Before Bethe: Early Ideas of the Sun's Generation of Energy

Abstract

Solar energy remained an enigma for nearly a century. For a while astronomers and physicists believed that the source of the Sun's energy was gravitational contraction, but the theory turned out to be untenable. Inspired by the new science of radioactivity, by the early twentieth century they increasingly focused on subatomic processes. The paper outlines the attempts to solve the solar energy problem in the period from about 1905 to 1938, which in the later phase involved nuclear astrophysics, a new and exciting interdisciplinary science. Although the problem was only satisfactorily solved with Hans Bethe's theory of the late 1930s, the earlier attempts involving scientists such as Arthur Eddington, Robert Atkinson and George Gamow can be considered a slow preparation for Bethe's breakthrough.