Albert Messiah

Albert Messiah ( born September 23, 1921 in Nice, † April 17, 2013 in Paris) was a French theoretical physicist.

Messiah studied from 1940 at the École polytechnique and was then during the Second World War Forces Françaises Libres member of in Africa ( Dakar, Chad) and adopted in 1944 as a lieutenant in the 2nd Armored Division of General Leclerc in the liberation of France in part, in which he was also involved in the conquest and occupation of Hitler's Berghof ( Obersalzberg ). In 1946 he was at Princeton, where he took part in a seminar by Niels Bohr at the Institute for Advanced Study. In 1947 he received his doctorate in Paris at the École polytechnique. Back in France, he taught quantum mechanics using the latest methods at the University of Paris-Sud (University Paris 11 ) in Orsay and researched among others in nuclear physics for the newly founded Commissariat à l' énergie Atomique (CEA ) in Saclay ( in the early 1950s, for example, on physics of neutron diffusion). He was promoted in 1965 to the Chef du département de physique and was Directeur de la Physique of the CEA since 1972. Messiah was a professor at the University Pierre and Marie Curie ( Paris VI University ).

Messiah is known for his two-volume quantum mechanics textbook, first published in 1959 in French. It was also translated into German, and since its release one of the standard textbooks of quantum mechanics.

He was an officer (1992) and from 2012 Commander of the Legion of Honour, Officer of the Ordre du Mérite and Commander of the Academic Palms.

Writings

• Quantum mechanics, 2 volumes, 1976, de Gruyter, 1991, ISBN 3110114526 Vol.1, Vol.2 ISBN 3110126699, Original French: Mécanique quantique, Dunod, Paris 1959, 1964, 1969, English translation: Quantum Mechanics, New York, Interscience and Amsterdam, North Holland, 1961/62