Gamow was born inOdessa,Russian Empire (nowOdesa,Ukraine). His father taught Russian language and literature insecondary schools, 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 English in his college years and became fluent. Most of his early publications were in German or Russian, but he later used English both for technical papers and for the lay audience.
In 1931, Gamow was elected a corresponding member of theAcademy of Sciences of the USSR at age 28 – one of the youngest in its history.[5][a][b] During the period 1931–1933, Gamow worked in the Physical Department of theRadium Institute in Leningrad headed byVitaly Khlopin. Europe's firstcyclotron was designed under the guidance and direct participation ofIgor 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.[6]
Staff of William Bragg's laboratory in 1931:W. H. Bragg (sitting, center): physicist A. Lebedev (leftmost), G. Gamow (rightmost)
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 thealpha decay of a nucleus viatunnelling, with mathematical help fromNikolai Kochin.[7][8] The problem was also solved independently byRonald W. Gurney andEdward U. Condon.[9][10] 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 nuclearpotential well. Also classically, it takes an enormous amount of energy to pull apart the nucleus, an event that would not occur spontaneously. Inquantum 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 thehalf-life of the alpha-decay event process and the energy of the emission, which had been previously discovered empirically and was known as theGeiger–Nuttall law.[11] Some years later, the nameGamow factor or Gamow–Sommerfeld factor was applied to the probability of incoming nuclear particles tunnelling through the electrostaticCoulomb barrier and undergoing nuclear reactions.
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 the Soviet Union, whom he nicknamed "Rho" afterthe 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 tokayak: first a planned 250-kilometer paddle over theBlack Sea toTurkey, and another attempt fromMurmansk toNorway. Poor weather foiled both attempts, but they had not been noticed by the authorities.[12]
In 1933, Gamow was suddenly granted permission to attend the 7thSolvay Conference on physics, inBrussels. 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 ofMarie Curie and other physicists. Over the next year, Gamow obtained temporary work at theCurie Institute,University of London, and theUniversity of Michigan.
When recruited in GWU, Gamow started theWashington Conference on Theoretical Physics. A series of small conferences from 1935–1947, that brought up experts in theoretical physics to discuss different subjects.[14] During the 1939 conference, Bohr announced publicly the discovery ofnuclear fission.[14]
In 1935, Gamow's son,Igor Gamow was born (in a 1947 book, Gamow's dedication was "To my son IGOR, Who Would Rather Be a Cowboy"). George Gamow became anaturalized American in 1940. He retained his formal association with GWU until 1956.
During World War II, Gamow continued to teach physics atGeorge Washington University and consulted for the US Navy.
Gamow was interested in the processes ofstellar evolution and the early history of theSolar System. In 1945, he co-authored a paper supporting work by German theoretical physicistCarl Friedrich von Weizsäcker on planetary formation in the early Solar System.[15] Gamow published another paper in the British journalNature 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).[16]
Gamow's work led the development of the hot "big bang" theory of the expanding universe. He was the earliest to employAlexander Friedmann's andGeorges 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.[17] 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[18] and to the subsequent condensation of matter into galaxies,[19] whose mass and diameter he was able to calculate in terms of the fundamental physical parameters, such as the speed of lightc, the Newtonian constant of gravitationG, the fine-structure constantα, and the Planck constanth.
Gamow's interest in cosmology arose from his earlier interest in energy generation and element production and transformation in stars.[20][21][22] This work, in turn, evolved from his fundamental discovery ofquantum tunneling as the mechanism of nuclearalpha 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 byFred Hoyle and others, that elements heavier than lithium are largely produced inthermonuclear 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 studentRalph Alpher the task of solving the equations numerically. These results of Gamow and Alpher appeared in 1948 as theAlpher–Bethe–Gamow paper.[23] 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,[24] 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.[25]
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.[26] In 1953 he produced similar results, but this time based on another determination of the density of matter and radiation, at the time at which they became equal.[27] In this paper, Gamow determined the density of the relict background radiation, from which a present temperature of 7 K was predicted – a value which was slightly more than twice the presently-accepted value.
