Francis Low

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Francis Eugene Low (born October 27, 1921 in New York City , † February 21, 2007 in Haverford , Pennsylvania ) was an American theoretical physicist.

Live and act

Low was the son of a mining engineer and a doctor and grew up in Greenwich Village . His grandfather Sergius Ingerman was also a doctor and one of the founders of the Socialist Party in the USA . In his youth he wanted to be a pianist (later he even wrote a musical about Huckleberry Finn ), but discovered his love for physics while attending the French International School (Ecole Internationale) in Geneva . Low studied at Harvard University in New York and after graduation (Bachelor's degree in 1942) worked on the Manhattan Project (theoretical work on uranium enrichment in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory ) and served in the US Army ( 10th Mountain Division , as Muleteer and later as a sergeant as an artillery observer). In 1947 he made his master's degree from Columbia University , where he received his doctorate in 1949 and was an instructor until 1950. 1950 to 1952 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (and 1967/68). From 1952 he was a professor (first assistant professor, later with full professorship) at the University of Illinois and from 1957 as professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was from 1968 to 1985 Carl Taylor Compton professor of physics and 1979 to 1985 director of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science (where he was "Institute Professor" from 1985 to 1992) and from 1974 to 1983 director of the Center of Theoretical Physics. 1980 to 1985 he was Provost of MIT, where he a. a. brought the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research to MIT. He retired in 1991, but held lectures until 1996 and remained Professor Emeritus until his death.

Low is one of the founders of the renormalization group theory with Murray Gell-Mann, and both independently introduced the Bethe-Salpeter equation .

In 1969 he was one of the founding members of the Union of Concerned Scientists and briefly its chairman, but resigned because some members refused to study the safety of nuclear reactors.

In 1958 Low was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , since 1967 he was a member of the National Academy of Sciences . His PhD students include Alan Guth (1972), Mitchell Feigenbaum (1970) and Sze-Hoi Tye.

From 1948 until her death in 2004 he was married to the psychologist Natalie Sadigur and had a son and two daughters with her.

Fonts

  • Classical Field Theory. Electromagnetism and Gravitation . John Wiley, 1997

literature

  • Roman Jackiw : Francis Low's contribution to the Standard Model . Comments on Nuclear and Particle Physics, 1993
  • Alan Guth , Kerson Huang , Robert L. Jaffe (Editors): Asymptotic realms of physics . MIT Press, 1983 (Low Festschrift)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gell-Mann, Low: Quantum Electrodynamics at low distances . In: Physical Review . Volume 95, 1954, p. 1300
  2. ^ Gell-Mann, Low: Bound states in quantum field theory . In: Physical Review . Volume 84, 1950, p. 350
personal data
SURNAME Low, Francis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Low, Francis E .; Low, Francis Eugene (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist
DATE OF BIRTH October 27, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH February 21, 2007
Place of death Haverford , Pennsylvania