Léon Rosenfeld

Léon Rosenfeld ( born August 14, 1904 in Charleroi, † 23 March 1974) was a Belgian theoretical physicist.

Life and work

Rosenfeld was born in 1904 as son of an engineer in Charleroi, Belgium. He received his doctorate in 1926 at the University of Liège and was then from 1926 in Paris ( with Louis de Broglie, Leon Brillouin, Paul Langevin ), from 1927 to 1929 in Göttingen with Max Born and 1929/30, in Zurich with Wolfgang Pauli. From 1930 to 1941 he was professor of theoretical physics in Liege, but remained frequently in Copenhagen with Niels Bohr. In 1940 he became the successor of George Uhlenbeck in Utrecht, but the professor was unable to start because of the German occupation and its anti-Semitic policies. After the war he was again professor in Utrecht and from 1947 to 1958 in Manchester. After that, he was in 1957, founded on the initiative of drilling until his death in 1974 NORDITA Institute in Copenhagen. Rosenfeld was there already as close as 1930 Employees of Niels Bohr. 1955 to 1974 he was principal editor of the journal " Nuclear Physics".

Rosenfeld et al employed to with the uncertainty relations and the measurement process in quantum electrodynamics ( with Bohr, 1933), with statistical mechanics, nuclear physics, and in particular nuclear reactions, history of science and the foundations of quantum mechanics.

In 1949 he received the Francqui price.

Writings

• Nuclear Forces, Interscience 1948
• With Niels Bohr: On the question of measurability of electromagnetic field quantities, Royal. Danske Videnskab. Selskab Mat - Fys. Medd. Bd.12, 1933, 8 ( PDF)
• With Niels Bohr: Field and Charge Measurements in Quantum Electrodynamics, Physical Review, Vol 78, 1950, p 794
• Nuclear reminiscences, in F.Reines (eds. ) Cosmology, Fusion and other Matters 1972 ( George Gamow Volume)