Bethe, Hans A.


Bethe, Hans A. (Albrecht)

(1906– ) physicist; born in Strasbourg, Germany (now France). He taught in Germany (1928–33), but since he was half Jewish, he fled Germany's growing Nazi regime and moved to England (1933–34). He came to the U.S.A. to become professor of physics at Cornell University (1935–75), and became director of theoretical physics for the Manhattan Project (1943–46). After World War II, he pursued his earlier research on stellar nuclear energy and the origin of the chemical elements during the generation of the universe. For these pioneering efforts he was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in physics.