Robert Pound

Robert Vivian Pound (born May 16, 1919 in Ridgeway , Ontario , † April 12, 2010 in Belmont ) was a Canadian - American physicist .

Life

Pound graduated from the University at Buffalo (Bachelor 1941). During the Second World War he was researching sonar (Submarine Signal Company 1941/42) and doing radar research at the Radiation Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (until 1946). In 1945 he was a Junior Fellow at Harvard University , where he was Assistant Professor in 1948 and Professor ( Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics ) in 1968 . From 1968 to 1972 he headed the physics faculty at Harvard. In 1989 he retired.

In 1951 he was visiting researcher at the Clarendon Laboratory of Oxford University (as a Fulbright fellow), in 1980 at Merton College in Oxford and in 1973 visiting professor at the Collège de France . He was also visiting professor at the University of Groningen (Zernike Professor 1982), at the University of Florida (1987) and visiting scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory (1986/87) and at the University of Colorado Boulder at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA).

In 1960 Robert Pound and his assistant Glen Rebka demonstrated the gravitational redshift of the radiation from a gamma source in the gravitational field of the earth in an experiment ( Pound-Rebka experiment ) with the help of the Mössbauer effect . For their experiment, they used the only 22.6 m high Jefferson Tower at Harvard University .

In the 1940s, Purcell was part of the Harvard team around Edward Mills , which demonstrated nuclear magnetic resonance (Purcell received the Nobel Prize for this in 1952). In 1951 he and Purcell proposed an experiment to generate negative temperatures (population inversion).

Pound was known for his experimental and mechanical skills (but was also considered a good theorist). As a young man he built a car horn that he could use to send Morse codes and he later built a hovercraft lawn mower .

In 1980 Pound presented a project for a microwave oven for residential buildings at Harvard University. The "pound heater" was published in the American science magazine " Science ".

Awards

• 1952 member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 1961 member of the National Academy of Sciences
• 1965 Eddington Medal
• 1975 member of the Académie des sciences
• 1990 National Medal of Science

See also

• Pound-Drever-Hall method

Web links

• Nicolaas Bloembergen : Robert Vivian Pound 1919-2010 . In: National Academy of Sciences (Ed.): Biographical Memoirs . 2001 (English, nasonline.org [PDF]).
• Robert V. Pound. In: Physics History Network. American Institute of Physics (with links to oral history interviews from 1976, 2003 and 2006).

Individual evidence

1. Jump up ↑ Jascha Hoffman: Robert Pound, Physicist Whose Work Advanced Medicine, Is Dead at 90 . In: The New York Times , April 19, 2010. Retrieved April 20, 2010. 
2. ↑ Microwave oven. Retrieved November 25, 2017 .