Physics In A Mad World by Misha Shifman - 9789814619295

Physics In A Mad WorldAuthor(s): Misha Shifman\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: World Scientific Publishing Co Pte Ltd, Singapore\nImprint: World Scientific Publishing Co Pte Ltd\nISBN-13: 9789814619295, 978-9814619295\nSynopsis\nThis book tells captivating stories of misadventures of two renowned theoretical physicists in the Soviet Union. The first part is devoted to Friedrich (Fritz) Houtermans, an outstanding Dutch-Austrian-German physicist who was the first to suggest that the source of stars' energy is thermonuclear fusion, and also made a number of other important contributions to cosmochemistry and geochemistry. In 1935, Houtermans, a German communist, in an attempt to save his life from Hilter's Gestapo, fled to the Soviet Union. He took up an appointment at the Kharkov Physico-Technical Institute, working there for two years with the Russian physicist Valentin P Fomin. In the Great Purge of 1937, Houtermans was arrested in December by the NKVD (Soviet Secret Police, KGB's pre.