George Gamow (March 4, 1904 – August 19,
1968), born Georgiy Antonovich Gamov, was
a Soviet-American theoretical physicist and
cosmologist. He was an early advocate and
developer of Lemaître's Big Bang theory.
He discovered a theoretical explanation of
alpha decay via quantum tunneling, and worked
on radioactive decay of the atomic nucleus,
star formation, stellar nucleosynthesis and
Big Bang nucleosynthesis (which he collectively
called nucleocosmogenesis), and molecular
genetics.
In his middle and late career, Gamow directed
much of his attention to teaching and wrote
popular books on science, including One Two
Three... Infinity and the Mr Tompkins ... series
of books (1939–1967). Some of his books
are still in print more than a half-century
after their original publication.
== Early life and career ==
Gamow was born in Odessa, Russian Empire.
His father taught Russian language and literature
in high school, and his mother taught geography
and history at a school for girls. In addition
to Russian, Gamow learned to speak some French
from his mother and German from a tutor. Gamow
learned fluent English in his college years
and later. Most of his early publications
were in German or Russian, but he later switched
to writing in English for both technical papers
and for the lay audience.
He was educated at the Institute of Physics
and Mathematics in Odessa (1922–23) and
at the University of Leningrad (1923–1929).
Gamow studied under Alexander Friedmann for
some time in Leningrad, until Friedmann's
early death in 1925. He aspired to do his
doctoral thesis under Friedmann, but had to
change dissertation advisors. At the University,
Gamow made friends with three other students
of theoretical physics, Lev Landau, Dmitri
Ivanenko, and Matvey Bronshtein. The four
formed a group known as the Three Musketeers,
which met to discuss and analyze the ground-breaking
papers on quantum mechanics published during
those years. He later used the same phrase
to describe the Alpher, Herman, and Gamow
group.
On graduation, he worked on quantum theory
in Göttingen, where his research into the
atomic nucleus provided the basis for his
doctorate. He then worked at the Theoretical
Physics Institute of the University of Copenhagen
from 1928 to 1931, with a break to work with
Ernest Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory
in Cambridge. He continued to study the atomic
nucleus (proposing the "liquid drop" model),
but also worked on stellar physics with Robert
Atkinson and Fritz Houtermans.
In 1931, Gamow was elected a corresponding
member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR
at age 28 – one of the youngest in the history
of this organization. During the period 1931–1933,
Gamow worked in the Physical Department of
the Radium Institute (Leningrad) headed by
Vitaly Khlopin. Europe's first cyclotron was
designed under the guidance and direct participation
of Igor Kurchatov, Lev Mysovskii and Gamow.
In 1932, Gamow and Mysovskii submitted a draft
design for consideration by the Academic Council
of the Radium Institute, which approved it.
The cyclotron was not completed until 1937.
== Radioactive decay ==
In the early 20th century, radioactive materials
were known to have characteristic exponential
decay rates, or half-lives. At the same time,
radiation emissions were known to have certain
characteristic energies. By 1928, Gamow in
Göttingen had solved the theory of the alpha
decay of a nucleus via tunnelling, with mathematical
help from Nikolai Kochin. The problem was
also solved independently by Ronald W. Gurney
and Edward U. Condon. Gurney and Condon did
not, however, achieve the quantitative results
achieved by Gamow.
Classically, the particle is confined to the
nucleus because of the high energy requirement
to escape the very strong nuclear potential
well. Also classically, it takes an enormous
amount of energy to pull apart the nucleus,
an event that would not occur spontaneously.
In quantum mechanics, however, there is a
probability the particle can "tunnel through"
the wall of the potential well and escape.
Gamow solved a model potential for the nucleus
and derived from first principles a relationship
between the half-life of the alpha-decay event
process and the energy of the emission, which
had been previously discovered empirically
and was known as the Geiger–Nuttall law.
Some years later, the name Gamow factor or
Gamow–Sommerfeld factor was applied to the
probability of incoming nuclear particles
tunnelling through the electrostatic Coulomb
barrier and undergoing nuclear reactions.
== Defection ==
Gamow worked at a number of Soviet establishments
before deciding to flee the Soviet Union because
of increased oppression. In 1931, he was officially
denied permission to attend a scientific conference
in Italy. Also in 1931, he married Lyubov
Vokhmintseva (Russian: Любовь Вохминцева),
another physicist in Soviet Union, whom he
nicknamed "Rho" after the Greek letter. Gamow
and his new wife spent much of the next two
years trying to leave the Soviet Union, with
or without official permission. Niels Bohr
and other friends invited Gamow to visit during
this period, but Gamow could not get permission
to leave.
