Biography of Robert Wood

Modern sorcerer of the physical laboratory, Willyam Sibruk, the story of one American boy, who became the most daring and original experimenter of our day, but the chapter 1 did not grow. A little boy with a giant toy. Wood starts to play with fire and ice to cross chapter 2. Four "irreconcilable" years in Harvard. Wood boldly argues with his professor and dreams of crossing chapter 3.

Excursions and explosions at the University of John Gopkins, ending with early marriage and work at the University of Chicago to move to chapter 4. Escapada and work in Berlin. Wood is present at the birth of x-rays and is engaged in planning chapter 5. Wood as a lecture magician and plumber, driver of a steam car, Roman senator to go to chapter 7. Wood begins his famous spectroscopic work, becomes a grandfather of Mickey Mouse and reads a report in the London Royal Society Chapter 8.

Chapter 8. The head of the professor at the first years of work.

University of John Hopkins. Important discoveries. The Promethean celebration of the opening to go to chapter 9. A lot of work and great fun with John Hopkins in the period - gg. Cross the head of Wood sets a mercury telescope in a barn and lets the cat into his spectroscope, go the head of Wood, stretches his vacation year by three, stands at the place where the pharapery once stood, and crosses our planet along and down the head of Wood, as a poet and writer, or the joy and sorrows of the scientist who came to the stealing of fiction, go You are participating in the world war and invents new methods of its conduct, including hunting with trained seals behind submarines to move on the head of Wood as a “sheep in wolf skin” and becomes a formidable major of the Woods Family traveling around the world.

The spectroscope moves from the barn to the palace, and the cat becomes unemployed as the chapter as Wood unraveled the secret of the purple gold of King Tutankhamun with the help of nail polish to cross the head of Wood - the exposure of scientists of fools and scammers. His war with mediums cross the head of Wood and the police. The famous scientist, as a detective, reveals the secrets of bombs and murders to cross the head of Wood turns a white girl into a black woman, continues his fruitful work, travels and collects medals to cross the head of the Wood - a boomerang thrower, the owner of an autograph of the children and a psychology researcher to go to the head of the family in a circle In the development of culture, individual people had and continue to maintain incomparably greater importance than in the general socio-economic and political history of mankind.

At least since the time of ancient Greece, science has been moving mainly progressively, although there are sometimes “backstage movements” and “loops”. The reasons for such an perfection of the evolutionary mechanism of science lies, firstly, in the great certainty, concreteness and practical value of its results, as a result of which the seal, the speed of movement, the connection of all kinds is selected, only the advanced.

Secondly, science is consistent, systematically, in essence, has “internal logic”, each subsequent step in science is based on the previous one, and after Newton is impossible if there are books and communication between people a return to Aristotle. Thirdly, the range of special abilities and giftedness in science is very large, and sharp deviations from the middle - Faradea, Mendeleevs, Einsteins are possible.

An increase in human communication leads to the fact that the results of the activities of these geniuses become a common property. This is the main reasons for the unprecedented, all the time of the accelerating process of growth of science and technology over the past four centuries. Therefore, it is clear that life and activity, advanced people are a very important factor in the development of science, and their biography is a necessary part of the history of science.

We present to the reader a biography of the remarkable and original physicist of our time, Robert Wood, written by the famous American writer William Sibruk. You can approach the life and activity of Wood from the point of view of the "development of ideas." He has very large both in quality and volume scientific merits. The main field of Wood is physical optics. In it, his name is primarily associated with a striking series of work on the resonant glow of vapors and gases, which formed the basis of the modern quantum theory of the structure of atoms.

Next, we can distinguish a huge series of witty experiments and large studies devoted to the specification of the wave theory of light and its, sometimes, the subtlest investigations. This includes the almost indescribable results of Wood for diffraction, interference, polarization, abnormal dispersion, absorption.Then you can indicate the spectroscopic studies of Wood, which are still not surpassed by anyone, are still not surpassed by experimental skill, its experimental “staffing” of the Balmero series of hydrogen and the main series of sodium absorption, the dismemberment of the iodine spectrum, etc.

The spectrophopic technique received enormous importance in the development of new physics and astrophysics Wood: his famous spectrograph 40 feet long, virtuoso diffraction grates, unusually aperture installations for obtaining combinations scattering spectra. In modern technology, the name of Wood is forever associated with photographing in infrared and ultraviolet rays, with the alarm with these rays, the use of them for analytical and detective purposes.

The ultrasound technique is also largely owed by R. This list is only approximate, it does not exhaust not only everything, but even the main one, and for its replenishment it is best to look directly into the Wood list, which is attached to this book. However, Wood's significance in modern physics and modern physicists is not at all limited to this impressive list.

