of articles portraying the scientific and cultural development of modern physics in Twentieth Century Physics (American Institute of Physics and the Institute of Physics, U.K., 1995). That same year Rockefeller University awarded him the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science. A Tale of Two Continents: A physicist's life in a turbulent world (Princeton University Press, 1997) was his autobiography. It refers to the 'esemplastic power of the imagination'. His book The Genius of Science: A portrait gallery (Oxford University Press, 2000) contains biographies of seventeen distinguished physicists he had known personally: Niels Bohr, Max Born, Paul Dirac, Albert Einstein, Mitchell Feigenbaum, Res Jost, Oskar Klein, Hans Kramers, Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang, John von Neumann, Wolfgang Pauli, Isidor Isaac Rabi, Robert Serber, George Uhlenbeck, Victor Frederick Weisskopf, and Eugene Wigner. Pais was working on a biography of Robert Oppenheimer at the time of his death. It was finished by Robert P. Crease and published posthumously as J. Robert Oppenheimer: A life (Oxford University Press, 2006). It is the most complete biography of Oppenheimer to date. The American Physical Society has awarded an Abraham Pais Prize for History of Physics annually since 2005. Later life After his retirement Pais and his third wife Ida Nicolaisen spent half their time in Denmark where he worked at the Niels Bohr Institute. His son Josh Pais is an American actor. Pais died of heart failure in Copenhagen. Notes References Citations Sources Land-Weber, Ellen. Online: "Bram Pais Tells His Story (1986)". To Save a Life: Stories of Holocaust Rescue Book: University of Illinois Press (August 30, 2000) Obituaries Martinus J. G. Veltman, Abraham Pais, Levensberichten en herdenkingen (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2002), pp. 51–56. External links 1918 births 2000 deaths 20th-century Dutch historians 20th-century American physicists Dutch Ashkenazi Jews Dutch nuclear physicists 20th-century Dutch physicists Dutch emigrants to the United States Dutch people of Portuguese-Jewish descent Dutch Sephardi Jews Historians of physics Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences National Book Award winners University of Amsterdam alumni Utrecht University alumni Columbia University faculty Institute for Advanced Study faculty Science teachers Scientists from Amsterdam Writers from Amsterdam Members of the American Philosophical Society Rockefeller University faculty American people of Portuguese descent Dutch people of Portuguese descent