Selected Papers of Chen Ning Yang II: With Commentaries

Professor Chen Ning Yang, an eminent contemporary physicist, was Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, from 1955 to 1966, and Albert Einstein Professor of Physics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook until his retirement in 1999. He has been Distinguished Professor-at-Large at the Chinese University of Hong Kong since 1986 and Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, since 1998. Since receiving his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1948, Prof Yang has made great impacts in both abstract theory and phenomenological analysis in modern physics. In 1983, he published “Selected Papers (1945–1980), With Commentary”. It has been considered by Freeman Dyson as one of his favorite books. The present book is a sequel to that earlier volume. It is a collection of his personally selected papers (1971–2012) supplemented by his insightful commentaries. Its contents reflect Professor Yang's changing interests after he reached age sixty. It also includes commentaries written by him in 2011 when he is 89 years old. The papers and commentaries in this unique collection comprise a remarkable personal and professional chronicle, shedding light on both the intellectual development of a great physicist and on the nature of scientific inquiry. Contents: Speech About the Great Wall C N Yang Discusses Physics in People's Republic of China A de Gaulle-Like Trip Condition of Self-Duality for SU(2) Gauge Fields on Euclidean Four-Dimensional Space Generalization of Dirac's Monopole to SU2 Gauge Fields Einstein and the Physics of the Future Does Violation of Microscopic Time-Reversal Invariance Lead to the Possibility of Entropy Decrease? Joseph Mayer and Statistical Mechanics Flux Quantization, A Personal Reminiscence The Discrete Symmetries P, T and C Gauge Fields, Electromagnetism and the Bohm-Aharonov Effect Spin of Electrons, Hadrons and Nuclei Hermann Weyl's Contribution to Physics Square Root of Minus One, Complex Phases and Erwin Schrödinger Generalization of Sturm-Liouville Theory to a System of Ordinary Differential Equations with Dirac Type Spectrum C Y Chao, Pair Creation and Pair Annihilation A One-Dimensional N Fermion Problem with Factorized S Matrix Journey Through Statistical Mechanics Modern Physics and Warm Friendship SO4 Symmetry in a Hubbard Model Symmetry and Physics S S Chern and I Reflections on the Development of Theoretical Physics Deng Jiaxian Julian Schwinger Path Crossings with Lars Onsager Exact Solution of the Vibration Problem for the Carbon-60 Molecule Father and I Speech After Banquet Writeup Upon Hearing of Mills' Death Enrico Fermi Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) Banquet Speech, June 2002 Thematic Melodies of Twentieth Century Theoretical Physics: Quantization, Symmetry and Phase Factor Gauge Invariance and Interactions Albert Einstein: Opportunity and Perception The Klein-Nishina Formula & Quantum Electrodynamics Pseudopotential Method and Dilute Hard “Sphere” Bose Gas in Dimensions 2, 4 and 5 Ground State of Fermions in a 1D Trap with δ Function Interaction Banquet Speech at the Singapore Conference in Honour of Murray Gell-Mann on His 80th Birthday Spin 1/2 Fermions in 1D Harmonic Trap with Repulsive Delta Function Interparticle Interaction One-Dimensional ω-Component Fermions and Bosons with Repulsive Delta Function Interaction Quantum Numbers, Chern Classes, and a Bodhisattva My Experience as a Student and Researcher Fermi's β-Deca