Léon Brillouin

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Léon Brillouin (1927)

Léon Nicolas Brillouin ([ bʁilwɛ̃ ]; born August 7, 1889 in Sèvres , Département Seine-et-Oise ; † October 4, 1969 in New York ) was a French-American physicist .

Life

Brillouin was the son of the physicist Marcel Louis Brillouin (1854-1948) and his wife Charlotte Mascart. His maternal grandfather was the physicist Éleuthère Mascart . In 1921 Brillouin successfully completed his studies with the dissertation La théorie des solides et les quanta at the University of Paris. He passed his doctoral examination with Marie Curie and Jean Perrin . He then held lectures on radio technology at the École Supérieure d'Électricité until 1931 . In 1928 he became a physics professor at the University of Paris and from 1932 to 1939 at the Collège de France . 1939/1940 he was director of the French radio. During the Second World War Brillouin went to the United States , where he was visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 1941 and a professor at Brown University in 1942 . In the same year he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society . From 1943 to 1945 he conducted research in the Applied Mathematics group of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. From 1946 to 1949 he was a professor at Harvard University . In 1949 Brillouin was naturalized and joined IBM as director of electronic education. 1952 to 1954 he was research director at IBM's Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory . From 1954 he was Adjunct Professor of Physics at Columbia University .

Brillouin died in New York in 1969 at the age of 80.

Brillouin is known for theoretical work in solid state physics . In information theory, he suggested the term negentropy . He developed a proposed solution for Maxwell's demon and published an electrical version of the same, the Brillouin paradox .

Since 1953 he was a member of the National Academy of Sciences .

See also

Works

  • Cours de physique théorique (1949)
  • La thèorie des solides et les quanta (1928)
  • Wave propagation in periodic structures (1946)
  • Science and Information Theory (New York: Academic Press, 1956)
  • Brillouin, L. and Sommerfeld, A .: Wave Propagation and Group Velocity (New York: Academic Press, 1960)

literature

  • Rémy Mosseri: Léon Brillouin (1889–1969). A la croisée des ondes. Belin, Paris 1999, ISBN 2-7011-2299-6

Web links

Commons : Léon Brillouin  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Brillouin, Léon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brillouin, Léon Nicolas (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French-American physicist
DATE OF BIRTH August 7, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Sèvres , Seine-et-Oise department , France
DATE OF DEATH 4th October 1969
Place of death New York , USA