This is not a science book, nor even a book about science, although most of the contributors are scientists. It is a book of personal stories about Walter Kohn, a theoretical physicist and winner of half of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Walter Kohn originated and/or refined a number of very important theoretical approaches and concepts in solid-state physics. He is known in particular for Density-Functional Theory. This book represents a kind of "oral history" about him, gathered - in anticipation of his 80th birthday - from former students, collaborators, fellow-scientists, and friends.
How did and does the fate of refugees unfold in internment camps? The contributors to this book facilitate an extensive engagement with the organized, state led, and forced placement of refugees in the past and present. They show the parallels and differences between the practices and types of internment in different countries - while considering the specific historical contexts. Moreover, they highlight the nexus of relationships and agencies which constitute the camps in question as transitory spaces. The contributions consist of analyses of local phenomena or case studies as well as comparative engagements from an international and/or historical perspective.
From the author of Aimée and Jaguar comes the extraordinary true love story of a couple who were separated during a shameful and fascinating chapter of British history Erica Fischer tells her own parents' astonishing story and at the same time sheds light on a little-known, little-discussed chapter in British history. Fischer's parents met in Austria in the early 1930s. Her mother, Irka, was a Polish Jew and her father, Erich, was a Viennese lapsed Catholic. In 1938, Irka fled to the United Kingdom, to be followed the year after by her husband. By no means a rarity as refugees, they found work in southern England. However at the outbreak of war, Erich was arrested as an "enemy alien," which was then common practice in time of war. After being interned, he was transported to Australia in July 1940, along with 2,500 other deportees. The conditions were appalling on board the Dunera: the men were locked up below decks with overflowing latrines and only seawater to clean themselves. Faced with unimaginable hardships, the deportees banded together in solidarity to face their new life. Erich and Irka struggled to maintain a correspondence to try to ensure that they would be able to find each other when the war came to an end. Amazingly crafted, this biography reads like fiction and vividly evokes a chapter in history with which few people are familiar.
Most textbooks in the field are either too advanced for students or don’t adequately cover current research topics. Bridging this gap, Electronic Structure of Materials helps advanced undergraduate and graduate students understand electronic structure methods and enables them to use these techniques in their work. Developed from the author’s lecture notes, this classroom-tested book takes a microscopic view of materials as composed of interacting electrons and nuclei. It explains all the properties of materials in terms of basic quantities of electrons and nuclei, such as electronic charge, mass, and atomic number. Based on quantum mechanics, this first-principles approach does not have any adjustable parameters. The first half of the text presents the fundamentals and methods of electronic structure. Using numerous examples, the second half illustrates applications of the methods to various materials, including crystalline solids, disordered substitutional alloys, amorphous solids, nanoclusters, nanowires, graphene, topological insulators, battery materials, spintronic materials, and materials under extreme conditions. Every chapter starts at a basic level and gradually moves to more complex topics, preparing students for more advanced work in the field. End-of-chapter exercises also help students get a sense of numbers and visualize the physical picture associated with the problem. Students are encouraged to practice with the electronic structure calculations via user-friendly software packages.
Volume 1 of the 5-volume Quantum Nanochemistry set presents an overall perspective of nuclear, atomic, molecular, and solids structures, and the observability and quantum properties as based on the quantum principles in their various levels of applications, from Planck, Bohr, Einstein, Schrodinger, Hartree-Fock, up to Feynman Path Integral approach
