Born #OTD: The great, prolific Hans Bethe. Bethe made so many contributions to so many fields of physics that the astronomer John Bahcall joked that there was a conspiracy by dozens of people to publish their paper under the name 'Hans Bethe'. 
Bethe's stamina, concentration, all-encompassing knowledge of physics and contributions made him a legend. His most famous student, Freeman Dyson, once joked to me that if he really focused on a problem he could be one tenth as good as Bethe. Physicist David Wark captures the awe
Bethe won the Nobel Prize for solving an elemental problem that had puzzled humanity for hundreds of years: What makes the sun shine? It took him until 1968 to get the prize because they were figuring out which one of his many contributions to recognize.
What made Bethe truly unique, however, was that he wasn't just an extraordinary scientist but a truly great human being. He became known as the conscience of the physics community, fighting against nuclear proliferation after playing a key role in the creation of the bomb.
He could be steadfast under the most trying of circumstances, and knew how to compromise without betraying his liberal principles. This distinguished him from his close friend Robert Oppenheimer and led to a very different life trajectory. wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2015/08/robert…
Bethe's Nobel Prize winning paper is characteristic of his style. He lays out the problem, suggests a possible solution, then examines 33 reactions and discards most of them systematically before zeroing in on the jugular; a small set of reactions that fuel the sun and stars.
This 1968 profile of Bethe describes the awe that both scientists and government officials held him in. "Give the problem to Hans Bethe" became the go-to solution for everyone.
Bethe also became one of fascism's greatest gifts to this country; an immigrant and patriot who quietly made the United States great without fanfare. "Understand what I love about America", he told his mentor Arnold Sommerfeld in a letter wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2016/06/unders…
This photo of Bethe was taken at Los Alamos only a few months before he died. He was almost ninety-nine then: his last paper on supernovae was submitted after his demise, he had published his first paper when he was eighteen. A force of nature and humanity who left a great legacy
