Zoltan Bay

Zoltán Lajos Bay (born July 24, 1900 in Gyulavári , † October 4, 1992 in Chevy Chase (Maryland) ) was a Hungarian physicist .

Life

After his father, a priest, died in 1910, his mother raised the children on a modest pension and rented rooms.

Zoltán Bay attended the reformed grammar school in Debrecen and studied physics at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Budapest . In 1923 he finished his studies as a physics teacher for middle schools, stayed as an assistant to Isidor Fröhlich at the chair for theoretical physics and took part in the research on the polarization of light. In 1926 he defended his dissertation Molecular Theory of Magnetooptical Phenomena in Dispersive Media . During an initial two-year stay at the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin , he worked in the Physikalische Reichsanstalt, then in the Physico-Chemical Institute of the University, where he dealt with problems of activated gases. A scholarship enabled him to extend his stay in Berlin.

In 1930 he returned to Hungary and became a professor at the chair for theoretical physics at Szeged University Franz Joseph . He was friends here with his colleague Albert von Szent-Györgyi Nagyrápolt . The idea of a pacemaker arose from her measurements of cardiac currents.

Lipót Aschner , the general director and co-owner of the Tungsram plants, became aware of him, founded a research laboratory and offered Bay its management. During World War II, Tungsram became a major arms company, and in 1944 Bay was promoted to a director. For hiding Jewish colleagues from the Nazis, he was honored as Righteous Among the Nations in the 1990s .

The tombstone of Zoltán Bay (Gyulavári, Hungary)

In the autumn of 1942 the Hungarian Defense Minister asked him to develop an early warning system and he began to work on radar technology. In 1944 they had a radar with which they could detect enemy aircraft at a distance of 60 km. Less than a month after John Hibbett DeWitt Jrs. Project Diana , he and his colleagues succeeded on February 6, 1946 in Nógrádverőce in receiving a radar signal sent to the moon at the starting point. On the receiver side, he developed an integrator with several coulometers , known as cumulation , to improve the signal-to-noise ratio . With that he had launched radar astronomy .

After traveling to the United States in 1947, where his colleagues tried to convince him to stay there, he married Júlia Herczegh from Transylvania. In May 1948 the family emigrated across the Green Border and Vienna to the United States, where he was initially a professor at George Washington University for six years . He then followed a call to the Department of Radiation Physics at the National Bureau of Standards , where he researched relativity and gravity theory, as well as questions about the speed of light. He developed the photomultiplier and was then able to put the determination of the length of a meter on a new basis.

In 1958 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society .

He is buried in his hometown.