Gamow later said that his first two attempts
to defect with his wife were in 1932 and involved
trying to kayak: first a planned 250-kilometer
paddle over the Black Sea to Turkey, and another
attempt from Murmansk to Norway. Poor weather
foiled both attempts, but they had not been
noticed by the authorities.In 1933, Gamow
was suddenly granted permission to attend
the 7th Solvay Conference on physics, in Brussels.
He insisted on having his wife accompany him,
even saying that he would not go alone. Eventually
the Soviet authorities relented and issued
passports for the couple. The two attended
and arranged to extend their stay, with the
help of Marie Curie and other physicists.
Over the next year, Gamow obtained temporary
work at the Curie Institute, University of
London, and the University of Michigan.
== Move to America ==
In 1934, Gamow and his wife moved to the United
States. He became a professor at George Washington
University (GWU) in 1934 and recruited physicist
Edward Teller from London to join him at GWU.
In 1936, Gamow and Teller published what became
known as the "Gamow–Teller selection rule"
for beta decay. During his time in Washington,
Gamow would also publish major scientific
papers with Mário Schenberg and Ralph Alpher.
By the late 1930s, Gamow's interests had turned
towards astrophysics and cosmology.
In 1935, Gamow's son, Igor Gamow was born
(in his 1947 book, Gamow's dedication was
"To my son Igor, who wanted to be a cowboy").
George Gamow became a naturalized American
in 1940. He retained his formal association
with GWU until 1956.
During World War II, Gamow did not work directly
on the Manhattan Project producing the atomic
bomb, in spite of his knowledge of radioactivity
and nuclear fusion. He continued to teach
physics at GWU and consulted for the U.S.
Navy.
Gamow was interested in the processes of stellar
evolution and the early history of the Solar
System. In 1945, he co-authored a paper supporting
work by German theoretical physicist Carl
Friedrich von Weizsäcker on planetary formation
in the early Solar System. Gamow published
another paper in the British journal Nature
in 1948, in which he developed equations for
the mass and radius of a primordial galaxy
(which typically contains about one hundred
billion stars, each with a mass comparable
with that of the Sun).
== Big Bang nucleosynthesis ==
Gamow's work led the development of the hot
"big bang" theory of the expanding universe.
He was the earliest to employ Alexander Friedmann's
and Georges Lemaître's non-static solutions
of Einstein's gravitational equations describing
a universe of uniform matter density and constant
spatial curvature. Gamow's crucial advance
would provide a physical reification of Lemaître's
idea of a unique primordial quantum. Gamow
did this by assuming that the early universe
was dominated by radiation rather than by
matter. Most of the later work in cosmology
is founded in Gamow's theory. He applied his
model to the question of the creation of the
chemical elements and to the subsequent condensation
of matter into galaxies, whose mass and diameter
he was able to calculate in terms of the fundamental
physical parameters, such as the speed of
light c, Newton's gravitational constant G,
Sommerfeld's fine-structure constant α, and
Planck's constant h.
Gamow's interest in cosmology arose from his
earlier interest in energy generation and
element production and transformation in stars.
This work, in turn, evolved from his fundamental
discovery of quantum tunneling as the mechanism
of nuclear alpha decay, and his application
of this theory to the inverse process to calculate
rates of thermonuclear reaction.
At first, Gamow believed that all the elements
might be produced in the very high temperature
and density early stage of the universe. Later,
he revised this opinion on the strength of
compelling evidence advanced by Fred Hoyle
et al. that elements heavier than lithium
are largely produced in thermonuclear reactions
in stars and in supernovae. Gamow formulated
a set of coupled differential equations describing
his proposed process and assigned, as a PhD.
dissertation topic, his graduate student Ralph
Alpher the task of solving the equations numerically.
These results of Gamow and Alpher appeared
in 1948 as the Alpher–Bethe–Gamow paper.
Bethe later referred to this paper as being
"wrong". Before his interest turned to the
question of the genetic code, Gamow published
about twenty papers on cosmology. The earliest
was in 1939 with Edward Teller on galaxy formation,
followed in 1946 by the first description
of cosmic nucleosynthesis. He also wrote many
popular articles as well as academic textbooks
on this and other subjects.In 1948, he published
a paper dealing with an attenuated version
of the coupled set of equations describing
the production of the proton and the deuteron
from thermal neutrons. By means of a simplification
and using the observed ratio of hydrogen to
heavier elements he was able to obtain the
density of matter at the onset of nucleosynthesis
and from this the mass and diameter of the
early galaxies. In 1953 he produced similar
results, but this time based on another determination
of the density of matter and radiation at
the point at which they became equal. In this
paper Gamow determined the density of the
relict background radiation from which a present
temperature of 7K is trivially predicted – a
value slightly more than twice the presently
accepted value. In 1967 he published a reminder
and recapitulation of his own work as well
as that of Alpher and Robert Herman (both
with Gamow and also independently of him).
