Maurice Lévy (physicist)

Maurice Marc Lévy (* 1922 in Tlemcen , Algeria ) is a French theoretical physicist. He played a special role in the modernization of French theoretical physics after World War II and later held high posts in the French scientific organization.

Lévy studied at the University of Algiers and received his doctorate in molecular optics from the University of Paris in 1949 . As a post-doctoral student he was at the University of Manchester, where he switched to theoretical physics. 1950–1952 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study (where he so impressed Robert Oppenheimer that he was invited again in 1955 and 1962). After returning to Paris in 1952 he founded the first research group for theoretical physicists in France at the École normal supérieure (with the support of Yves Rocard ) and became a professor at the Sorbonne . In his research group, he stimulated theoretical research in quantum field theory and quantum mechanics by focusing in particular on the upswing in particle physics in the USA. Physicists such as Oppenheimer, Chen Ning Yang and Murray Gell-Mann were guests in his group and he also promoted physicists outside the Grande Ecoles in his group , for example John Iliopoulos from Greece. He also succeeded in bringing a group of experimental particle physicists around Hans von Halban (whom he brought from Oxford) to France. In 1959 he and his group went to the newly founded branch of the University of Paris in Orsay , where a linear accelerator was also built (LAL). In 1971 he became a professor at the University of Paris VI (Pierre et Marie Curie).

Among other things, he dealt with the meson theory of nuclear forces and theoretical elementary particle physics in the 1950s.

He taught at the first summer school for theoretical physics in Les Houches, which Cécile DeWitt-Morette organized in 1952, and founded the summer school in Cargèse in Corsica in 1960 .

In the 1960s he was a scientific advisor to the French embassy in Washington, DC and director of the Center national d'études spatiales , the center of civil missile and satellite development in France.

From 1971 to 1973 he was head of the research department at the French Ministry of Industry. From 1973 to 1975 he was head of ESA and from 1974 to 1975 he was head of the French space agency.

He was president and founder of the Cité des Sciences de la Villette.

In 1967 he became an officer of the Ordre national du Mérite and in 1975 Knight of the Legion of Honor . In 1959 he received the Prix ​​Félix Robin of the French Physical Society. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the Italian Physical Society.

Fonts

• with DR Yennie, DG Ravenhall: Electromagnetic structure of nucleons , Rev. Mod. Phys., Volume 29, 1957, p. 144
• Sur la theorie relativiste des forces nucleaires , part 1–5, Comptes Rendus Acad. Sci., Vol. 235, 1952, pp. 815, 922, 1255, 1671, 1744
• The non adiabatic treatment of the relativistic two-body problem , Phys. Rev., Volume 88, 1952, p. 72
• The symmetrical pseudoscalar meson theory of nuclear forces , Phys. Rev., Volume 86, 1952, p. 806
• Meson theory of the nuclear forces and low energy properties of the neutron-proton system , Phys. Rev., Volume 88, 1952, p. 725
• High energy behavior of scattering amplitudes in quantum electrodynamics , Phys. Rev., Vol. 130, 1963, p. 791
• with Gell-Mann: The axial vector current in beta decay . In: Nuovo Cimento. Volume 16, 1960, p. 705 (chiral model)

Web links

• Biography at the CERN Courier

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Until then, it was dominated by the group around Louis de Broglie in Paris , but they were working on alternatives to quantum mechanics, for example, and had lost international ties.