Władysław Świątecki (physicist)

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Not to be confused with his father, the inventor and airman Władysław Świątecki.

Władysław J. Świątecki
Born(1926-04-22)22 April 1926
Paris, France
Died30 September 2009(2009-09-30) (aged 83)
Berkeley, California
Known forPioneering research in nuclear physics, including the nuclear shell model and the theory of the "island of stability"
AwardsMarian Smoluchowski Medal (1989)[1]
Scientific career
FieldsTheoretical physics[1]
Nuclear physics[2]
InstitutionsLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley

Władysław J. (Wladek) Świątecki (22 April 1926 – 30 September 2009) was a Polish theoretical and nuclear physicist. He was one of the first proponents of the island of stability for superheavy elements, showing that it appears in a mass formula influenced by the presence of closed nuclear shells; he is also known for several other contributions in nuclear structure research.

Biography

Świątecki was born in Paris on 22 April 1926. His father, also named

aeronautical engineer. Świątecki lived in Poland with his family until September 1939, when they escaped to France following the invasion of Poland and start of World War II, only to flee again to England in May 1940.[1]

Świątecki continued his education in England. In 1945 and 1946 respectively, Świątecki completed

Ph.D. in physics for his thesis entitled "The Surface Energy of Nuclei".[1]

Having completed his education, Świątecki went on to work in various nuclear physics laboratories in Scandinavia before settling at the

University of Aarhus. At Berkeley, Świątecki did extensive work in nuclear physics, and continued to do so even after his formal retirement in 1991.[1]

Świątecki died peacefully in his home on 30 September 2009 from pancreatic cancer. He has 5 children and 8 grandchildren.[3]

Research

Świątecki was a pioneer in several areas of nuclear physics, including studies of

Coulomb force would shift the proton shell closure to Z = 114. With this work, the theory of an "island of stability" for superheavy nuclides gained popularity, and motivated experiments seeking such nuclides in subsequent decades.[5]

In addition to his prediction of the island of stability, Świątecki's contributions led to further developments in the nuclear shell model, most notably the macroscopic-microscopic method for calculating various properties of nuclei and extrapolating to unknown nuclei.

Thomas-Fermi model of Myers and Świątecki offered several new developments, namely a solution to an anomaly in nuclear curvature.[6]

Świątecki also did some research in chaos theory and its implications for nuclear dynamics.[7]

Honors and awards

In 1973, Świątecki became a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.[1] He was also a member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. In recognition for his work, he won the 1990 Marian Smoluchowski Medal[8] of the Polish Physical Society (for which he was a laureate in 1989), and received an honorary degree from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków in 2000.[2]

See also

References

  1. ^
    doi:10.1080/10619127.2010.529752
    .
  2. ^ a b "Today at Berkeley Lab: Nuclear Science Symposium to Honor Swiatecki". 21 April 2006.
  3. ^ "Wladyslaw J. Swiatecki". Legacy.com. 1 November 2009. Retrieved 20 July 2019.
  4. ^ "Superheavy Element 114 Confirmed: A Stepping Stone to the Island of Stability". Berkeley Lab. 24 September 2009. Retrieved 20 July 2019.
  5. ISSN 0010-2709
    .
  6. arXiv:nucl-th/9507015
    . LA-UR-95-2073.
  7. doi:10.1016/0375-9474(93)90227-O
    .
  8. ^ "Laureates of the Marian Smoluchowski Medal". Polish Physical Society. Retrieved 21 July 2019.
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