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The Story of Spin

All atomic particles have a particular "spin," analogous to the earth’s rotation on its axis. The quantum mechanical reality underlying spin is complex and still poorly understood. Sin-itiro Tomonaga’s The Story of Spin remains the most complete and accessible treatment of spin, and is now available in English translation. Tomonaga tells the tale of the pioneers of physics and their difficult journey toward an understanding of the nature of spin and its relationship to statistics. His clear unfolding of the tale of spin is invaluable to students of physics, chemistry, and astronomy, and his description of the historical development of spin will interest historians and philosophers of science.

"This piece of the history of physics will provide excellent and exciting reading. . . . It also provides the personal touch of an expert in the field that is so often lacking in the physics literature. I recommend it very highly."—Fritz Rohrlich, Physics Today

Sin-itiro Tomonaga was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965.

265 pages | 23 halftones, 16 line drawings, 5 tables | 6 x 9 | © 1998

Physical Sciences: History and Philosophy of Physical Sciences

Table of Contents

Translator’s Preface
Lecture 1: Before the Dawn
Lecture 2: Electron Spin and the Thomas Factor
Lecture 3: Pauli’s Spin Theory and the Dirac Theory
Lecture 4: Proton Spin
Lecture 5: Interaction between Spins
Lecture 6: Pauli-Weisskopf and the Yukawa Particle
Lecture 7: The Quantity Which Is neither Vector nor Tensor
Lecture 8: Spin and Statistics of Elementary Particles
Lecture 9: The Year of Discovery: 1932
Lecture 10: Nuclear Force and Isospin
Lecture 11: The Thomas Factor Revisited
Lecture 12: The Last Lecture
Epilogue
Short Biography of Sin-Itiro Tomonaga
Annotated Bibliography
Index

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