ISAAC ASIMOV received his academic degrees from Columbia University and is Associate Professor of Biochemistry at the Boston University School of Medicine. He is a prolific author who has written over 100 books in the past 18 years, including about 20 science fiction works, and books for children. His many excellent science books for the public cover subjects in mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, and biology, such as The Genetic Code, Inside the Atom, Building Blocks of the Universe, Understanding Physics, The New Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science, and Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. In 1965 Dr. Asimov received the James T. Grady Award of the American Chemical Society for his major contribution in reporting science progress to the public.
VOLUME 1 [Introduction] 5 [Atomic Weights] 6 [Electricity] 11 [Units of Electricity] 11 [Cathode Rays] 13 [Radioactivity] 17 [The Structure of the Atom] 25 [Atomic Numbers] 30 [Isotopes] 35 [Energy] 47 [The Law of Conservation of Energy] 47 [Chemical Energy] 50 [Electrons and Energy] 54 [The Energy of the Sun] 55 [The Energy of Radioactivity] 57 VOLUME 2 [Mass and Energy] 69 [The Structure of the Nucleus] 75 [The Proton] 75 [The Proton-Electron Theory] 76 [Protons in Nuclei] 80 [Nuclear Bombardment] 82 [Particle Accelerators] 86 [The Neutron] 92 [Nuclear Spin] 92 [Discovery of the Neutron] 95 [The Proton-Neutron Theory] 98 [The Nuclear Interaction] 101 [Neutron Bombardment] 107 VOLUME 3 [Nuclear Fission] 117 [New Elements] 117 [The Discovery of Fission] 122 [The Nuclear Chain Reaction] 127 [The Nuclear Bomb] 131 [Nuclear Reactors] 141 [Nuclear Fusion] 146 [The Energy of the Sun] 146 [Thermonuclear Bombs] 148 [Controlled Fusion] 150 [Beyond Fusion] 158 [Antimatter] 158 [The Unknown] 163 [Reading List] 165
Enrico Fermi (left) and Niels Bohr discuss physics as they stroll along the Appian Way outside Rome in 1931.
NUCLEAR FISSION
New Elements
In 1934 Enrico Fermi began his first experiments involving the bombardment of uranium with neutrons—experiments that were to change the face of the world.
Fermi had found that slow neutrons, which had very little energy, were easily absorbed by atomic nuclei—more easily than fast neutrons were absorbed, and certainly more easily than charged particles were.