George William Series

George William Series ( February 22, 1920 - January 2, 1995 in Oxford ) was a British physicist.

Series studied from 1938 on a scholarship at Oxford University ( St. John's College ), interrupted from serving as a medic for the Quakers in World War II. In 1947 he continued his studies at Oxford, where he became a lecturer in 1951 and a fellow of St. Edmond's Hall in 1954. In 1968 he became professor of physics at the University of Reading , where he retired in 1968.

In 1972 he was visiting professor at the University of Otago (where he worked with John Newton Dodd (1922-2005)). In 1982 he was Raman visiting professor at the Indian Academy of Sciences, whose honorary fellow he was in 1984.

Series dealt with optical spectroscopy of atoms, specifically hydrogen, in which he was an internationally recognized authority. In the 1950s he was involved in early measurements of the Lamb shift and in a precision determination of the Rydberg constant . He then turned to the use of optical pumping , by Alfred Kastler discovered in France, in atomic physics to and played in the 1960's a pioneering role in the phenomenon of quantum beats (quantum beats). In the 1970s he turned to laser spectroscopy.

One of his collaborators was S. Pancharatnam , whose posthumous writings he edited.

In 1971 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 1975 of the American Physical Society . In 1982 he received the Meggers Award from the Optical Society of America.

He was married to Annette Pepper since 1948 and had three sons and a daughter (the mathematician Caroline Series ).

Fonts

• The spectrum of atomic hydrogen, Oxford University Press 1957
• as editor: The spectrum of atomic hydrogen: advances, World Scientific 1988
• Laser spectroscopy and other topics, Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore 1985 (selected articles)

Web links

• Obituary in The Independent by Derek Stacey

Individual evidence

1. ^ Marlan Scully, Oral History