In 1967, he published reminiscences and recapitulation of his own work as well as the work of Alpher and Robert Herman (both with Gamow and also independently of him).[28] This was prompted by the discovery of thecosmic microwave background radiation by Penzias and Wilson in 1965; Gamow, Alpher, and Herman felt that they did not receive the credit they deserved for their theoretical predictions of its existence and source.[citation needed] Gamow was disconcerted by the fact that the authors of a communication[29] explaining the significance of the Penzias/Wilson observations failed to recognize and cite the previous work of Gamow and his collaborators.[citation needed]
In 1953,Francis Crick,James Watson,Maurice Wilkins andRosalind Franklin discovered thedouble helix structure of theDNA macromolecule. Gamow attempted to solve the problem of how the ordering of four different bases (adenine,cytosine,thymine andguanine) in DNA chains might control the synthesis of proteins from their constituent amino acids.[30] Crick has said that Gamow's suggestions helped him in his own thinking about the problem.[31] As related by Crick,[32] Gamow observed that the 43 = 64 possiblepermutations of the four DNA bases, taken three at a time, would be reduced to 20 distinctcombinations if the order was irrelevant.[33] 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 ofbiological degeneracy.[34][35]
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 alsonon-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 truegenetic 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 theRNA Tie Club. This was a discussion group of leading scientists concerned with the problem of the genetic code, which counted among its members the physicistsEdward Teller andRichard 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".[36]
Gamow's grave in Green Mountain Cemetery, Boulder, Colorado, USThe George Gamow Tower at theUniversity of Colorado Boulder
Gamow worked at George Washington University from 1934 until 1954, when he became a visiting professor at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. In 1956, he moved to theUniversity of Colorado Boulder, where he remained for the rest of his career. In 1956, Gamow became one of the founding members of thePhysical Science Study Committee (PSSC), which later reformed teaching of high-school physics in the post-Sputnik years.
In 1959, Gamow,Hans Bethe, andVictor Weisskopf publicly supported the re-entry ofFrank Oppenheimer into teaching college physics at theUniversity of Colorado, as theRed Scare began to fade (J. Robert Oppenheimer was the older brother of Frank Oppenheimer, and both of them had worked on theManhattan Project before their careers in physics were derailed byMcCarthyism).[37]: 130 While in Colorado, Frank Oppenheimer became increasingly interested in teaching science through simple hands-on experiments, and he eventually moved toSan Francisco to found theExploratorium.[37]: 130–152 Gamow would not live to see his colleague's opening of this innovative new science museum, in late August 1969.[37]: 152
In his 1961 bookThe Atom and its Nucleus, Gamow proposed representing theperiodic system of thechemical elements as a continuous tape, with the elements in order ofatomic number wound round in a three-dimensional helix whose diameter increased stepwise (corresponding to the longer rows of the conventional periodic table).
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 fromliver 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 inBoulder, Colorado, and was buried there in Green Mountain Cemetery. The physics department tower at the University of Colorado at Boulder is named after him.
In 1956, Gamow divorced his wife Rho. In 1958 he marriedBarbara Perkins, an editor for one of his publishers.
Gamow was a well-known prankster, who delighted in practical jokes and humorous twists embedded in serious scientific publications.[38][39] His most famous prank was the pioneeringAlpher–Bethe–Gamow paper (1948), which was serious in its style and content. However, Gamow could not resist adding his colleagueHans Bethe to the list of authors, as apun on the first three letters of theGreek alphabet.[38][40][39]
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 1946 Gamow was a proponent ofhuman spaceflight propelled by atomic energy.[44] "We may prepare ourselves for a trip to the moon and to various planets of our solar system in a comfortable rocketship driven by atomic power." He also wrote "the ordinary chemical fuels which could be used in the motor of such a rocketship could not possibly give it the necessary velocity...".[45]By 1965 he moderated his expectations though he re-stated his atomic-power prognostication:
Whereas we may be able to study the forms of life that may have developed on Mars and Venus (the best "inhabitable" planets of the solar system) in the not too distant future by means of an adventuresome trip to these planets on a "nuclear power propelled space ship," the question about the possible existence and the forms of life in other stellar worlds hundreds and thousands of light-years away, will probably remain forever an unsolvable problem of science.[46]
By that time thespace race was underway with conventional chemical rockets.
His book,The Creation of the Universe, was first published in 1952, concluding: "It took less than an hour to make all the atoms in the universe, a few hundred million years to make the stars and planets but three billion years to make man."[47][48]
Before his death, Gamow was working with Richard Blade on a textbookBasic Theories in Modern Physics, but the work was never completed or published under that title. Gamow was also writingMy World Line: An Informal Autobiography, which was published posthumously in 1970.
