Robert B. Leighton
Robert Benjamin Leighton (born September 10, 1919 in Detroit , † March 9, 1997 in Pasadena ) was an American experimental physicist and astronomer.
Leighton grew up with his divorced mother in Los Angeles and began studying engineering at Los Angeles City College before moving to Caltech in 1939 as a physics student . Even as a student, he was developing x-ray machines for doctors and, during the Second World War, rockets, for example. B. for attacks on the V1 launch pads. In 1947 he received his doctorate at Caltech on the specific heat of crystals. In 1949 he joined his faculty, where he became a professor and where he remained as a teacher until his retirement in 1985 and as an active scientist in 1990.
Leighton wrote a well-known textbook in the USA "Principles of Modern Physics" in 1959 and was involved with Matthew Sands and Richard Feynman in the reform of the introductory lectures at Caltech, which were published as Feynman Lectures on Physics (held 1961/62) from 1963 to 1965.
In the 1950s, Leighton developed cloud chambers in the group of Carl David Anderson for the study of elementary particles from cosmic rays . Leighton himself first examined the decay of the muon and its other properties, then that of many other newly discovered hadrons . After elementary particle physics began to concentrate on working in large accelerators, Leighton, who preferred to work for himself or in small collaborations throughout his life, left the field and turned to astrophysics, where he designed telescopes for various wavelengths in the infrared and radar range, the z. B. at Mount Wilson Observatory , Mauna Kea and Owens Valley Radio Telescope Observatory. He was a pioneer of helioseismology and discovered the sun's surface oscillations with a period of five minutes in the early 1960s. In doing so, he used the techniques of differential photography developed by Fritz Zwicky . Leighton was team leader of the Mars probes Mariner 5, 6 and 7 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech.
Leighton was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1966). In 1988 he received their James Craig Watson Medal . He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1963), whose Rumford Prize he received in 1986. In 1971 he received the Exceptional Science Achievement Medal from NASA .
His son Ralph Leighton was also a co-author of books with Feynman.
Web links
- Biography in the Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy by Jesse Greenstein
- Robert B. Leighton. In: Physics History Network. American Institute of Physics
Remarks
- ↑ To solve some integrals, he built an analog computer especially for his doctoral thesis, which, in his own words, showed him that he was not a theoretician.
- ↑ where it turned out that it was not the exchange particle sought in the Yukawa theory of nuclear forces
- ↑ A group of six radio telescopes used as an interferometer has been named after him there since 1997.
- ↑ Robert B. Leighton, Robert W. Noyes, George W. Simon, Velocity fields in the solar atmosphere , I, Astrophysical Journal, Volume 135, 1962, pp. 474-499
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Leighton, Robert B. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Leighton, Robert Benjamin |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American experimental physicist and astronomer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 10, 1919 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Detroit |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 9, 1997 |
| Place of death | Pasadena |