Bergen Davis
Bergen Davis (born March 31, 1869 in Whitehouse (New Jersey) , † June 30, 1958 ) was an American physicist.
Davis was the son of a farmer and studied physics at Rutgers University (bachelor's degree in 1896) and Columbia University with a master's degree in 1900 and a doctorate in 1901 (on sound measurements in organ pipes). He then spent two years in Europe as a John Tyndall Fellow with JJ Thomson at the Cavendish Laboratory and Eduard Riecke in Göttingen. After returning in 1903 he became a tutor and in 1907 an instructor at Columbia University. In 1913 he became an associate professor and in 1919 he was given a full professorship. In 1939 he retired after having had serious heart surgery in 1938.
He dealt with the physics of gas discharges and X-rays, for example in the improvement of double-reflection X-ray spectrometers. During the First World War, he set up an X-ray machine in the New York harbor to uncover the smuggling of contraband in cotton freight on ships to Germany. He was also an advisor to the Crocker Institute for Cancer Research at Columbia University in the medical application of X-rays. His study of the corona discharge (1914) was known among electrical engineers .
At Columbia University he carried out experiments on Bohr's atomic model early (1915) when he and Goucher found one of the sources of interference in the Franck-Hertz experiment (a photoelectric effect on the electrodes triggered by the radiation of atoms excited by inelastic collisions of the electrons) .
He was Vice President of the Physics Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and from 1929 a member of the National Academy of Sciences . Davis holds two honorary degrees from Columbia University, Rutgers University. From 1923 to 1926 he was a member of the physics department of the National Research Council. He was a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America .
A work he presented at the National Academy of Science in 1929 on the so-called Davis Barnes Effect , the observation of discrete energy levels when alpha particles interact with electrons, later turned out to be an observation error (a perception error when counting scintillations).
literature
- Harold W. Webb, Obituary, National Academy of Sciences, 1960
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Davis, Bergen |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 31, 1869 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Whitehouse |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 30, 1958 |