Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky
Wolfgang Kurt Hermann " Pief " Panofsky ( born April 24, 1919 in Berlin, † 24 September 2007 in Los Altos, California, United States) was an American particle physicist, who was instrumental in the development and establishment of the SLAC.
Life
Panofsky was the son of the art historian Erwin Panofsky. Because of the persecution of Jews by the Nazis, he left Germany in 1934. He studied at Princeton University he graduated in 1938 with a Bachelor degree in 1942 he received his doctorate at Caltech. From 1945 to 1951 he was assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, then a professor at Stanford University.
Wolfgang Panofsky was since 1945 consultant to the U.S. government on matters of science and national security. Until 2003 he was a member of the Independent Advisory Committee was the " National Nuclear Security Administration ," the authority which is responsible for the development, construction and maintenance of nuclear weapons.
He spoke in 1957 for the construction of the linear particle accelerator SLAC ( Stanford Linear Accelerator Center ) in Palo Alto from as its director from 1962 until 1984.
Panofsky was one of the signatories of the protest letter of the "Union of Concerned Scientists" to George Bush, in which the U.S. government is accused of manipulating scientific results.
He died in September 2007 at the age of 88 years.
Awards (selection)
Writings (selection )
- With WM Woodward, & GB Yodh: Pion Production by Inelastic Scattering of Electrons in Hydrogen. Phys. Rev. 102, 1392-1398 (1956 )
- With Melba Phillips: Classical electricity and magnetism, Reading / Massachusetts, Addison -Wesley, 1962
- Particles and policy, Woodbury, NY. AIP Press, 1994
- Panofsky on Physics, Politics and Peace. Pief Remembers, Springer Verlag, 2007, ISBN 9780387697314 ( memories )