ABSTRACT

This talk will not be on some recent development in physics. I retired almost 20 years ago and my last paper dates from 2000. However as a graduate student at Columbia University and as a physics professor at UMD for over 40 years, I encountered many of the great contributors to theoretical physics in the second half of the 20th century. By the romance of physics I mean the tales and stories about the major actors in this field. They give a certain life to this rather abstract endeavor to understand the nature of the world and are not to be found in textbooks. In the 50’s there were over ten Nobel Prize winners in the Columbia Faculty, many of whom became household names among physicists. I hope to regale you with some untold tales about them and others of their ilk.

About the Speaker:

Joseph Sucher is Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Maryland in College Park. Together with his family he escaped from Vienna in 1938 and after more than two years in war-torn Europe, he arrived in the USA in 1941 at age 10. He attended Erasmus Hall High School, Brooklyn College and Columbia University, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1957, with a thesis on the quantum electrodynamics of the helium atom.. He has held visiting positions at Columbia University, New York University, Berkeley, Cambridge University, University of Paris and at NASA Goddard itself. He is best known for his work on the relativistic theory of many-electron atoms, on the quantum theory of long-range forces, and on the foundations of relativistic quantum theory. His name is associated with the Gellman-Low-Sucher level-shift formula, the no-pair Hamiltonian for many-electron atoms, the Levy-Sucher identity, the Dirac-Sucher equation and the Feinberg-Sucher formula for the long-range force between neutral atoms. He retired in 1998.