Publications

Reflection of Microwaves from the Moon ; In: Hungarica Acta Physica 1 (1947): 1-6
Szent-Györgyi Albert: documentumok, riportok ; 1989
Az élet erősebb ; 1990 ( Life is stronger ); Autobiography
with Werner Steiner: About active nitrogen ; In: Zeitschrift für Elektrochemie ; 35, 733-738, 1929, No. 9
with János Márki-Zay, György Marx: Bay Zoltán és Németh László, a tudós és az író ; 1994
Electron-Multiplier as an electron-counting device. In: Nature, 1938, vol. 141, p. 284.
Electron-Multiplier as an electron-counting device. In: Nature, 1938, vol. 141, p. 1011.
with Szepesi, Z .: About the intensity distribution of Compton scattering of ă rays. In: Zeitschrift für Physik, 1939, Vol. 112, p. 20th
mit Papp, G .: About the core effect in the scattering of ă rays. In: Zeitschrift für Physik, 1939, Vol. 112, p. 86.
Electron-Multiplier as an electron-counting device. In: Reviews of Scientific Instruments, 1941, vol. 12, no. 3, p. 127 ?? 133.
with Papp, G .: Coincidence Device of 10-8 ?? 10-9 Second Resolving Power. In: Reviews of Scientific Instruments, 1948, vol. 19, p. 565 .; In: Nature, 1948, vol. 161, p. 59.
New Type of High Speed Coincidence Circuit. In: Physical Review, 1950, vol. 79, p. 233.
with Meijer, RR, Papp, G .: On Measuring Very Short Half-Lives. In: Physical Review, 1951, vol. 82, p. 754
Differential Coincidence Counting Method. In: Physical Review, 1951, vol. 83, p. 242.
with Meijer, RR, Papp, G .: Differential Coincidence Counting Method. In: Nucleonics, 1952, vol. 10, no. 3, p. 39.
with Szent-Györgyi, A .: Window Field in Muscle. In: Nature, 1951, vol. 167, p. 482.
Determination of the Resolving Time of Coincidences. In: Physical Review, 1952, vol. 87, p. 194.
with Cleland, MR, McLernon, F .: Coincidences with Cerenkov Counters. In: Physical Review, 1952, vol. 87, p. 901.
with Goddall, MC, Szent-Györgyi, A .: Transmission of Excitation from the Membrane to Actomyosin. In: Bull. Math. Biophysics, 1953, vol. 15, p. 1.
with Henri, VP, McLernon, F .: Simultaneity in the Compton Effect. In: Physical Review, 1955, vol. 97, p. 1710.
Millimicrosecond Coincidence Circuits. In: Nucleonics, 1956, vol. 14, no.5, p. 56.
Techniques and Theory of Fast Coincidence Experiments. (Invited Paper, Scintillation Counter Symposium, Washington, DC 1956) In: IRE Transactions on Nuclear Science, Nov. 1956, vol. 125, P12.
with Farago, PS: Remarks on Coincidence Experiments with Visible Light. In: Proceedings of the Roy. Soc Edinburgh, 1963, Part II., Vol. 66, no. 1, p. 111 ?? 115.
with Szent-Györgyi, A .: On the Energy Transfer in Biological Systems. In: Proc. Nat. Acad. of Sci., 1961, vol. 47, no.11, p. 1742.
with Boyne, HS: The Use of Terahertz Photobeats for Precise Velocity-of-Light Measurements. In: Rendiconti Scuola Intern. di Fisica, E. Fermi, 1964, XXXI. Corso, p. 352.
with Luther, GG: Locking a Laser Frequency to the Time Standard. In: Applied Physics Letters, 1968, vol. 13, no.3, p. 303
The Use of Microwave Modulation of Lasers for Length Measurement. Precision Measurement and Fundamental Constants. In: Langenberger, DN, Taylor, BN (Ed. By): National Bureau of Standard Special Publication 343, (US GPO, Washington, DC 1971) p. 59.
with Luther, GG: The Measuring of Optical Frequencies and the Velocity of Light. Precision Measurements and Fundamental Constants. In: Langerberg, DN, Taylor, BN (Ed. By): National Bureau of Standard Special Publication 343, (US GPO, Washington, DC 1971) p. 63.
The Constancy of the Velocity of Light and Prospects for a Unified Standardization of Time, Frequency and Length. Proceeding of the Fourth Internat. Conf. on Atomic Mases and Fundamental Constants. Teddington, England (ed.): Sanders, JH, Wapstra, AH New York: Plenum Press, 1972. p. 334.
with White, JA: Frequency Dependence of the Speed of Light in Space. In: Physical Review, 1972, D5, no. 4, p. 796.
with Luther, GG, White, JA: Measurement of an Optical Frequency and the Speed of Light. In: Physical Review Letters, 1972, vol. 29, no. 3, p. 189
with White, JA: The Speed of Light and the New Meter. In: Physics Today, April 1974, p. 9.
with White, JA: Radar Astronomy and the Special Theory of Relativity. In: Acta Physica Hung., 1981, vol. 51, p. 273.
Az élet erősebb. (Life is stronger, in Hungarian) Budapest: Püski, 1990.
Differencial Coincidence Circuit. In: Physical Review, vol. 83, 242. Part A: Precision Measurement of the Speed of Light; Part B: Proposal for a New Length Standard.

literature

Francis S. Wagner, Christina Wagner-Jones: Zoltan Bay, atomic physicist: a pioneer of space research ; Akadémiai Kiadó, 1985
Ferenc Wagner, Francis Stephen Wagner, Albert Szent-Györgyi: Bay Zoltán atomfizikus, az űrkutatás úttörője ; 1994

Web links

MÉSZÁROS SÁNDOR: A Hold válaszolt Bay Zoltán radarvisszhang-kísérlete (Hungarian)
IRE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRONIC COMPUTERS: Contributors: Zoltan Bay
bzlogi.hu: BAY-LOGI - Bay Zoltán

supporting documents

^ New York Times: Zoltan L. Bay, 92, Major Figure In Developing Radar Astronomy , October 9, 1992.

↑ humboldt.hu: ZOLTÁN BAY (1900 - 1992) ( Memento of the original dated November 5, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2
↑ bme.hu: Bay, Zoltán
↑ Zoltán Bay on the website of Yad Vashem (English)
↑ nasa.gov: SP-4218 To See the Unseen

personal data
SURNAME	Bay, Zoltan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Bay, Zoltán Lajos (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Hungarian physicist
DATE OF BIRTH	July 24, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH	Gyulavari
DATE OF DEATH	4th October 1992
Place of death	Chevy Chase, Maryland

[1] New York Times: Zoltan L. Bay, 92, Major Figure In Developing Radar Astronomy , October 9, 1992.