Nobel Century Chronicle: Pursuing the Laws of Nature

Author: Li Xinzhou
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2001-07-01
Features: The Centennial Chronicle of the Nobel Prize is an original popular science book compiled to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize. It consists of 29 volumes and 2.7 million words, written by 40 expert professors from renowned universities and research institutions in China, including Academician Hong Tao of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. The book portrays the century-long journey of the Nobel Prize in Science within the broader context of the 20th-century scientific development, focusing on highlighting the essence of the Nobel Prize—technological innovation spirit. In addition to three volumes of reviews that comprehensively review the century-long transformations in modern physics, chemistry, and life sciences, the book categorizes all Nobel Prize-winning projects over the past century into 26 fields based on their intrinsic connections and developmental progress, with each field having its own volume. Each volume follows the lineage of scientific development in that field as its main thread, highlighting relevant Nobel Prize-winning projects as focal points. It not only popularly introduces related scientific knowledge, methods, and ideas but also emphasizes promoting the spirit of pragmatism and innovation in science. The book is concise, easy to understand, and rich in humanistic color, making it both a valuable reference and a collectible.
The 20th century was the most accomplished in the history of physics development. Building on the foundation of classical physics, physics rapidly advanced, achieving many remarkable accomplishments that profoundly impacted human society. Before the 20th century, physicists’ understanding of the structure of matter was still conceptual. In 1897, at the turn of the 20th century, humanity discovered the first fundamental particle—the electron. This discovery marked the beginning of physicists’ true exploration of the microscopic world of matter. In 1900, Max Planck proposed the quantum hypothesis, giving birth to quantum theory. Later, Albert Einstein explained the photoelectric effect using the theory of light quanta. In 1913, Niels Bohr proposed the atomic spectrum theory, establishing the modern atomic model. In the 1920s, matrix mechanics, Schr?dinger’s equation, the Pauli exclusion principle, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and Dirac’s electron equation were successively introduced, laying the foundation for quantum mechanics. This was a true revolution in the history of 20th-century physics. Simultaneously, Einstein launched another revolution in 20th-century physics. In 1905, he proposed the theory of special relativity, driving the deeply entrenched Newtonian concept of absolute space and time out of physics. In 1915, he further proposed the theory of general relativity, establishing the scientific theory of gravity. Together with quantum theory, relativity became one of the two cornerstones of 20th-century physics.
By the 1940s, quantum electrodynamics emerged, providing an extremely profound elaboration of electromagnetism using relativity and quantum theory. In the 1950s, the phenomenon of parity violation in weak interactions was discovered. In the 1960s, the quark model was successfully established. From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, the electroweak unification theory and quantum chromodynamics were successively proposed, and the Standard Model was formally formed. The Standard Model represents an important milestone in humanity’s understanding of the microscopic world and can be considered another revolution in 20th-century physics. However, the Standard Model does not mean that humanity has reached the end of its exploration of nature. On one hand, unifying gravity with electromagnetism, weak, and strong forces into a complete grand unified theory has always been a dream that physicists cannot give up. On the other hand, experimental and observational data have raised many new questions. Since the 1980s, the vigorous development of string theory may also bring a profound revolution to physics.
The above is the historical journey of the revolution in physics as described in The Revolutions of 20th-Century Physics. This book is one of the volumes in the Centennial Chronicle of the Nobel Prize series published by Shanghai Science and Technology Education Press. The series categorizes all Nobel Prizes in 20th-century physics, chemistry, and life sciences into 26 fields based on specific winning content, with each field written as a book of about 80,000 words. The content of each book follows the developmental progress of the field as its main thread, with a focus on relevant Nobel Prize-winning projects. Through this, readers not only gain insight into the scientific content of these Nobel Prize achievements but also understand the developmental history of the field.