Mário Schenberg
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| Mário Schenberg | |
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| Born | July 2, 1914 Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil |
| Died | November 10, 1990 São Paulo, Brazil |
| Nationality | Brazilian |
| Fields | Theoretical physics |
| Known for | Schönberg-Chandrasekhar limit Urca process |
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Notes
One of the most important Brazilian physicists of the 'heroic era' (1900-1945), together with José Leite Lopes, Cesar Lattes, Jayme Tiomno, and Joaquim da Costa Ribeiro. |
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Mário Schenberg, (July 2, 1914, Recife (Pernambuco) – November 10, 1990, São Paulo), var. Mário Schönberg, Mario Schonberg, Mário Schoenberg), was a Jewish Brazilian electrical engineer, physicist, art critic and writer.
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[edit] Scientific work
[edit] The Urca process
Widely regarded as Brazil's most important theoretical physicist, Schenberg is best remembered for his contributions to astrophysics, particularly the theory of nuclear processes in the formation of supernova stars. He provided the inspiration for the name of the so-called Urca process, a cycle of nuclear reactions in which a nucleus loses energy by absorbing an electron and then re-emitting a beta particle plus a neutrino-antineutrino pair, leading to the loss of internal supporting pressure and consequent collapse and explosion in the form of a supernova. George Gamow (1904-1968) was inspired to name the process Urca after the name of a casino in Rio de Janeiro, when Schenberg remarked to him that “the energy disappears in the nucleus of the supernova as quickly as the money disappeared at that roulette table.”
[edit] Schönberg-Chandrasekhar limit
Together with Indian physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995), he discovered and published in 1942 the so-called Schönberg-Chandrasekhar limit, which is the maximum mass of the core of a star that can support the overlying layers against gravitational collapse, once the core Hydrogen is exhausted.
[edit] Quantum physics and geometric algebra
Schönberg is also cited for a series of publications of 1957/1958 on geometric algebras that stand in relation to quantum physics and quantum field theory. He pointed out that those algebras can be described in terms of extensions of the commutative and the anti-commutative Grassmann algebras which have the same structure as the boson algebra and the fermion algebra of creation and annihilation operators. These algebras, in turn, are related to the symplectic algebra and Clifford algebra, respectively.[1] Schönberg's ideas have been cited in connection with algebraic approaches to describe relativistic phase space.[2]
His work has been cited, together with that of Marcel Riesz, for its importance to Clifford algebras and mathematical physics in the proceedings of a workshop held in France in 1989 which had been dedicated to these two mathematicians.[3]
[edit] Politics
Schenberg was also a known member of the Brazilian Communist Party.[citation needed]
[edit] Articles
His articles include:
- M. Schönberg: Quantum kinematics and geometry, Il Nuovo Cimento (1955-1965), vol. 6, Supplement 1, pp. 356-380, 1957, DOI: 10.1007/BF02724793 (preview)
- M. Schönberg, S. Chandrasekhar: On the Evolution of the Main-Sequence Stars, Astrophysical Journal, vol. 96, no. p.161 ff., 1942, fulltext
[edit] References
- ^ F. A. M. Frescura, B. J. Hiley: Algebras, quantum theory and pre-space, p. 3–4 (published in Revista Brasileira de Fisica, Volume Especial, Julho 1984, Os 70 anos de Mario Schonberg, pp. 49-86)
- ^ M.C.B. Fernandes, J.D.M. Vianna: On the generalized phase space approach to Duffin–Kemmer–Petiau particles, Foundations of Physics, vol. 29, no.nbsp;2, pp. 201-219, 1999, DOI 10.1023/A:1018869505031 (abstract), therein p. 201
- ^ Artibani Micali, Roger Boudet, Jacques Helmstetter (edds.): Clifford Algebras and their Applications in Mathematical Physics. Workshop Proceedings: 2nd (Fundamental Theories of Physics), Kluwer, 1989, ISBN 0-7923-1623-1, Foreword (in French language)
| Preceded by José Goldemberg |
President of the Brazilian Society of Physics 1979 - 1981 |
Succeeded by Herch Moysés Nussenzveig |
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