Franz ND Curia

Franz Newell Devereux Curia (born February 6, 1907 in Victor (Colorado) , † June 12, 1972 ) was an American nuclear physicist .

Life

Franz ND Kurie was the son of a mining engineer and grew up in Canada, where he studied at McGill University in Montreal until 1927 . In 1932 he obtained the Ph.D. at Yale University . At the Sloane Physics Laboratory there, he had contact with Ernest Orlando Lawrence , who was the first director of the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) at the University of California, Berkeley, which was founded in 1931 . From 1933 to 1935 Kurie was a Fellow of the National Research Council and then until 1938 Research Associate at the Berkeley Lab. In 1935 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society . In 1938 he went to Indiana University Bloomington , where he oversaw the construction of a new cyclotron . In 1941 he moved to the US Navy Radio and Sound Laboratory of the University of California (Division of War Research) in San Diego , where he did research on sonar technology during World War II . In 1942 he became a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . In 1946 he returned to academic life and worked at Washington University in St. Louis until 1948 . In 1948 he accepted an offer to move to the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. In 1953 he returned to San Diego as technical director of the research facility renamed the US Navy Electronics Laboratory in 1945. Due to a serious illness, he had to end his professional career in 1960.

Franz Kurie was one of Ernest Lawrence's early collaborators. He was involved in numerous groundbreaking nuclear physics experiments with the cyclotron and Wilson's cloud chamber . In 1934, when analyzing the bombardment of nitrogen with neutrons, he received the first indications of the reaction ¹⁴ N (n, p) ¹⁴ C, i.e. the existence of the unstable carbon isotope ¹⁴ C, which was unknown at the time . He was best known for his representation of the radioactive beta decay in the curia plot.

literature

• Edwin M. McMillan : Franz ND Curia (obituary) . In: Physics Today . tape 25 , no. 9 , 1972, p. 76-77 , doi : 10.1063 / 1.3071027 .

Web links

• Core beta decay. Max Planck Institute for Physics, accessed on August 5, 2017 (representation of the curia plot). 

Individual evidence

1. ^ FND Kuria, GP Harnwell: The Wartime Activities of the San Diego Laboratory of the University of California, Division of War Research . In: Review of Scientific Instruments . tape 18 , no. 4 , 1947, pp. 2017-218 , doi : 10.1063 / 1.1740927 .
2. ^ Fellows of the AAAS: Franz Kurie. American Association for the Advancement of Science, accessed July 28, 2018 . 
3. ^ FND Curia: A New Mode of Disintegration Induced by Neutrons . In: Physical Review . tape 45 , no. 12 , 1934, pp. 904 , doi : 10.1103 / PhysRev . 45.904 .
4. ^ Franz ND Kurie, JR Richardson , HC Paxton: On the Shape of the Distribution Curves of Electrons Emitted from Artificially Produced Radioactive Substances . In: Physical Review . tape 48 , no. 2 , 1935, p. 167 , doi : 10.1103 / PhysRev.48.167.2 .