A collection of Gamow's writings was donated to TheGeorge 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 MelvinGelman Library.[49]
Mr Tompkins Learns the Facts of Life (1953), about biology
Mr. Tompkins Inside Himself (1967), coauthorMartynas Yčas revisedMr Tompkins Learns the Facts of Life giving a broader view of biology, including recent developments in molecular biology
Title page of a 1949 copy of "Theory of Atomic Nucleus and Nuclear Energy-Sources"
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,ISBN0-13-187291-5. Incorporates material fromMatter, Earth, and Sky andThe Atom and Its Nucleus. Notwithstanding the title, this book isnot part of theMr. Tompkins series.
^ He was expelled from the Academy in 1938, but his membership was restored posthumously in 1990.
^ The youngest corresponding member elected to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR was the Armenian mathematicianSergey Mergelyan (1928-2008), elected at age 24.
^ab"Kalinga 1956".www.unesco.org. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Retrieved2020-05-16.
^Z. Physik51, 204 (1928) G. Gamow, "Zur Quantentheorie des Atomkernes".
^R. W. Gurney and E. U. Condon, "Quantum Mechanics and Radioactive Disintegration"Nature122, 439 (1928);Phys. Rev. 33, 127 (1929).
^Friedlander, Gerhart; Kennedy, Joseph E; Miller, Julian Malcolm (1964).Nuclear and Radiochemistry (2nd ed.). New York, London, Sydney: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 225–7.ISBN978-0-471-86255-0.
^Gamow, G.; Hynek, J. A. (1 March 1945). "A New Theory by C. F. Von Weizsacker of the Origin of the Planetary System".The Astrophysical Journal.101: 249.Bibcode:1945ApJ...101..249G.doi:10.1086/144711.
^Gamow, G. (1946, October 1 & 15), Physical Review.
^for example, Gamow, G. (1942), Jour. Washington Academy of Sciences, Vol. 32
^Gamow, G. (1968) 'On the Origin of Galaxies', Properties of Matter under Unusual Conditions (Edward Teller 60th Birthday Volume). New York; John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Interscience Publishers.
^Gamow, G. (1935), Ohio Journal of Science, 35, 5.
^Chandrasekhar, S., Gamow, G. and Tuve, M., (1938), Nature, May 28.
^Gamow, G., Schoenberg, M., (1940), Physical Review, December 15.
^Alpher, R. A., Bethe, H., Gamow, G., (1948), Phys. Rev., April 1. The inclusion of Bethe's name is explained atαβγ paper.
^Gamow, G., Teller, E., (1939), Nature, January 21 and March 4.
^Gamow and Critchfield (1949), "Theory of Atomic Nucleus and Energy Sources", Clarendon Press, Oxford
^ANDERSON: "What, uh, one thing I'm fascinated with is, of course, George Gamow left the university in '59 [1956], and Edward Teller had left in 1946 [1945] and went to the University of Chicago. But do you have any recollections of maybe some of the, anything between Dr. Marvin and Dr. Gamow, as far as, just before he left and went to Colorado?" NAESER: "Ah, no, I don't know of any. I know Gamow made no, never did hide the fact that he was an atheist, but whether that came into the picture, I don't know. But the story around the university was that Gamow and Mrs. Gamow were divorced, but they were in the same social circles some of the time, he thought it was better to get out of Washington. That's why he went to Ohio State."The George Washington University and Foggy Bottom Historical Encyclopedia,Gamow, George and Edward TellerArchived 2010-06-13 at theWayback Machine, October 23, 1996.
^Grote Reber."The Big Bang Is Bunk"(PDF). 21st Century Science Associates. p. 44. Retrieved28 May 2012.After the initial mathematical work on relativity theory had been done, the Big Bang theory itself was invented by a Belgian priest, Georges Lemaître, improved upon by an avowed atheist, George Gamow, and is now all but universally accepted by those who hold advanced degrees in astronomy and the physical sciences, despite its obvious absurdity.
^Simon Singh (2010).Big Bang. HarperCollins UK.ISBN978-0-00-737550-9.Surprisingly, the atheist George Gamow enjoyed the Papal attention given to his field of research.
^G. Gamow (1946)Atomic Energy in Human and Cosmic Life, Preface, page ix, Cambridge University Press and Macmillan Company
Interviews with Ralph A. Alpher and Robert C. Herman conducted by Martin Harwit in August, 1983, for the Archives at the Niels Bohr Library, American Institute of Physics, College Park, Maryland.
"Ralph A. Alpher, Robert C. Herman, and the Prediction of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation," Physics in Perspective, 14(3), 300–334, 2012, by Victor S. Alpher.