The fact is that for more than forty years, Wood has become a truly legendary figure for physicists around the world, genuine virtuoso and sorcerer of the experiment. The genius of Wood is the ability to set unusual tasks and find completely inexhaustible for them, and at the same time amazingly “simple” paths. The art of combining in the experience of elements, as if completely heterogeneous, is developed in Wood to the highest degree.

Wood showed the possibility of experimental physics of a completely unusual style, diverging with ordinary "school" techniques. In this special style or method of Wood lies the secret of its unprecedented scientific productivity; He published more experimental work, and most contains completely new facts and a new methodology, for the discovery and development of which in ordinary ways it would take many years and huge forces.

In this regard, Wood has very few quantitative works, its manner is to solve the problem qualitatively. For painstaking quantitative study, he does not have time and, apparently, patience and hunting. Countless studies of Wood could and, in many cases, should have a quantitative continuation. The very true and soulful characterization of the style and content of the works of R. Wood was given by the late academician D.

Rozhdestvensky in a large preface to the Russian translation of the “physical optics” by R. Wood Onti, and there is nothing to add to this characteristic. It is best to turn to the Russian reader, who wants to get acquainted with the scientific activity of Wood and his method, to turn to "physical optics". Both in terms of content and style, this book is largely the scientific autobiography of R.

The book by V. Sibruk is an interesting addition and an application to the "physical optics", revealing in an extremely lively form the life and work of R. Wood in its entirety and variegated. The nature of the book of Sibruk is very unusual in comparison with the established canon of the biographies of scientists. In essence, it is an extensive American feuilleton about Wood, his life, his science, ingenuity, adventure and family.

Sometimes the presentation becomes almost fiction, full of Americanisms and very difficult for translation. However, to describe the life and work of Wood, a book of this kind is most suitable. From the text, the reader will be convinced that R. Wood himself and his family took a living part in the preparation of the book. At least a third of it is the quotes of Wood's own records.

The book was intended by the author, obviously, for a very wide range of readers, which is explained by the very popularity of the name of Wood in the United States even among people who are very far from science. Hence, the author’s repeated attempts to state in few, extremely simplifying the essence of the matter, the very complex results of Wood. Unfortunately, these results are often so thin that they require thorough physical, and sometimes specially optical knowledge.

In the Russian translation, we omitted those places of the original, where the author made extra and little successful, from our point of view, attempts to vulgarize subtle physical facts. We also abandoned the intention to explain with long notes many scientific places of the book, stated in passing, and limited ourselves to only brief footnotes in the text. The reader will find an extensive commentary on this book in the Russian translation of “physical optics”.

At the end of the book, apparently, an almost complete list of Wood's scientific articles was attached, in the Russian translation only slightly supplemented. There are no fiction works of Wood in the list, about which Sibruk talks about quite extensively. The bibliography is limited to the end of the year. Wood, as can be seen from the text, took an extremely active part in scientific assistance to the front during the First World War.

One must think that in recent years, despite the advanced age of the brilliant physicist, he actively worked on new ways to combat a persistent and crazy enemy.We hope that many, especially Soviet students, and Wood will serve as an example for them, will read Sibruk’s book. In addition, they love desperate and impudent tricks. The essence of Robert Williams Wood is that this is a super -state American boy who has not become an adult in his entire life.

The role of the environment in the development of these two American boys of one - the deceased, the other - now living, who stand and will always stand giants in their completely different areas, is completely the same. Both, in order to experience their mind and strength in early childhood, fate awarded a powerful and huge "toy". In the case of Mark Twain, it was a mississippi with its rafts, floods and steamboats, runaway blacks, bandits ...

you know ... In the case of Robert Wood, it was a huge, rumbling factory of Startvant, with its engines, hydraulic presses, stoves, chemical workshops, machines and tools that you will soon see. Now I am very familiar with Robert Wood - I worked for a long time, lived and had fun with him, and I hope that I will be able to show it to you as it is in reality. Something fantastic, Gargantuyan, Prometheevskoye is connected with this person, but until today, when Wood has entered his active and healthy eighth dozen, he still looks from him, grinning, and sometimes the American boy’s dream of himself, an American boy who became a great person, but did not become an adult, jumps out due to the curtain of the scientist.

I repeat - American, because my Wood is the same American as the Hikory tree [1]. America has grown into it with roots. The most brilliant boy from Greece or France could never have understood what was the matter - just as Heck Finn could not have understood properly. And Wood often horrified his British cousins, although they give him the highest honors.