Edoardo Amaldi

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Edoardo Amaldi, 1960

Edoardo Amaldi (born September 5, 1908 in Carpaneto Piacentino , † December 5, 1989 in Rome ) was an Italian physicist .

Edoardo was the son of math professor Ugo Amaldi . Amaldi met Enrico Fermi in his youth (1924) and studied physics in Rome with the experimental physicist Orso Mario Corbino, with whom he later became an assistant. After graduating in 1929 (with a thesis on the Raman spectra of benzene ) he went to Leipzig to Peter Debye , where he worked on X-ray spectra of liquids. After his return to Rome in 1932, in collaboration with George Placzek, he published a work on the rotational spectra of the ammonia molecule, in which quantum mechanical selection rules were confirmed (after Edward Teller and Placzek). In 1934 he visited the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge with Emilio Segrè , with whom he had been friends from mountain tours since his youth . In Rome he was a member of the jokingly “ragazzi di via Panisperna” research group headed by Enrico Fermis, which was able to gain fundamental knowledge in nuclear physics, which was crowned in 1938 with the Nobel Prize for Fermi. An important international conference on nuclear physics, which took place in Rome in 1931, was a top-class international conference. Under their influence, Amaldi turned from molecular spectroscopy to nuclear physics and investigated u. a. in the Fermi group the resonances in the cross sections of slow neutrons with nuclei. In 1936 he visited the USA (including Merle Antony Tuve in Washington) in order to acquire the knowledge necessary to build a Cockcroft-Walton accelerator . A second visit in 1939 served similar purposes, this time to set up a cyclotron . In 1938 Edoardo Amaldi was appointed to the chair for experimental physics in Rome, which he held for 41 years. As a result of the Italian race laws of 1938, the research group was dissolved; Enrico Fermi, Emilio Segrè, Franco Rasetti and Bruno Pontecorvo left Italy. Amaldi stayed and dealt with cosmic rays during the war.

Amaldi was one of the founders of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), of which he became President, the INFN laboratories of Frascati and the European Nuclear Research Center ( CERN ) in Geneva .

Amaldi dealt with molecular physics, nuclear and particle physics. He also published theoretical papers, e.g. B. on the theory of magnetic monopoles and gravitational waves .

As a respected member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei , Amaldi was involved in the Pugwash movement and in the ISODARCO (International School on Disarmament And Research on Conflicts) for nuclear disarmament. In 1961 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society and in 1962 to both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences , in 1963 to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and in 1964 to the Leopoldina Scholars' Academy . In 1958 he became a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and in 1968 the Royal Society .

The third ESA Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) was named in his honor. The ATV was docked at the International Space Station from March to September 2012 . The Amaldi Medal for Gravitational Physics is named in his honor. In 2012 an asteroid was named after Edoardo Amaldi: (18169) Amaldi .

His son Ugo Amaldi is also a well-known physicist.

literature

Web links

Commons : Edoardo Amaldi  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter A. (PDF; 945 kB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved April 10, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Edoardo Amaldi. In: nasonline.org. Retrieved April 10, 2018 .
  3. ^ Members of the KNAW: Edoardo Amaldi. Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, accessed April 10, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Member entry of Edoardo Amaldi at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on April 10, 2018.
  5. ^ Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724: Amaldi, Edoardo. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed April 10, 2018 (Russian).
  6. ^ Entry on Amaldi, Edoardo (1908-1989) in the archives of the Royal Society , London
personal data
SURNAME Amaldi, Edoardo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian physicist
DATE OF BIRTH September 5, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Carpaneto Piacentino
DATE OF DEATH 5th December 1989
Place of death Rome , Italy