This was prompted by the discovery of the
cosmic background radiation by Penzias and
Wilson in 1965, for which Gamow, Alpher and
Herman felt that they did not receive the
credit they deserved for their prediction
of its existence and source. Gamow was disconcerted
by the fact that the authors of a communication
explaining the significance of the Penzias/Wilson
observations failed to recognize and cite
the previous work of Gamow and his collaborators.
== DNA and RNA ==
In 1953, Francis Crick, James Watson, Maurice
Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin discovered the
double helix structure of the DNA macromolecule.
Gamow attempted to solve the problem of how
the ordering of four different bases (adenine,
cytosine, thymine and guanine) in DNA chains
might control the synthesis of proteins from
their constituent amino acids. Crick has said
that Gamow's suggestions helped him in his
own thinking about the problem. As related
by Crick, Gamow observed that the 43 = 64
possible permutations of the four DNA bases,
taken three at a time, would be reduced to
20 distinct combinations if the order was
irrelevant.. Gamow proposed that these 20
combinations might code for the twenty amino
acids which, he suggested, might well be the
sole constituents of all proteins. Gamow's
contribution to solving the problem of genetic
coding gave rise to important models of biological
degeneracy.The specific system that Gamow
was proposing (called "Gamow's diamonds")
proved to be incorrect. The triplets were
supposed to be overlapping, so that in the
sequence GGAC (for example), GGA could produce
one amino acid and GAC another, and also non-degenerate
(meaning that each amino acid would correspond
to one combination of three bases – in any
order). Later protein sequencing work proved
that this could not be the case; the true
genetic code is non-overlapping and degenerate,
and changing the order of a combination of
bases does change the amino acid.
In 1954, Gamow and Watson co-founded the RNA
Tie Club. This was a discussion group of leading
scientists concerned with the problem of the
genetic code, which counted among its members
the physicists Edward Teller and Richard Feynman.
In his autobiographical writings, Watson later
acknowledged the great importance of Gamow's
insightful initiative. However, this did not
prevent him from describing this colorful
personality as a "zany", card-trick playing,
limerick-singing, booze-swilling, practical–joking
"giant imp".
== Late career and life ==
Gamow worked at George Washington University
from 1934 until 1954, when he became a visiting
professor at the University of California,
Berkeley. In 1956, he moved to the University
of Colorado Boulder, where he remained for
the rest of his career. In 1956, Gamow became
one of the founding members of the Physical
Science Study Committee (PSSC), which later
reformed teaching of high-school physics in
the post-Sputnik years. Also in 1956, he divorced
his first wife. Gamow later married Barbara
Perkins (an editor for one of his publishers)
in 1958.
In 1959, Gamow, Hans Bethe, and Victor Weisskopf
publicly supported the re-entry of Frank Oppenheimer
into teaching college physics at the University
of Colorado, as the Red Scare began to fade
(J. Robert Oppenheimer was the older brother
of Frank Oppenheimer, and both of them had
worked on the Manhattan Project before their
careers in physics were derailed by McCarthyism).
While in Colorado, Frank Oppenheimer became
increasingly interested in teaching science
through simple hands-on experiments, and he
eventually moved to San Francisco to found
the Exploratorium. Gamow would not live to
see his colleague's opening of this innovative
new science museum, in late August 1969.In
his 1961 book The Atom and its Nucleus, Gamow
proposed representing the periodic system
of the chemical elements as a continuous tape,
with the elements in order of atomic number
wound round in a three-dimensional helix whose
diameter increased stepwise (corresponding
to the longer rows of the conventional periodic
table).
Gamow was an atheist.Gamow continued his teaching
at the University of Colorado Boulder and
focused increasingly on writing textbooks
and books on science for the general public.
After several months of ill health, surgeries
on his circulatory system, diabetes and liver
problems, Gamow was dying from liver failure,
which he had called the "weak link" that could
not withstand the other stresses.
In a letter written to Ralph Alpher on August
18, he had written, "The pain in the abdomen
is unbearable and does not stop". Prior to
this, there had been a long exchange of letters
with his former student, in which he was seeking
a fresh understanding of some concepts used
in his earlier work, with Paul Dirac. Gamow
relied on Alpher for deeper understanding
of mathematics.
