Henry Primakoff

Henry Primakoff (born February 12, 1914 in Odessa , † July 25, 1983 in Philadelphia ) was a theoretical physicist who is known for the Primakoff effect he discovered .

Primakoff studied at Columbia University (Bachelor in 1935) and received his doctorate in 1938 from New York University . From 1938 he was an instructor for physics at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn and from 1940 at Queens College in New York. During World War II he worked in military research at Columbia University. In 1945 he became an assistant professor at New York University and in 1946 at Washington University in St. Louis . From 1960 he was professor of physics at the University of Pennsylvania .

Primakoff contributed to the understanding of weak interaction , double beta decay , spin waves in ferromagnetism and the interaction between neutrinos and atomic nuclei. The Holstein-Primakoff bosons and the Holstein-Primakoff transformation in the theory of spin waves are named after him and Theodore Holstein .

Primakoff was married for 45 years to the biochemist and biophysicist Mildred Cohn , who died in 2009 , a pioneer in the field of magnetic resonance spectroscopy .

In 1949 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society . In 1968 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences and in 1976 a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Web links

• H. Primakoff. In: Physics History Network. American Institute of Physics