Hendrika Johanna van Leeuwen

Hendrika Johanna van Leeuwen ( born July 3, 1887 in 's- Gravenhage, † February 26, 1974 in Delft) was a Dutch physicist.

Life

Together with Niels Bohr, she was author of the Bohr -van Leeuwen theorem -. In 1919 she published her doctoral thesis, in which they discussed the issue of the magnetization in the classical theory under the supervision of Hendrik Lorentz and Paul Ehrenfest. It showed that in a classical system in thermal equilibrium and in the presence of magnetic and electric fields, no magnetic moment can arise - in other words, according to the rules of classical mechanics, there can be no magnetism, so magnetism only quantum mechanics to explain is ( Bohr van Leeuwen theorem).

She was from 1920 to 1947 and an assistant from 1947 to 1952 lecturer at the Technical University of Delft.