Rudolf Peierls

Sir Rudolf Ernst Peierls was a German-born British physicist. He helped advance science, especially in the area of nuclear weapons.

He was born on June 5, 1907, and passed away on September 19, 1995. Peierls studied physics at many well-known universities, including the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Leipzig University, and ETH Zurich. He earned his DPhil from Leipzig University in 1929.

In 1940, Peierls worked with Otto Robert Frisch on a paper called the Frisch–Peierls memorandum. Their work showed that a small amount of uranium-235 could be used to build an atomic bomb. This changed how leaders thought about nuclear weapons.

After World War II, Peierls taught and did research at the University of Birmingham and later at the University of Oxford. He also wrote books and spoke about the dangers of nuclear weapons, supporting peace efforts. He was knighted in 1968 for his work in science.

Early life

Rudolf Ernst Peierls was born in the Berlin suburb of Oberschöneweide. He was the youngest of three children in a Jewish family. His father worked as an electrical engineer and managed a cable factory for AEG. Sadly, his mother passed away when he was young.

Peierls started school a year late because he needed glasses. He later attended the Humboldt Gymnasium and passed his exams in 1925. Although he wanted to study engineering, his parents encouraged him to study physics instead. He first studied at the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin, where he enjoyed listening to lectures by famous scientists like Max Planck. He later moved to the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München to study under Arnold Sommerfeld.

At Munich, Peierls met other future scientists such as Hans Bethe. He then went to Leipzig University to work with Werner Heisenberg on studying metals. Finally, he studied at ETH Zurich under Wolfgang Pauli, where he completed his research project and earned his doctorate in 1929.

Early career

Rudolf Peierls began his work in physics with Wolfgang Pauli and became his assistant, taking the place of Felix Bloch. During this time, he met Lev Landau, who was studying in the Soviet Union. They tried to make new equations for particles of light, called photons, but their work did not work out.

In 1930, Peierls visited scientists like Hans Kramers in the Netherlands and Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. Later that year, he went to a physics meeting in Odessa and met Eugenia Kannegiesser. They married in 1931 and moved to Zürich, where they had four children.

Peierls also worked with Egon Orowan to study how forces move in solid materials. His early research in quantum physics helped explain how semiconductors work, introducing ideas such as "holes" in materials. His work was important for understanding electrons in metals and how they move in magnetic fields.

Academic in exile

In 1932, Rudolf Peierls got a special award to study in Rome and then at a famous lab in England. In Rome, he studied how tiny parts in metals behave, helping explain some unusual properties of a metal called bismuth.

Because of difficult times in Germany, Peierls chose to stay in Britain. He worked at a university in Manchester with help from a group supporting people who had to leave Germany. Peierls also worked with other scientists on projects about how tiny parts move in metals and other materials. He later moved back to Cambridge and worked on special kinds of materials that lose their resistance to electricity under very cold conditions.

In 1936, he got a permanent job at a university in Birmingham. There he taught and did more research, working with students from different places. During World War II, he worked on important projects that would later influence many areas of science.

Second World War

Frisch–Peierls memorandum

Main article: Frisch–Peierls memorandum

When World War II began in 1939, physicist Rudolf Peierls started working on nuclear weapons research with Otto Robert Frisch. They could not work on radar because they were considered enemy aliens. In 1940, Peierls became a British subject. In early 1940, Peierls and Frisch wrote a paper showing that an atomic bomb could be made from a small amount of uranium-235. This paper helped leaders in Britain and America understand that building such a bomb was possible.

Manhattan Project

Main article: British contribution to the Manhattan Project

Because of this paper, a new group called Tube Alloys was formed to lead nuclear weapons development. Peierls joined this group. In 1943, Tube Alloys joined with the American Manhattan Project. Peierls went to the United States and worked at different science centers. He helped design important parts of the bomb and was there when the first nuclear test happened in 1945.

Espionage allegations

Main article: Atomic spies

Later, Peierls was thought to have helped share secret information because he had recommended a colleague named Fuchs. Fuchs was later found to have shared information. However, it was shown that Peierls was not involved in any wrongdoing.

Post-war

After the war, Rudolf Peierls was very popular as a physicist. He chose to go back to Birmingham University. There, he studied things like nuclear forces, scattering, and quantum field theories. In 1953, he found something new about how atoms are arranged in metal crystals. This discovery is called the Peierls transition.

Peierls helped grow the physics department at Birmingham by inviting talented researchers to join. He also began teaching quantum mechanics, which was a new subject there. In 1946, he started working as a consultant at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell. Later, in 1963, he became a professor at the University of Oxford and stayed there until he retired in 1974. He wrote many books about physics. He was worried about nuclear weapons and worked with groups like the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Pugwash movement.

Honours

Sir Rudolf Peierls received many important awards for his work. He was knighted in 1968. He also received medals such as the Rutherford Memorial Medal in 1952, the Royal Medal in 1959, and the Enrico Fermi Award in 1980.

In 1986, he was given the Copley Medal and in 1991 the Dirac Medal and Prize. In 2004, a building at the University of Oxford was named after him, called the Sir Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics.