Lothar Wolfgang Nordheim

Lothar Wolfgang Nordheim ( born November 7, 1899 in Munich, † 5 October 1985 in La Jolla ) was an American theoretical physicist of German origin.

Life

Nordheim received his doctorate in 1923 with Max Born in Göttingen and was a pioneer in the application of quantum mechanics to solid-state problems ( thermionic emission from metals, the work function of metals, Fowler -Nordheim theory of tunneling in the field emission of electrons from 1928, rectifying in metal-semiconductor contacts, electrical resistance in metals and alloys). He wrote two extensive articles in the " physics textbook " by Muller and Pouillet ( Vieweg 1926-1929 ) on the " quantum theory of magnetism " and the line phenomena in metals. Nordheim was supported with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, a lecturer at Göttingen and a visiting professor in Moscow. In the early 1930s he also began working on nuclear physics, among others, Hans Bethe about Mesonenzerfall and turned Fermi's theory of beta decay to. As a " physical Wizard" by David Hilbert ( as before him, his teacher Born) in 1928, he worked with this and John von Neumann on the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics.

In 1934 he emigrated as a Jew from Germany via the Netherlands ( where he was Lorentz Fellow ) in the United States and came to Purdue University, where he began research on cosmic rays, partly supported by his wife, the physicist Gertrude Pöschl. In 1937 he became a professor at Duke University. During the war he worked as an employee in the Manhattan Project Department Manager in the " Clinton Laboratories " in Oak Ridge, and from 1945 to 1947 head of the local physics department (later from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory was ). In 1947 he returned to Duke University, but remained consultant in Oak Ridge and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. After his wife was killed ( during a stay in Germany ) in a car accident, Nordheim went to California. In 1956 he was a scientist at the " John L. Hopkins Laboratory of Pure and Applied Science" from General Atomics in San Diego and later head of the theoretical department there. There he occupied himself mainly with the physics of nuclear reactors. He also performed in the early 1950s early contributions to the shell model of atomic nuclei ( spin coupling, beta decay ).

In 1951 he was made an honorary doctor at the University of Karlsruhe and in 1963 at Purdue University.

Writings

In addition to the references cited in the footnotes work:

• Hilbert, von Neumann, Nordheim: The Foundations of quantum mechanics. In: Mathematische Annalen. Volume 98, 1928
• Nordheim From someone who set out to learn the quantizing, or the suffering of a young eigenvalue coupler: An anachronistic fairy tale, Physical Blätteer, 17, 1961, 420