Early Career in Physics
After completing his education Karplus worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he became interested in the developing, but yet untested, theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED). The magnetic moment of the electron had been determined very precisely by means of a variety of experiments, but the best theoretical calculations of this quantity, based on quantum mechanics, were seriously at variance with the experimental results. There was great interest among physicists in knowing whether or not a calculation based on QED would agree with the experimental results, but because of the ambiguities and complexity of QED, no one had so far been able to do such a calculation. Karplus, in collaboration with Norman Kroll, used QED to calculate the value of the magnetic moment of the electron. This was an extremely difficult calculation, requiring more than a year of intense effort from both men; the agreement between their result and the experimental measurements was the first, dramatic confirmation of QED.
Karplus continued his work at the highest level in theoretical physics for more than 10 years, at Harvard from 1950 to 1954 and then at the University of California, Berkeley, publishing 50 research papers, mostly in QED but also in other areas of physics, including the Hall effect, Van Allen radiation, and cosmic rays. He also thoroughly enjoyed experimental work, investigating the chemistry of Land Camera instant pictures and setting up an experimental germanium purification assembly line for transistors.
Read more about this topic: Robert Karplus
Famous quotes containing the words early, career and/or physics:
“I could be, I discovered, by turns stern, loving, wise, silly, youthful, aged, racial, universal, indulgent, strict, with a remarkably easy and often cunning detachment ... various ways that an adult, spurred by guilt, by annoyance, by condescension, by loneliness, deals with the prerogatives of power and love.”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“I restore myself when I’m alone. A career is born in public—talent in privacy.”
—Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962)
“The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced—by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)