Felix Bloch

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This article is about the Swiss physicist. For the man accused of espionage, see Felix Bloch (diplomatic officer).

Felix Bloch
Born(1905-10-23)23 October 1905
Zürich, Switzerland
Died10 September 1983(1983-09-10) (aged 77)
Zürich, Switzerland
NationalitySwiss
Citizenship
  • Swiss
  • American
Alma mater
  • ETH Zürich
  • University of Leipzig
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
Institutions
Doctoral advisorWerner Heisenberg
Doctoral studentsCarson D. Jeffries

Felix Bloch (23 October 1905 – 10 September 1983) was a Swiss-American

Nobel Prize for Physics for "their development of new ways and methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements."[2] In 1954–1955, he served for one year as the first director-general of CERN. Felix Bloch made fundamental theoretical contributions to the understanding of ferromagnetism and electron behavior in crystal lattices. He is also considered one of the developers of nuclear magnetic resonance
.

Biography

Felix Bloch in the lab, 1950s

Early life, education, and family

Bloch was born in

Jewish[3] parents Gustav and Agnes Bloch. Gustav Bloch, his father, was financially unable to attend University and worked as a wholesale grain dealer in Zürich.[4] Gustav moved to Zürich from Moravia in 1890 to become a Swiss citizen. Their first child was a girl born in 1902 while Felix was born three years later.[4]

Bloch entered public elementary school at the age of six and is said to have been teased, in part because he "spoke Swiss German with a somewhat different accent than most members of the class".

University of Zürich. A fellow student in these seminars was John von Neumann
.

Bloch graduated in 1927, and was encouraged by Debye to go to

Leipzig to study with Werner Heisenberg.[5] Bloch became Heisenberg's first graduate student, and gained his doctorate in 1928.[5] His doctoral thesis established the quantum theory of solids, using waves to describe electrons
in periodic lattices.

On March 14, 1940, Bloch married Lore Clara Misch (1911–1996), a fellow physicist working on X-ray crystallography, whom he had met at an American Physical Society meeting.[6] They had four children, twins George Jacob Bloch and Daniel Arthur Bloch (born January 15, 1941), son Frank Samuel Bloch (born January 16, 1945), and daughter Ruth Hedy Bloch (born September 15, 1949).[5][7]

Career

Bloch remained in European academia, working on superconductivity with

Hitler came to power, he left Germany because he was Jewish, returning to Zürich, before traveling to Paris to lecture at the Institut Henri Poincaré.[8]

In 1934, the chairman of

naturalized citizen
of the United States.

During WWII, Bloch briefly worked on the atomic bomb project at Los Alamos. Disliking the military atmosphere of the laboratory and uninterested in the theoretical work there, Bloch left to join the radar project at Harvard University.[9]

After the war, he concentrated on investigations into nuclear induction and nuclear magnetic resonance, which are the underlying principles of MRI.[10][11][12] In 1946 he proposed the Bloch equations which determine the time evolution of nuclear magnetization. He was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1948.[13] Along with Edward Purcell, Bloch was awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on nuclear magnetic induction.

When CERN was being set up in the early 1950s, its founders were searching for someone of stature and international prestige to head the fledgling international laboratory, and in 1954 Professor Bloch became CERN's first director-general,[14] at the time when construction was getting under way on the present Meyrin site and plans for the first machines were being drawn up. After leaving CERN, he returned to Stanford University, where he in 1961 was made Max Stein Professor of Physics.

In 1964, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.[15] He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.[16][17]

Bloch died in Zürich in 1983.[6]

See also

Footnotes

  1. doi:10.1063/1.2916128. Archived from the original
    on 30 September 2013.
  2. ^ Sohlman, M (Ed.) Nobel Foundation directory 2003. Vastervik, Sweden: AB CO Ekblad; 2003.
  3. ISBN 978-0-19-959215-9
    .
  4. ^
    ISBN 978-0-309-04978-8
    .
  5. ^ a b c d e f Hofstadter, Robert; Chodorow, Marvin; Schawlow, Arthur; Walecka, Dirk. "Memorial Resolution: Felix Bloch (1905 - 1983)" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 March 2017. Retrieved 11 November 2017.
  6. ^ a b Former Fellows of The Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783 – 2002 Archived 19 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine. royalsoced.org.uk
  7. ^ "Guide to the Felix Bloch Papers".
  8. ^ "Bloch, Felix", Current Biography, H. W. Wilson Company, 1954. Accessed 24 February 2013. "Because of his Jewish faith, his position soon became uncomfortable and he went to Paris, where he lectured at the Institut Henri Poincaré."
  9. ^ Charles, Weiner (15 August 1968). "Oral Histories: Felix Bloch". American Institute of Physics. Retrieved 11 November 2017.
  10. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.57.111
    .
  11. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.69.127
    .
  12. PMID 7643644
    .
  13. ^ "Felix Bloch". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 5 October 2022.
  14. ^ "People and things : Felix Bloch". CERN Courier. CERN. 1983. Retrieved 1 September 2015.
  15. ^ "F. Bloch (1905 - 1983)". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 22 May 2016.
  16. ^ "Felix Bloch". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 5 October 2022.
  17. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 5 October 2022.

References

Further reading

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Felix Bloch.
Academic offices
Preceded by
Position created
First Director-General of CERN

1954-1955 		Succeeded by
Preceded by President of the American Physical Society
1965 		Succeeded by
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