X38 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1937 



afraid lie has never really recovered from this upbringing. Conse- 

 quently, although his paper contained reassuring equations, it did 

 not clearly reveal the simple physical modification of ideas which 

 wave mechanics brought about. He proved that the star would 

 manage all right. But, as you may have inferred from Professor 

 Hardy's revelations, I am not an extreme worshipper of proof. I 

 want to know why; a proof does not always tell you that. As Clerk 

 Maxwell used to ask, "What's the go of it?" Well, in this case the 

 "go of it" was that whereas the older theory said that atoms could 

 only be ionized by high temperature the new wave mechanics said 

 that high temperature was not essential because they could also be 

 ionized by crushing them under high pressure. Several writers tum- 

 bled to it, before I did, tliat that was what Fowler's rather mysterious 

 result really meant; but I think that it is still not at all generally 

 known. You see this allows the star to cool down and still retain 

 its enormous density — which the older quantum tlieory did not. 



Not content \vith letting well alone, physicists began to improve on 

 Fowler's formula. They pointed out that in white dwarf conditions 

 the electrons would have s])oods approaching the velocity of light, and 

 there would be certain relativity effects which Fowler had neglected. 

 Consequently Fowler's formula, called the ordinary degeneracy for- 

 mula, came to be superseded by a newer formula, called the relativ- 

 2*s<ic degeneracy formula. All seemed well until certain researches by 

 Chandrasekhar brought out the fact that the relativistic formula put 

 the stars back in precisely the same difficulty from which Fowler had 

 rescued them. The small stars could cool down all right, and end 

 their days as dark stars in a reasonable way. But above a certain 

 critical mass (two or three times that of the sun) the star could never 

 cool down, but nnist go on radiating and contracting until heaven 

 knows what becomes of it. That did not worry Chandrasekhar; ho 

 seemed to like the stars to behave that way, and believes that that is 

 what really happens. But I felt the same objections as 12 years 

 earlier to this stellar buffoonery; at least it was sufficiently strange to 

 rouse my suspicion that there must be something ^vTong with the 

 physical formula used. 



I examined the formula — the so-called relativistic degeneracy 

 formula — and the conclusion I came to was that it was the result of a 

 combination of relativity theory with a nonrelativistic quantum 

 theory. I do not regard the offspring of such a union as born in 

 lawful wedlock. The relativistic degeneracy formula — the formula 

 currently used — is in fact baseless; and, perhaps rather surprisingly, 

 the formula derived by a correct application of relativity theory is the 

 ordinary formula — Fowler's original formula which every one had 

 abandoned. I was not surprised to find that in announcing these 

 conclusions I had put my foot in a hornet's nest ; and I have had the 