On August 19, 1968, Gamow died at age 64 in
Boulder, Colorado, and was buried there in
Green Mountain Cemetery. The physics department
tower at the University of Colorado at Boulder
is named for him.
== Writings ==
Gamow was a highly successful science writer,
with several of his books still in print more
than a half-century after their initial publication.
As an educator, Gamow recognized and emphasized
fundamental principles that were unlikely
to become obsolete, even as the pace of science
and technology accelerated. He also conveyed
a sense of excitement with the revolution
in physics and other scientific topics of
interest to the common reader. Gamow himself
sketched the many illustrations for his books,
which added a new dimension to and complemented
what he intended to convey in the text. He
was unafraid to introduce mathematics wherever
it was essential, but he tried to avoid deterring
potential readers by including large numbers
of equations that did not illustrate essential
points.
In 1956, he was awarded the Kalinga Prize
by UNESCO for his work in popularizing science
with his Mr. Tompkins... series of books (1939–1967),
his book One, Two, Three...Infinity, and other
works.
Before his death, Gamow was working with Richard
Blade on a textbook Basic Theories in Modern
Physics, but the work was never completed
or published under that title. Gamow was also
writing My World Line: An Informal Autobiography,
which was published posthumously in 1970.
A collection of Gamow's writings was donated
to The George Washington University in 1996.
The materials include correspondence, articles,
manuscripts and printed materials both by
and about George Gamow. The collection is
currently under the care of GWU's Special
Collections Research Center, located in the
Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library.
== Books ==
=== 
Popular ===
The Birth and Death of the Sun (1940, revised
1952)
The Biography of the Earth (1941)
One Two Three ... Infinity (1947, revised
1961), Viking Press (copyright renewed by
Barbara Gamow, 1974), Dover Publications,
ISBN 0-486-25664-2, illustrated by the author.
Dedicated to his son, Igor Gamow, it remains
one of the most well received ever in the
popular science genre. The book winds from
mathematics to biology, to physics, crystallography,
and more.
The Moon (1953)
Gamow, George; Stern, Marvin (1958). Puzzle-Math.
Viking Press. ISBN 978-0-333-08637-7.
Biography of Physics (1961)
Gravity (1962) Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-42563-0.
Profiles of Galileo, Newton, and Einstein
A Planet Called Earth (1963)
A Star Called the Sun (1964)
Thirty Years That Shook Physics: The Story
of Quantum Theory, 1966, Dover Publications,
ISBN 0-486-24895-X.
My World Line: An Informal Autobiography (1970)
Viking Press, ISBN 0-670-50376-2
==== Mr Tompkins series ====
Throughout these books, Mr Tompkins is introduced
as "C. G. H. Tompkins" to emphasize the notion
of cGh physics.
Mr Tompkins in Wonderland (1940) Originally
published in serial form in Discovery magazine
(UK) in 1938.
Mr Tompkins Explores the Atom (1945)
Mr Tompkins Learns the Facts of Life (1953),
about biology
Mr Tompkins in Paperback (1965), combines
Mr Tompkins in Wonderland with Mr Tompkins
Explores the Atom, Cambridge University Press,
1993 Canto edition with foreword by Roger
Penrose
Mr. Tompkins Inside Himself (1967), A rewritten
version of Mr Tompkins Learns the Facts of
Life giving a broader view of biology, including
recent developments in molecular biology.
Coauthored by M. Ycas.
The New World of Mr Tompkins (1999), coauthor
Russell Stannard updated Mr Tompkins in Paperback
(ISBN 9780521630092 is a hardcover)
=== Science textbooks ===
The Constitution of Atomic Nuclei and Radioactivity
(1931)
Structure of Atomic Nuclei and Nuclear Transformations
(1937)
Atomic Energy in Cosmic and Human Life (1947)
Theory of Atomic Nucleus and Nuclear Energy
Sources (1949) coauthor C. L. Critchfield
The Creation of the Universe (1952)
Matter, Earth and Sky (1958)
Physics: Foundations & Frontiers (1960) coauthor
John M. Cleveland
The Atom and its Nucleus (1961)
Mr. Tompkins Gets Serious: The Essential George
Gamow (2005). edited by Robert Oerter, Pi
Press, ISBN 0-13-187291-5. Incorporates material
from Matter, Earth, and Sky and The Atom and
Its Nucleus. Notwithstanding the title, this
book is not part of the Mr. Tompkins series.
== In popular culture ==
George Gamow was the inspiration for Professor
Gamma in the Professor Gamma series of science
fiction books by Geoffrey Hoyle and his father
astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle.
== See also ==
Urca process
Ylem
RNA Tie Club
