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FORMATION AND EVOLUTION OF BLACK HOLES IN THE GALAXY
Selected Papers with Commentary
edited by H A Bethe (Cornell University, USA) , G E Brown (State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA) , & C-H Lee (Seoul National University, South Korea)
Hans A Bethe took his doctorate with Sommerfeld in Munich in 1928. He worked in Stuttgart with Ewald and in Rome with Fermi, before going to Manchester, England. Since 1935 he has been at Cornell University. He received the Nobel Prize for his work on the energy production in stars. Dr Bethe published his Selected Works in 1996 (World Scientific). That book overlaps with the present volume only in the “Equation of State in the Gravitational Collapse of Stars” (near the end of the former volume), and the present volume summarizes much of his work in astrophysics continuing after that.
Gerry E Brown received his PhB in Physics from the University of Wisconsin in 1946, his PhD from Yale University in 1950 and his DSc from the University of Birmingham, England, in 1957. He was on the faculty of Birmingham University in 1950–60, and was Professor at Nordita, Denmark, in 1960–85 and at Princeton University in 1964-8, and has been Professor at Stony Brook since 1968.
Chang-Hwan Lee received his PhD from Seoul National University, South Korea, in 1995. He was Research Associate at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1996–2001, Assistant Professor at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study in 2001–2, and has been BK21 Assistant Professor at Seoul National University since 2002.
In published papers H A Bethe and G E Brown worked out the collapse of large stars and supernova explosions. They went on to evolve binaries of compact stars, finding that in the standard scenario the first formed neutron star always went into a black hole in common envelope evolution. C-H Lee joined them in the study of black hole binaries and gamma ray bursts. They found the black holes to be the fossils of the gamma ray bursts. From their properties they could reconstruct features of the burst and of the accompanying hypernova explosions.
This invaluable book contains 23 papers on astrophysics, chiefly on compact objects, written over 23 years. The papers are accompanied by illuminating commentary. In addition there is an appendix on kaon condensation which the editors believe to be relevant to the equation of state in neutron stars, and to explain why black holes are formed at relatively low masses.
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