James Rainwater

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Leo James Rainwater
Rainwater in 1975
Born(1917-12-09)December 9, 1917
Council, Idaho, U.S.
DiedMay 31, 1986(1986-05-31) (aged 68)
New York City, U.S.
EducationCalifornia Institute of Technology (BA)
Columbia University (MA, PhD)
AwardsErnest Orlando Lawrence Award (1963)
Nobel Prize in Physics (1975)
Scientific career
InstitutionsColumbia University
Manhattan Project
Thesis Neutron beam spectrometer studies of boron, cadmium, and the energy distribution from paraffin  (1946)
Doctoral advisorJohn R. Dunning

Leo James Rainwater (December 9, 1917 – May 31, 1986) was an American physicist who shared the

atomic nuclei
.

During

Ben Mottelson's experiments. He also contributed to the scientific understanding of X-rays and participated in the United States Atomic Energy Commission
and naval research projects.

Rainwater joined the physics faculty at Columbia in 1946, where he reached the rank of full professor in 1952 and was named Pupin Professor of Physics in 1982. He received the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award for Physics in 1963 and in 1975 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, "for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this connection".[1]

Early life

Leo James Rainwater was born on December 9, 1917, in Council, Idaho, the son of a former civil engineer who ran the local general store,[2] Leo Jaspar Rainwater and his wife Edna Eliza née Teague.[3] He never used his first name and was always referred to as James or Jim. His father died in the great influenza epidemic of 1918 and Rainwater and his mother moved to Hanford, California, where she married George Fowler, a widower with two sons, Freeman and John. In time he also acquired a half-brother, George Fowler Jr., who became naval officer. At high school he excelled in mathematics, chemistry and physics and was admitted to the California Institute of Technology on the strength of a chemistry competition.[3][4] He received his Bachelor of Science degree as a physics major in 1939.[5]

Manhattan Project

Rainwater then chose to undertake postgraduate studies at Columbia University. At the time this was an unusual move for a scholar from California, as Columbia was not then renowned for its physics; but this had recently changed. George B. Pegram had recently built up the physics department, and hired scientists like Enrico Fermi.[4] At Columbia Rainwater studied under Isidor Isaac Rabi, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller and John R. Dunning.[2] Fermi was engaged in neutron moderator studies that would lead to the construction of the first nuclear reactor, while Dunning and Eugene T. Booth had built Columbia's first cyclotron, in the basement of the Pupin Physics Laboratories.[6] Rainwater received his Master of Arts in 1941.[5] For his Doctor of Philosophy thesis on "Neutron beam spectrometer studies of boron, cadmium, and the energy distribution from paraffin",[7] written under Dunning's supervision, he built a neutron spectrometer and developed techniques for its use.[6] Rainwater married Emma Louise Smith in March 1942.[2] They had three sons, James, Robert and William and a daughter, Elizabeth Ann, who died from leukaemia when she was nine.[8]

Fermi's reactor group moved to the

fissile uranium-235 for use in atomic bombs. Rainwater worked with William W. Havens Jr. and Chien-Shiung Wu, mostly on studies of neutron cross sections, using the neutron spectrometer.[2] After the war, a dozen papers by Dunning, Havens, Rainwater and Wu would be declassified and published.[9] So too was his thesis, published in the Physical Review in two parts with Havens's thesis,[10][11] and he was awarded his doctorate in 1946.[2] In 1963 he was awarded the United States Atomic Energy Commission's Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award, for his work on the Manhattan Project.[12]

Later life

Rainwater remained at Columbia as an instructor. In 1948, he began teaching courses on nuclear structure.

Ben Mottelson published their results in three papers in 1952 and 1953 that conclusively confirmed the theory.[15]
Rainwater felt that his model was overlooked. He later recalled that:

When I made my proposal for use of a spheroidal nuclear model, it seemed to be an obvious answer which would immediately be simultaneously suggested by all theorists in the field. I do not understand why it was not. I was also surprised and dismayed to hear one or more respected theorists announce in every Nuclear Physics Conference which I attended through 1955 some such comment as, "Although the Nuclear Shell Model seems empirically to work very well, there is at present no theoretical justification as to why it should apply."[16]

With funding from the

muonic atoms, atoms where an electron is replaced by a muon.[18][19] After 1965, he worked on turning the Nevis synchrotron into a meson facility. When a reporter rang in 1975 to inform him that he had won the Nobel Prize in Physics, he initially thought that it was for his work on muonic atoms. Several hours passed before he discovered that it was for his work on nuclear structure, the Nobel Prize being shared with Bohr and Mottelson.[12]

He was a fellow of the

Optical Society of America.[20]

Rainwater succeeded Robert R. Wilson as Michael I. Pupin Professor of Physics in 1983.[21]

Rainwater collapsed after a lecture at the Pupin Laboratories in 1985 but was revived by a student who knew how to administer

CPR.[17] In declining health, he retired and became a professor emeritus in February 1986. He died from cardiopulmonary arrest[3] at St. John's Riverside Hospital in Yonkers, New York on May 31, 1986. He was survived by his wife, three sons and half-brother George.[21]

Notes

  1. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1975". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g "James Rainwater – Biographical". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved March 28, 2015.
  3. ^ a b c "James Rainwater". Soylent Communications. Retrieved March 28, 2015.
  4. ^ a b Fitch 2009, pp. 3–4.
  5. ^ a b "L. James Rainwater". Array of Contemporary American Physicists. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved March 28, 2015.
  6. ^ a b Fitch 2009, p. 5.
  7. OCLC 77870480
    . Retrieved March 28, 2015.
  8. ^ Fitch 2009, p. 14.
  9. ^ Fitch 2009, p. 18.
  10. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.70.136
    .
  11. hdl:2027/mdp.39015077319682
    .
  12. ^ a b c d Havens 1986, p. 142.
  13. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.56.426
    .
  14. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.79.432
    .
  15. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1975 – Award Ceremony Speech". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved March 28, 2015.
  16. ^ James Rainwater on Nobelprize.org Edit this at Wikidata including the Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1975 Background for the Spheroidal Nuclear Model Proposal
  17. ^ a b Fitch 2009, p. 15.
  18. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.92.789
    .
  19. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.95.291.2
    .
  20. ^ Fitch 2009, p. 16.
  21. ^
    New York Times
    . Retrieved March 28, 2015.

References

External links

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  • James Rainwater on Nobelprize.org Edit this at Wikidata including the Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1975 Background for the Spheroidal Nuclear Model Proposal

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