Erwin Hahn

Erwin Louis Hahn ( born June 9, 1921 in Sharon ( Pennsylvania)) is an American solid-state physicist.

Life and research

Hahn studied at Juniata College Purdue University ( bachelor's degree in chemistry) and - after military service in World War II in the United States Navy, where he taught radar and sonar technology - at the University of Illinois as assistant to the betatron developer Donald William Kerst. Since he did not like his opinion, purely electrical engineering group working on the betatron, he moved to just by Edward Mills Purcell (Harvard University ) and Felix Bloch ( Stanford University) discovered nuclear magnetic resonance ( NMR) and received his PhD in 1949 about Arnold Nordsieck (title of the thesis: nutation of the nuclear magnetic moment and associated effects in spin ensembles ), where he owed important suggestions James H. Bartlett ( 1904-2000 ). In 1950 he was a postdoctoral fellow with Charles P. Slichter at the University of Illinois; in this time, the discovery of the NMR spin - echo falls through tap. 1950 to 1952 he worked in the NMR group of Bloch at Stanford University. Then he built at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center ( and cooperating with the laboratory Columbia University) on an NMR group and changed some of his earlier discoveries in patents to. From 1955 he was assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he received in 1961 a full professor in 1991 and emeritus. He inquired further, for example, at Oxford University, Canada, and Japan, as well as a fellow of the Humboldt Foundation at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg.

Hahn is known as the discoverer of the spin - echo, for example, very much in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI ) is being used. The response signals for a number of timed NMR RF pulses having well-defined phase relationship provides information about the relaxation phenomena of the nuclear spins in the solid state or in the liquid and thus the environment of the nuclear spins. From the 1960s, he carried out research on laser spectroscopy, where he discovered self-induced transparency with his student Samuel L. McCall, a non-linear effect ( soliton phenomenon ), which was used for example in experiments on " slowing down of light."

In the 1950s he also worked for the scientific consultant firm Harold Lyons, at the Theodore Maiman, he brought to the company, worked on his rubidium laser.

Awards

Hahn is Honorary Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford University. The Erwin L. Hahn Institute was founded in 2005 for Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Food is named after him.