Edwin Kemble

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Edwin Crawford Kemble (born January 28, 1889 in Delaware (Ohio) , † March 12, 1984 ) was an American physicist.

Life

Kemble studied physics from 1906 at Ohio Wesleyan University and at the Case School of Applied Science with Dayton C. Miller (bachelor's degree 1911). He then was an instructor at the Carnegie Institute of Technology before starting his PhD at Harvard University with Percy Williams Bridgman (PhD 1917, Studies in the Application of the Quantum Hypothesis to the Kinetic Theory of Gases and to the Theory of their Infrared Absorption Bands ). During the First World War he worked briefly in the development department of an aircraft engine factory, then was at Williams College, before he accepted an invitation from Bridgeman as an instructor to Harvard in 1919, who had a department for theoretical physics there with a focus on the atomic theory newly founded by Niels Bohr and others wanted to establish. In 1922 Kemble was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1931 to the National Academy of Sciences . From 1924 he was assistant professor, 1927 associate professor and from 1930 until his retirement in 1957 professor at Harvard. From 1927 to 1928 he was a Guggenheim fellow with Max Born in Göttingen and Arnold Sommerfeld in Munich. During World War II he worked for the US Navy on the acoustic discovery of sea mines and was involved in the Alsos mission at the end of the war .

Kemble dealt with the quantum theory of molecular spectra. As a teacher he contributed significantly to the early spread of quantum mechanics in the USA, about which he and E. Hill wrote two articles in the Reviews of Modern Physics in 1929/30.

John H. van Vleck was one of his PhD students . Post-doctoral students with him at Harvard included Robert Oppenheimer , John C. Slater , Robert Mulliken and Eugene Feenberg .

1945 to 1948 he was the physics department of the National Academy of Sciences .

He also dealt with the history of physics, first shortly after World War II in a series of lectures on the history of physics for students in the general curriculum.

In 1970 he was awarded the Oersted Medal .

Fonts

  • with others: Molecular spectra in gases, Washington DC, National Research Council 1927
  • with EL Hill General principles of quantum mechanics , Reviews of modern physics, Vol. 1, 1929, pp. 157-215, Vol. 2, 1930, pp. 1-59
  • Physical Science - its structure and development, MIT Press, 2 volumes, 1966, 1970
  • The fundamental principles of quantum mechanics with elementary applications, McGraw Hill 1937, Dover 1958, 2005

literature

  • Who's Who in America: a biographical dictionary of notable living men and women. : volume 33 (1964-1965), Marquis Who's Who, Chicago, Ill., 1964, p. 1075.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kemble, Edwin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kemble, Edwin Crawford (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Delaware (Ohio)
DATE OF DEATH March 12, 1984