Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe passes away at age of 98

March 7, 2005 Nobel Laureate in Physics  died in his home in on March 6, 2005, according to Cornell University, where he was professor emeritus of physics.

Hans Albrecht Bethe (pronounced Bay-ta) was born on July 2, 1906 in the city of, then part of Germany (now part of France). He studied physics at Frankfurt and obtained his doctorate from the.

Bethe, whose mother was Jewish}}, fled Germany in 1933 when the came to power. Bethe, along with hundreds of other Jewish academics, were fired from their posts as a result of one of [[Adolf Hitler's first anti-Semitic acts. Bethe moved first to England and in 1935 to the USA where he taught at Cornell University.

Between 1935 and 1938, he studied and reaction cross sections. This research was useful to Bethe in more quantitatively developing 's theory of the compound nucleus.

During World War II, he served as a prominent member of a special summer session at the at the invitation of, which outlined the first designs for the  and served as the beginning of the. When Oppenheimer started the secret weapons design laboratory,, he appointed Bethe as Director of the Theoretical Division.

After the war, Bethe argued that a crash project for the should not be attempted, though after  announced the beginning of such a crash project, and the outbreak of the, he signed up and played a key role in the weapon's development. In 1968, he reflected upon the choice, noting that "It seemed quite logical. But sometimes I wish I were more consistent an idealist." Though he would see the project through to its end, in Bethe's account he was primarily hopeful that the weapon would be impossible to produce. He later characterized as the "father" of the hydrogen bomb, and  as its "mother," and himself as its "midwife."

Among his many honors, Bethe received the in 1955, and in 1961 he was awarded the  of the  for his work in identifying the energy generating processes in stars. In 1967, Bethe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his studies of the production of solar and stellar energy,. He postulated that the source of this energy are in which  was converted into.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Bethe campaigned for the peaceful use of nuclear energy, arguing against the and against. In 1995, at the age of 88, Bethe wrote an open letter calling on all scientists to "cease and desist" from working on any aspect of nuclear weapons development and manufacture. In 2004, he signed a letter along with 47 other Nobel laureates endorsing John Kerry for president of the United States citing Bush's apparent misuse of science.