Two Full and Good Lives

In August 1927 while enjoying his customary summer holiday with his mother in the Alps, Hans Bethe sent a postcard to Rudolf Peierls, a fellow student at Arnold Sommerfeld's institute¹ of theoretical physics in Munich.² Little did the two students know that their meeting in Munich in 1927 would be the beginning of a deep friendship and a productive work relationship; little, also, did they know that when Hans Bethe, shortly before his friend's death in 1995 would reminisce about their lives³ as those of two of the giants of 20th century physics he would look back on more than 68 years of uninterrupted contact most clearly visible in the hundreds of pages of letters exchanged between the two …