Henryk Niewodniczański

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Henryk Niewodniczański (born December 10, 1900 in Vilnius , † December 20, 1968 in Cracow ) was a Polish nuclear physicist and founding director of the Institute for Nuclear Physics in Cracow, which is named after him today.

Life

Niewodniczański's father was the engineer Wiktor Niewodniczański (1872–1929), director of the first electricity company in Vilnius. Henryk studied at the Stefan Batory University in Vilnius, where he received his doctorate in 1926. In 1927 he was at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen with Walther Gerlach . At that time his main interests were the optics of metals and molecular optics, where he discovered phenomena of quantum reflection in cooperation with Jan Blaton . In 1932 he received an assistant professorship in Vilnius and in 1934 became a Fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation , after which he went to Cambridge to work at the Royal Society's Moon Laboratory and the Cavendish Laboratory . In 1937 he returned to Poland and worked first in Poznań at the Adam Mickiewicz University and later again in Vilnius as a professor of experimental physics. During the Second World War he was involved in the resistance against the occupation regime and taught at the underground university.

After the war, Niewodniczański was appointed to the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. There he organized a Soviet U-120 cyclotron in 1952 and in 1955 founded the Institute for Nuclear Physics.

family

Henryk Niewodniczański was married to Irena, nee Prawocheńska, a daughter of Roman Prawocheński (1877-1965), professor of biology at the Jagiellonian University.

His sons Tomasz Niewodniczański and Jerzy Niewodniczański also became nuclear physicists; Jerzy, the younger of the two, was President of the National Atomic Energy Agency in Poland from 1992 to 2009 . There is also a daughter who worked as a professor at a Polish university.

Honors and memberships

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.ifj.edu.pl/?lang=en
  2. ↑ https://www.porta-polonica.de/de/atlas-der-erinnerungsorte/sammler-physiker-unternehmer-tomasz-niewodniczanski?page=1#body-top
  3. ^ Prof. Jerzy W. Niewodniczański
personal data
SURNAME Niewodniczański, Henryk
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish nuclear physicist
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Vilnius
DATE OF DEATH 20th December 1968
Place of death Krakow