John Norris Bahcall 1935-2005

摘要

The philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin once famously quoted a scrap of Archilochus: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Astrophysicist John Bahcall would often introduce himself and a colleague to a new acquaintance with the sentence: "I know all about neutrinos, and my friend here knows about everything else in astrophysics." Such light-hearted self-deprecation was typical of Bahcall, who died on 17 August 2005. But it was inaccurate: Bahcall's scientific interests and expertise ranged from neutrino physics and the structure of the Sun and other stars, to galaxy models, quasars and the inter-galactic medium. His more than 600 scientific publications, on an enormous array of subjects, received nearly 20,000 citations. Many established fundamental paradigms in their fields, and others provided the clearest and most comprehensive overview of them.