Biography:Abraham Pais

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Abraham Pais
Abraham Pais
Abraham Pais
Born 19 May 1918
Died 28 July 2000


Known for Physics history; biographies of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr; Inward Bound

Abraham Pais (19 May 1918 - 28 July 2000) was a Dutch-American theoretical physicist and historian of science.[1]

Career and work

Pais trained as a physicist in the Netherlands and later worked in the United States, where he became closely associated with the postwar theoretical-physics community.[1][2]

He became especially influential as a historian of modern physics. His books include Subtle is the Lord, on Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr's Times, and Inward Bound, a history of matter and forces in twentieth-century physics.[1][3]

In the QFT further-reading list, Inward Bound gives general readers historical background on the development of particle physics, quantum theory, and the field-theoretic view of forces.[3]

Selected works

  • Subtle is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein (1982).
  • Inward Bound: Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World (1986).
  • Niels Bohr's Times: In Physics, Philosophy, and Polity (1991).

References


Author: Harold Foppele