James Rainwater

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Leo James Rainwater (born December 9, 1917 in Council , Idaho , † May 30, 1986 in New York ) was an American physicist . The most important of his scientific works develop theories about the behavior and structure of atomic nuclei .

Life

Leo James Rainwater was born in 1917 in a small town in Idaho where his parents ran a small general store. Just a year later, his father died during a flu epidemic. He then moved to Hanford , California with his mother and grandmother . His strengths in the natural sciences subjects physics, chemistry and mathematics were already evident in school.

Rainwater began studying physics at the California Institute of Technology , which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1939. After moving to Columbia University in New York, where he worked in the early years a. a. Learned from the physicists Isidor Isaac Rabi and Enrico Fermi , Rainwater, like many American physicists of the time, was involved in the Manhattan project to develop the atomic bomb.

In 1946 he received his doctorate from Columbia University, where he also went through the other stages of his scientific career: the position of private lecturer in 1947, an associate professorship in 1949 and appointment to full professor in 1952.

From 1949 Rainwater developed a theory that atomic nuclei can deviate from the previously assumed spherical shape due to collective nucleon excitations. The starting point was the experimental results with regard to measured quadrupole moments of atomic nuclei, which Charles H. Townes presented during a colloquium. The collaboration with the Danish physicist Aage Niels Bohr , who spent a stay abroad at Columbia University, was extremely fruitful .

Leo James Rainwater was married to Emma Louis Smith since 1942. They had three sons and a daughter who, however, died young.

Honors

In 1963 Rainwater was awarded the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Prize in Physics by the Atomic Energy Commission . In 1975 he received together with Aage Bohr and Ben Mottelson the physics - Nobel Prize "for the discovery of the connection between collective and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this connection."

In 1968 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sarah Mitchell, Elizabeth Tootill, Derek Gjertsen: Biographical Encyclopedia of Scientists. 2 volumes, 2nd edition. CRC Press, 1994, ISBN 0-7503-0287-9 , p. 735.
  2. ^ Member Directory: L. James Rainwater. National Academy of Sciences, accessed December 15, 2015 (Biographical Memoir by Val L. Fitch ).