John Hasbrouck Van Vleck

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John H. Van Vleck (standing third from right) at the Solvay Conference 1930

John Hasbrouck Van Vleck (born March 13, 1899 in Middletown , Connecticut , † October 27, 1980 in Cambridge ) was an American physicist who dealt with solid-state physics. Van Vleck received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977 together with Nevill F. Mott and Philip Warren Anderson "for the fundamental theoretical achievements on the electronic structure in magnetic and disordered systems". He has often been referred to as the father of the modern theory of magnetism. and was a pioneer of quantum mechanics in the United States in the 1920s.

life and work

Van Vleck came from a long-established originally Dutch family in the USA since the 17th century, his father Edward Burr Van Vleck (1863–1943) was a mathematics professor at the University of Wisconsin from 1905 and his grandfather John Monroe Van Vleck mathematics and astronomy professor from Wesleyan University . He began his physics studies at the University of Wisconsin and then studied from 1920 at Harvard University , where he received his master’s degree in 1921 and his doctorate in 1922 with Edwin Kemble (one of the few theoretical physicists in the USA who taught quantum theory at the time), with a thesis on the helium atom in what is now called the older quantum theory. He was then a year instructor at Kemble and from 1923 Assistant Professor and later Professor at the University of Minnesota . In 1928 he became a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison before returning to Harvard University in 1934 as a professor of physics, where he remained scientifically active even after his retirement in 1969. From 1943 to 1945 he headed the radar research group at Harvard and from 1945 to 1949 he headed the physics faculty. From 1951 to 1957 he was Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Physics and from 1951 Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy .

He was visiting professor at Stanford University (1927, 1934, 1941), at the University of Michigan (1933), Columbia University (1934), Princeton University (1937), Leiden University (as Lorentz Professor 1960) and Oxford University (1961/62).

In 1934 Van Vleck was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1935 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences and in 1939 American Philosophical Society . In 1965 he received the Langmuir Prize of the American Physical Society (of which he was president in 1952) and in 1966 the National Medal of Science . In 1974 he received the Lorentz Medal and in 1970 he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor. He was since 1960 and corresponding auswärtiges since 1974 member of the French Academy of Sciences and auswärtiges since 1967 Member ( Foreign Member ) of the Royal Society . In 1963 he was the first recipient of the Michelson Award from the Case Institute of Technology (lecture: American Physics comes of age ).

His student nickname was Van . Since childhood he was bedridden for long periods of time due to illness, and he had a weakness for train schedules, which he memorized thanks to an excellent memory.

His book Quantum Principles and Line Spectra from 1926 is still clinging to the old quantum theory - in contrast, he uses the quantum mechanics that was developing at that time in his second textbook Theory of Electric and Magnetic Susceptibilities from 1932.

His graduate students included Philip Warren Anderson , Thomas S. Kuhn , Robert Serber, and his undergraduate students included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain .

The Van Vleck Lectures at the University of Minnesota are named in his honor (and also after his wife Abigail, who sponsored the series of lectures).

Fonts

  • Quantum Principles and Line Spectra , Bulletin of the National Research Council, Volume 10, Part 4, No. 54, Washington DC 1926
  • The Theory of Electric and Magnetic Susceptibilities , Oxford University Press 1932, Archives
  • Quantum mechanics: The key to understanding magnetism , Science, Volume 201, 1978, pp. 113–120 (Nobel lecture, also on the Nobel website online)
  • Models of exchange coupling in ferromagnetic media , Reviews of Modern Physics, Volume 25, 1953, pp. 220-227

Memories:

  • Travels with Dirac in the Rockies , in Salam, Wigner (Ed.) Aspects of Quantum Theory , Cambridge University Press 1972
  • Reminiscences of the first decade of quantum mechanics , Int. J. Quant. Chemistry, Vol. 5, 1971, pp. 3-20
  • Reminiscences of my scientific report with RS Mulliken , J. Phys. Chem., Vol. 84, 1980, pp. 2091-2095

literature

See also

Web links

Commons : John Hasbrouck Van Vleck  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files
  • Information from the Nobel Foundation on the 1977 award ceremony for John H. Van Vleck
  • Philip Warren Anderson: John Hasbrouck Van Vleck 1899–1980 . In: National Academy of Sciences (Ed.): Biographical Memoirs . 1987, p. 500 (English, nasonline.org [PDF]).
  • Brebis Bleaney, FRS: John Hasbrouck Van Vleck, 13 March 1899 - 27 October 1980 . In: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society . tape 28 , November 1, 1982, pp. 627–665 , doi : 10.1098 / rsbm.1982.0024 (English, royalsocietypublishing.org [PDF]).
  • JH Van Vleck. In: Physics History Network. American Institute of Physics

Individual evidence

  1. Philip Warren Anderson 1987 obituary in the Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences
  2. ^ List of former members since 1666: Letter V. Académie des sciences, accessed on March 11, 2020 (French).
  3. ^ Entry on Vleck, John Hasbrouck Van (1899–1980) in the Archives of the Royal Society , London