Nitta Isamu

Nitta, 1936

Nitta Isamu ( Japanese 仁 田 勇 ; born October 19, 1899 in Tokyo ; died January 16, 1984 ) was a Japanese physicist and crystallographer.

life and work

Nitta studied chemistry at Tokyo University from 1920 to 1923 and graduated in organic chemistry. He then became a research assistant at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research in Tōkyō, known internationally as RIKEN , where he became a student of Nishikawa Shōji . This introduced him to the use of Laue X-ray analysis for the structure determination of crystals. An important publication from the period was the 1926 work on the crystal structure of pentaerythritol with a first refutation of earlier assumptions. Nitta was then sent to Europe, where he continued his education under Ewald , among others .

In 1933, Nitta became a professor at the newly established Osaka University . one of the first work there was the final elucidation of the crystal structure of pentaerythritol , independent of another publication on this question in the same year. The determination of a phase transition at 190 ° from tetragonal to cubic led Nitta and his colleagues to further research the change in thermodynamic, electrical and optical properties of pentaerythritol and other solids. After his retirement, Nitta campaigned for the establishment of a faculty of natural sciences at the private Kwansei Gakuin University for the next eight years .

In addition to his scientific career, Nitta served as dean of the Faculty of Science at Osaka University from 1942 to 1947 and then again from 1955 to 1959. He was from 1961 to 1967 Dean of the Faculty of Science at Kansai Gakuin University. He was also co-editor of the journal Acta Crystallographica from 1953 to 1963 and was an elected member of the Executive Committee of the International Union of Crystallography from 1957 to 1963 , then was Vice President of IuCr until 1969. In Japan itself he was President of the Society for Crystallography from 1955 to 1958 and President of the Society of Chemists from 1963 to 1964. In 1964 Nitta received the Asahi Prize , in 1966 he was awarded the Order of Culture .

The Japanese Society for Crystallography awards the Nitta Prize.

literature

• Obituary for Nitta Isamu in Acta Cryt, 1984

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Nitta is the family name, Isamu the first name.