Olli Lounasmaa
Olli Viktor Lounasmaa ( born August 20, 1930 in Turku, † 27 December 2002 in Goa India) was a Finnish low-temperature physicist.
Lounasmaa made in 1953 graduated from the University of Helsinki, then was an assistant at the University of Turku and then went to the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University, where he received his doctorate in 1957 in Low Temperature Physics ( Specific heats at low temperatures applications, 1958). 1960 to 1964 he was a visiting scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, and in 1964 professor of physics and engineering at the Technical University in Helsinki. In 1965 he founded the Laboratory for Low Temperature Physics, whose director he was until his retirement in 1995 and from 2012 bears his name (as part of Aalto University ). He drowned during a vacation in Goa while bathing as a result of a heart attack.
He found in his laboratory German -human evidence that was discovered by David M. Lee, Douglas D. Osheroff and Robert C. Richardson 1972 new phase was superfluid helium in 3. They measured the damping of a vibrating string before and after the phase transition and found a decrease in the attenuation by a factor of 1000 in the superfluid state. This was also recognized by the Nobel Committee when the Nobel Prize in 1996 to Lee, Osheroff and Richardson went for the discovery of superfluidity of helium 3 ( Lounaasma time was also nominated ). He also examined the behavior of superfluid helium 3 on rotation and magnetic fields.
In the early 1980s he moved to a new field of work and became one of the leading scientists recorded magnetic field is created in the imaging of brain activity with over the SQUID magnetometers in the development of magnetoencephalography (MEG ). He took advantage of the expertise of his laboratory in low-temperature physics and magnetometers advantage. He was involved in the establishment of various companies: SHE early 1970s, Biomagnetic Technologies, 4-D Neuroimaging and 1989 Neuromag, now part of Elekta. In this field he worked with physicians and interdisciplinary neuroscientists.
In 1984 he received the Fritz London Memorial Award, 1994, the Kapitza Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and in 1993 the Humboldt Research Award. He was a member of the Finnish Academy (1997), the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He was an honorary doctorate from the University of Helsinki, Helsinki University of Technology and the Technical University of Tampere. In 1987 he received the Körber European Science with Riitta Hari, Matti Krusius and Martti Salomaa.
A price for Low Temperature Physics, Aalto University is named after him.
Writings
- Experimental Principles and Methods Below 1 K, 1st edition, Academic Press 1974
- Matti Hämäläinen, Riitta Hari, Risto Ilmoniemi, Jukka Knuutila Magnetoencephalography -theory, instrumentation, and applications to noninvasive studies of the working human brain, Reviews of Modern Physics, Volume 65, 1993, pp. 413-497