Leonard Schiff

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Leonard Isaac Schiff (born March 29, 1915 in Fall River , Massachusetts , † January 19, 1971 in Stanford , California ) was an American theoretical physicist.

Life

Schiff's ancestors were Jewish immigrants from Lithuania ; he himself grew up in Brooklyn. He studied physics at Ohio State University , where he received his bachelor's degree in 1933 and his master's degree from Llewellyn Thomas in 1935 . Then he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he in 1937 Philip M. Morse with a work on the scattering of neutrons, protons and deuterons ( "Theory of collision of the light elements") doctorate . Then he went on a scholarship to Robert Oppenheimer's theory group in California (at the same time at Caltech and at the University of California, Berkeley ). He worked there with other members of the group such as Hartland Snyder , Robert Serber and Willis Lamb . In 1940 he became an instructor at the University of Pennsylvania , two years later an assistant and then an associate professor. During this time, like at Berkeley, he worked on liquid helium . During the Second World War he worked on various projects, including crystal detectors in radar and the nuclear weapons program in Los Alamos ; there he took part in the Trinity test . After the war ended, Schiff went to Stanford University in 1947 . There he became professor and head of the physics department in 1948, which he remained until 1966. Schiff was involved in the development of the linear accelerator SLAC and, together with Robert Hofstadter , whom he knew from the University of Pennsylvania, analyzed the electron scattering experiments for which Hofstadter finally received the Nobel Prize .

Schiff's theoretical work mostly has a close connection to the experiment, similar to that of John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh , whom Schiff admired and whose biography he wanted to write. Schiff is best known today for his textbook on quantum mechanics, which first appeared in 1949 and has long been the leading textbook in the United States. Rumor has it that it goes back in part to his lecture notes from Oppenheimer's lectures at Berkeley, but Schiff himself was known as an excellent teacher and received several awards for it. Schiff is also known for the theoretical analysis of tests of general relativity ; For example, he proved that the gravitational mass of anti-particles cannot be negative, as this contradicts observations of atomic physics. In 1960, Schiff proposed a satellite experiment to test general relativity by placing gyroscopes into orbit around the earth. From the relative orientation of the gyro axis to the fixed stars, the Lense-Thirring-Effect would be observable, which results from the entrainment effect of spacetime when the earth rotates. The experiment was prepared for decades by William Fairbank Sr. in Stanford, among others , and finally realized in 2004 in the Gravity Probe B experiments.

In 1966 Schiff received the Oersted Medal . He was one of the initiators of the establishment of the journal of Mathematical Physics in 1960. He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1969) and the National Academy of Sciences (at the time of his death as Chairman of the Physics Department).

In 1948 he was one of the founders of Varian Associates (with Russell Varian and his brother Sigurd, William Webster Hansen , Edward Ginzton, and others).

Schiff had been married since 1941 and had two children.

Fonts

  • Ship: Quantum Mechanics . McGraw Hill, 1949, 2nd edition 1955, 3rd edition 1968.
  • Schiff, Hofstadter (Ed.): Nucleon Structure . Stanford University Press 1964.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Schiff: Sign of the gravitational mass of a positron . In: Physical Review Letters . Volume 1, 1959, p. 254; Gravitational Properties of Antimatter . In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Volume 45, 1959, p. 69
  2. ^ Ship: Possible new experimental test of General Relativity . In: Physical Review Letters . Volume 4, 1960, p. 215; Motion of a gyroscope according to Einstein's Theory of Gravitation . In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Volume 46, 1960, p. 871; Proposed gyroscope experiment to test the General Theory of Relativity . In: Proc. International Conference on Relativity and Gravitation . Warsaw 1962
  3. ^ American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Book of Members ( PDF ). Retrieved April 21, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Ship, Leonard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schiff, Leonard Isaac (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist
DATE OF BIRTH March 29, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Fall River , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH 19th January 1971
Place of death Stanford , California