Hydrogen

John S. Rigden is Adjunct Professor of Physics, Washington University in St. Louis.

• Prologue 1. In the Beginning: Hydrogen and the Big Bang 2. Hydrogen and the Unity of Matter: The Prout Hypothesis William Prout, 1815 3. Hydrogen and the Spectra of the Chemical Elements: A Swiss High School Teacher Finds a Pattern Johann Jakob Balmer, 1885 4. The Bohr Model of Hydrogen: A Paradigm for the Structure of Atoms Niels Bohr, 1913 5. Relativity Meets the Quantum in the Hydrogen Atom Arnold Sommerfeld, 1916 6. The Fine-Structure Constant: A Strange Number with Universal Significance Arnold Sommerfeld, 1916 7. The Birth of Quantum Mechanics: The Hydrogen Atom Answers the "Crucial Question" Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli, 1925-26 * Paul Dirac, 1925-26 8. The Hydrogen Atom: Midwife to the Birth of Wave Mechanics Erwin Schrodinger, 1926 9. The Hydrogen Atom and Dirac's Theory of the Electron Paul Dirac, 1928 10. Hydrogen Guides Nuclear Physicists: The Discovery of Deuterium Harold Urey, 1932 11. Hubris Meets Hydrogen: The Magnetic Moment of the Proton Otto Stern, 1933 12. The Magnetic Resonance Method: The Origin of Magnetic Resonance Imaging I. I. Rabi, 1938 13. New Nuclear Forces Required: The Discovery of the Quadrupole Moment of the Deuteron Norman F. Ramsey and I. I. Rabi, 1939 14. Magnetic Resonance in Bulk Matter (NMR) Edward M. Purcell and Felix Bloch, 1946 15. Hydrogen's Challenge to Dirac Theory: Quantum Electrodynamics as the Prototype Physical Theory Willis Lamb, 1947 16. The Hydrogen Atom Portends an Anomaly with the Electron I. I. Rabi, John E. Nafe, and Edward B. Nelson, 1946 17. Hydrogen Maps the Galaxy Edward M. Purcell and Harold Ewen, 1951 18. The Hydrogen Maser: A High-Precision Clock Norman F. Ramsey and Daniel Kleppner, 1960 19. The Rydberg Constant: A Fundamental Constant Johannes Robert Rydberg, 1890 * Theodor Hansch, 1992 20. The Abundance of Deuterium: A Check on Big Bang Cosmology David N. Schramm, 1945-1997 21. Antihydrogen: The First Antiatom 22. The Bose-Einstein Condensate for Hydrogen Satyendranath Bose, 1924 * Albert Einstein, 1925 * Eric A. Cornell and Carl E. Wieman, 1995 * Daniel Kleppner and Tom Greytak, 1998 23. Exotic Hydrogen-like Atoms: From Theory to Technology Epilogue Notes Acknowledgments Credits Index

A prominent physicist once said, "to understand hydrogen is to understand all of physics." That is perhaps a bit of an overstatement; but it is no exaggeration to say that John Rigden's eminently readable book is a unique guide to the overwhelming role in science and technology of that simplest of all elements--from the origin of the universe itself to the most recently created lab sensation, the Bose-Einstein condensate. A book to be treasured by laypersons and experts alike.