From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Tue Sep 20 2005 - 13:16:34 UTC
>From: cunews_at_cornell.edu
>Reply-To: cunews_at_cornell.edu
>To: CUNEWS-CAMPUS-L_at_cornell.edu (CUNEWS-CAMPUS-L)
>Subject: Featuring Cornell: Honoring Hans Bethe
>Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 23:22:21 -0400
>
>University celebrates 'most distinguished professor ever to serve at
>Cornell' with a building in his honor
>http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Sept05/Bethe.celebration.lg.html
>
>Sept. 19, 2005
>
>By Lauren Gold
>lg34_at_cornell.edu
>
>
>ITHACA, N.Y. -- There are so many things to say about Hans Bethe. One of
>the most important is that his name will live on with a West Campus
>building that is to be named for him.
>
>"He was great and good man," said physicist Freeman Dyson of the Institute
>for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J. "A great teacher, great scientist, wise
>counselor and faithful friend."
>
>On Sunday afternoon, Sept. 18, some of Bethe's closest colleagues and
>protégés delivered tributes to Bethe before a full house at
>Statler Auditorium. The event, "Celebrating an Exemplary Life," drew
>hundreds of admirers from the Cornell community and beyond.
>
>They came to remember the man Dyson once characterized, in a letter to his
>family, as "large and clumsy, with an exceptionally muddy pair of shoes."
>They spoke of his wide-ranging and extraordinary accomplishments -- his
>Nobel Prize-winning paper explaining the process that powers the stars; his
>leadership as head of the theoretical division at the Los Alamos National
>Laboratory during the Manhattan Project; his essential contributions to the
>field of quantum electrodynamics; and his tireless dedication to making the
>world safer.
>
>Setting the tone, Cornell University President Hunter R. Rawlings began the
>event by announcing that West Campus House Three, a building planned for
>the West Campus Residential Initiative project, will become the Hans Bethe
>House. A ceremony dedicating the building will be held following its
>completion next spring.
>
>"Hans Bethe was the most distinguished professor ever to serve at Cornell
>University," said Rawlings. "He controlled the entire field of physics in
>his head. He defied conventional wisdom that physics is a young person's
>sport. And he also changed the way physics and much of contemporary science
>is done."
>
>"He was a man of principle and integrity," said Rawlings. "Cornell will
>keep his example forever before the world."
>
>Each speaker following Rawlings noted the sides of Bethe they knew best.
>
>Kurt Gottfried, Cornell professor emeritus of physics, spoke of his
>mentor's unparalleled 70-plus-year scientific career. "His intellectual
>output was on a scale which would have been thought impossible -- had he
>not existed," Gottfried said. "But Bethe achieved respect and esteem not
>explicable by his contributions to physics alone."
>
>Much of that respect came from his strong sense of duty to his adopted
>country. Bethe came to the United States in 1935, after Hitler's racial
>laws barred him from work in Germany, and said he immediately felt at home
>here.
>
>"The U.S. offered a social and intellectual atmosphere unique and different
>than anything he had been part of before," said Bethe's son, Henry. "He
>loved it. He felt a great sense of obligation to it." Bethe's stand against
>nuclear proliferation was largely responsible for President John F.
>Kennedy's signing of the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty outlawing atmospheric
>tests. Even after Bethe's 1975 retirement from teaching, he continued to
>advocate strongly for nuclear disarmament.
>
>Bethe also loved Cornell.
>
>Dale Corson, Cornell president emeritus and former physics department
>chair, spoke of Bethe's leadership during the chaotic summer of 1969, when
>students seized Willard Straight Hall and announced, over the radio, that
>Cornell had only a few remaining hours of existence.
>
>"I felt strongly that this should not be so," Bethe said later. In the
>weeks following the radio announcement, he set an example for colleagues by
>participating in campuswide meetings and writing a paper on "The Academic
>Responsibility of the Faculty." That Cornell survived through that
>turbulent time, said Corson, was in part due to those efforts.
>
>"It was a long way from neutrinos and supernovae … but for this place and
>that time, that paper was more important than any of the others," said
>Corson. "I've always been very grateful to Hans for that."
>
>The speakers remembered Bethe's joyful enthusiasm for new knowledge, and
>his ability to teach and guide each of his students individually -- with
>just the right touch.
>
>Many also noted Bethe's distress, in his final years of life, at the
>current tone of national politics.
>
>"He felt very sad that at a time when there should have been more
>scientists and intellectuals getting involved, there were less," said
>Cornell astrophysicist Edwin Salpeter, who -- like Corson and many others
>-- chose a career at Cornell based on Bethe's presence here. "I am hoping
>that our junior colleagues will speak out."
>
>And finally, said Bethe's colleagues, any fitting tribute is also
>necessarily a tribute to his wife, Rose.
>
>"[Bethe's] habit was to talk with Rose about the larger dimensions of his
>work," said Rawlings; Bethe relied on her insight, commitment and
>unflagging support.
>
>Rose Bethe spoke briefly. "He would have loved to hear it all," she said,
>"because he liked to be praised. But I think he knew that Cornell
>appreciated him."
>
>For her words, and for her life, the audience stood and applauded.
>
>At a reception after the ceremony, Cornell seniors Ben Hsu, Will Regan,
>Andrew Schwarzkopf and Nabil Iqbal wondered at a life so amazing, and so
>full.
>
>The four were among dozens of younger attendees who never got to meet Hans
>Bethe. They came to show their respect, and to be inspired and to learn
>from his example.
>
>And when they receive their degrees in physics next May, perhaps they will
>consider Bethe's own words, replayed to the eminent physicists and
>just-starting-out students who filled the auditorium:
>
>"It has been a very interesting life, and most satisfactory. So I recommend
>to all the young people to do likewise."
>
>
>-30-
>
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>Phone: (607) 255-6074
>E-mail: pressoffice_at_cornell.edu
>
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>
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