Isidor Isaac Rabi

Isidor Isaac Rabi ( born July 29, 1898 in Rymanów, Galicia, Austria - Hungary, † January 11, 1988 in New York ) was an American physicist.

Life

The come as a four year old in the USA Rabi studied chemistry at Cornell University, received his doctorate from Columbia University with topics on magnetic properties of crystals in 1927. After a two-year stay in Europe, he returned as a teacher back at the Columbia University, since 1937 he became professor there at the Faculty of Physics. From 1930 he undertook studies on the binding behavior of protons in the nucleus, from which he derived the molecular beam magnetic resonance detection method ( precursor of NMR spectroscopy ), which led to his later Nobel Prize work.

In 1940 he moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and participated there in the development of radar and the atomic bomb at Los Alamos laboratories. After the war he returned to Columbia University, by the way, he worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory. In addition, he was one of the organizers of the founding of CERN. He was scientific adviser to the U.S. President Harry S. Truman. In 1964 he received at Columbia University the title of University Professor. In 1967 he became Professor Emeritus, but continued to hold lectures. Rabi has published several papers in the journal The Physical Review, which he was co-editor temporarily.

Rabi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944 for the development of the resonance method for investigating the magnetic properties of the atomic nucleus, where he had gearbeit since 1930.

Rabi received honorary doctorates from several prestigious universities (including Princeton, Harvard, Birmingham) and was a member of several academies. From 1946 to 1956 he was a member of the Advisory Board of the Atomic Energy Commission, from 1952 he was the successor of J. Robert Oppenheimer as its chairman. He belonged to a Fellow of the American Physical Society, 1950, he was its president. In addition, he was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. As a foreign member he belonged to the Japanese and the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. He sat on the advisory board of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and was a member of the American Commission of UNESCO. He was an American delegate to the International Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy at Geneva in 1955 and vice president of the first three conferences. Furthermore, he also belonged to the scientific advisory board ( Scientific Advisory Committee, SAC ) of the International Atomic Energy Agency ( IAEA) and the Scientific Advisory Board of the UN Secretary General. In 1959 he was included in the Board of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel.

In 1939 he received the Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1942, the Elliott Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute. In 1948, he was the highest civilian award, the American Presidential Medal for Merit, in addition, the King 's Medal for Service in the Cause of Freedom, he was inducted as an officer in the Legion of Honor. In 1960, the Barnard Medal he was awarded. On November 14, 1967, he was honored along with Wilfrid Bennett Lewis and Bertrand L. Goldschmidt with the Atoms for Peace Award.

According to him, the oscillation has been designated by the quantum-mechanical two-level systems that Rabioszillation.

Isidor Isaac Rabi married in 1926 Helen Newmark, the couple has two daughters.

Quotes

• "The world would be better without to Edward Teller. " ("The world would be better without someone like Edward Teller. " )
• "Who ordered that? " - Who ordered? ( upon discovery of the muon )