insulator nansitions that first appeared in 1974 11. 1). In his view, a Motk insulator displays a gap for charge-carrying excitations due to electron cowelations, whose importance is expressed by the presence of local magnetic moments regardless of whether or not they are ordered. Since the subject is far from being settled, different opinions on specific aspects of the Mott transition still persist. This book naturally embodies my own understanding of the phenomenon, inspired by the work of the late Sir Kevill Mott. The purpose of this book is twofold: first, to give a detailed presen- tion of the basic theoretical concopts for Mott insulators and, second, to test these ideas against the results from model calculations. For this purpose the Hubbard model and some of its derivatives are best suited. The Hubbard model describes a Mott transition with a mere minimum of tunable par- eters, and various exact statements and even exact solutions exist in certain limiting cases. Exact solutions not only allow us to test our basic ideas, but also help to assess the quality of approxin~ate theories for correlated electron systems.

The scientific career of John Stewart Bell was distinguished by its breadth and its quality. He made several very important contributions to scientific fields as diverse as accelerator physics, high energy physics and the foundations of quantum mechanics.This book contains a large part of J S Bell's publications, including those that are recognized as his most important achievements, as well as others that are for no good reason less well known. The selection was made by Mary Bell, Martinus Veltman and Kurt Gottfried, all of whom were involved with John Bell both personally and professionally throughout a large part of his life. An introductory chapter has been written to help place the selected papers in a historical context and to review their significance.This book comprises an impressive collection of outstanding scientific work of one of the greatest scientists of the recent past, and it will remain important and influential for a long time to come.

World-class science and technology developed in the Soviet Union during Stalin's dictatorial rule under conditions of political violence, lack of international contacts, and severe restrictions on the freedom of information. Stalin's Great Science: The Times and Adventures of Soviet Physicists is an invaluable book that investigates this paradoxical success by following the lives and work of Soviet scientists — including Nobel Prize-winning physicists Kapitza, Landau, and others — throughout the turmoil of wars, revolutions, and repression that characterized the first half of Russia's twentieth century.The book examines how scientists operated within the Soviet political order, communicated with Stalinist politicians, built a new system of research institutions, and conducted groundbreaking research under extraordinary circumstances. Some of their novel scientific ideas and theories reflected the influence of Soviet ideology and worldview and have since become accepted universally as fundamental concepts of contemporary science. In the process of making sense of the achievements of Soviet science, the book dismantles standard assumptions about the interaction between science, politics, and ideology, as well as many dominant stereotypes — mostly inherited from the Cold War — about Soviet history in general. Science and technology were not only granted unprecedented importance in Soviet society, but they also exerted a crucial formative influence on the Soviet political system itself. Unlike most previous studies, Stalin's Great Science recognizes the status of science as an essential element of the Soviet polity and explores the nature of a special relationship between experts (scientists and engineers) and communist politicians that enabled the initial rise of the Soviet state and its mature accomplishments, until the pact eroded in later years, undermining the communist regime from within.