Lothar Wolfgang Nordheim
Lothar Wolfgang Nordheim | |
---|---|
Statistical physics | |
Institutions | Duke University |
Academic advisors | Max Born |
Doctoral students | Walter Goad |
Lothar
Life
He obtained his PhD in 1923, under the supervision of Max Born in the University of Göttingen.[2][3] He also worked with Edward Teller on the muon, sparkling his interest in cosmic rays.[3]
As a "physical assistant" to David Hilbert (like his teacher Born before him), he worked with him John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner on the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics in 1928.[4]
He wrote extensive articles[5] for the Lehrbuch der Physik by J.H.J. Müller and Claude Pouillet on the quantum theory of magnetism and the conduction phenomena in metals.[2][3] During the same period was the holder of a Rockefeller Foundation Research Fellowship, a Lorentz Fellowship.[3] He lectured at Göttingen and was also a visiting professor at the University of Moscow.[2][3]
In the early 1930s he got interested in Fermi's theory of beta decay and worked with Hans Bethe on meson decay.[3]
Upon his immigration to the United States in 1934 Nordheim served as a visiting professor at Purdue University, working on cosmic rays, moving on to a permanent faculty position at Duke University in 1937.
He married German physicist Gertrud Pöschl in 1935, and together worked on structure and spectra of polyatomic molecules.[2]
During the World War II, he worked as a member of the Manhattan Project as head of department in the Clinton Laboratories in Oak Ridge and from 1945 to 1947 head of the physics department there.[2]
His wife died in an accident during a stay in Germany in 1949, Nordheim was deeply affected.[3] He later decided to move to California. In 1956 he became a scientist at the John L. Hopkins Laboratory of Pure and Applied Science of General Atomics in San Diego and later chairman of the theoretical physics department.[2] There he mainly dealt with the physics of nuclear reactors and neutron physics.[2][3] In the early 1950s, however, he also made early contributions to the nuclear shell model with Maria Goeppert Mayer.[6][3]
He was elected in 1936 a Fellow of the American Physical Society.[7] In 1951 he received the honorary degree of Doctor in Science from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and 1963 from Purdue University.[3] He was also the first to give the Fritz London Memorial Lecture at Duke University in 1956.[3]
Field electron emission
An important contribution, with the British physicist
Fowler-Nordheim tunneling was the first effect in physics to be firmly identified as due to wave-mechanical tunneling, in the early days of quantum mechanics. The original Fowler-Nordheim-type equation was one of the first to use Fermi–Dirac statistics to explain an experimental phenomenon involving electrons in metals, and its success greatly helped to establish modern electron band theory.[9] The Fowler-Nordheim paper also established the physical basis for a unified treatment of field-induced and thermally induced electron emission.[9]
The ideas of
References
- ^ Nordheim, Lothar W. (1934). The theory of thermoelectric effects. Paris: Hermann.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Purdue University: Department of Physics and Astronomy: Lothar Wolfgang Nordheim". www.physics.purdue.edu. Retrieved 2021-07-14.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l "Lothar W. Nordheim | Department of Physics". physics.duke.edu. Retrieved 2021-07-14.
- Zbl 0080.00416.
- ^ Nordheim, Lothar W. (1934). "Statistische und kinetische Theorie des metallischen Zustandes". Müller-Pouillets Lehrbuch der Physik. 4 (4): 243–389.
- ISSN 0034-6861.
- ^ "APS Fellow Archive". American Physical Society. (search on year=1936 and institution=Purdue University)
- . Retrieved 2009-10-26.
- ^ a b Sommerfeld, A.; Beth, H. (1963). "Handbuch der Physik". Julius Springer-Verlag. 24.
- ^ Z. Physik 51, 204 (1928) G. Gamow, "Zur Quantentheorie des Atomkernes".
- doi:10.1038/122439a0.
- .
- doi:10.1119/1.11306.
Notes
- ^ His name is sometimes misspelled as ''Lother''.