University celebrates 'most distinguished professor ever to serve at
Cornell' with a building in his honor

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Sept05/Bethe.celebration.lg.html

Sept. 19, 2005

By Lauren Gold
lg34@cornell.edu

ITHACA, N.Y. -- There are so many things to say about Hans Bethe. One
of the most important is that his name will live on with a West
Campus building that is to be named for him.

"He was great and good man," said physicist Freeman Dyson of the
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J. "A great teacher, great
scientist, wise counselor and faithful friend."

On Sunday afternoon, Sept. 18, some of Bethe's closest colleagues and
protégés delivered tributes to Bethe before a full
house at Statler Auditorium. The event, "Celebrating an Exemplary
Life," drew hundreds of admirers from the Cornell community and
beyond.

They came to remember the man Dyson once characterized, in a letter
to his family, as "large and clumsy, with an exceptionally muddy pair
of shoes." They spoke of his wide-ranging and extraordinary
accomplishments -- his Nobel Prize-winning paper explaining the
process that powers the stars; his leadership as head of the
theoretical division at the Los Alamos National Laboratory during the
Manhattan Project; his essential contributions to the field of
quantum electrodynamics; and his tireless dedication to making the
world safer.