Another Grand Old Man is gone

[unixronin]

A week ago, actually, and I just now found out.  Ralph Alpher, sometimes called "the forgotten father of the Big Bang," died on August 12 in Austin, Texas at the age of 86.  He predicted the cosmic microwave background and the elemental distribution of hydrogen and helium in the universe twenty years before the instruments existed to measure his predictions, simply from thinking about what the effects of such a Big Bang would be, at a time the steady-state theory reigned supreme and the Big Bang was just a quirky new idea that few people took seriously.

George Gamow (or, properly, Georgiy Antonovich Gamov), when he was Alpher's Ph.D advisor, co-authored a paper with Alpher and, knowing that the conventional method in scientific publishing is to list authors in alphabetical order, added Hans Bethe's name to the paper specifically so that the resulting paper, would have as its byline "Alpher, Bethe, Gamow" (alpha, beta, gamma).  It has been widely known in physics ever since as the αβγ paper.

Gamow died in 1968 in Boulder, Colorado, aged 64.  Bethe died two years ago in Ithaca, New York at the age of 99.  And now, they're all gone.

Comments

[smandal.livejournal.com]

The Washington Post obituary (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/13/AR2007081301014.html) mentions that his scholarship to MIT was withdrawn after it was learned he was Jewish.

A shameful episode for my alma mater, and a study in perseverance on Alpher's part.

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

I thought I heard a brief note and sighed at the loss of the last of the "Silly Three" for I too had heard of Gamow adding Bethe for the joke.
Those were some strange days.
Very good theory though. Started to make the Big Bang work.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Evidence appears to indicate the Big Bang worked just fine without any theories to back it up. ;)



(Yes, I know what you meant.)