 |
Eugene WignerPhysicist
Date of Birth: 17.11.1902
Country:  Hungary |
Content:
Biography of Eugene Paul Wigner
Eugene Paul Wigner was a Hungarian-American physicist born in Budapest to Antal Wigner, a businessman, and Elizabeth Wigner (nee Ainhor), in Budapest. He completed his education at a Lutheran school in 1920 and then attended the Budapest University of Technology for a year. He later transferred to the Berlin Technical University, where he obtained a Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering in 1924 and a Doctorate in Technical Sciences in 1925. After working as a chemical engineer at a tannery, Wigner became a research assistant and later a lecturer in physics at the Berlin Technical University, spending one year as an assistant at the University of Göttingen. In 1930, he became an assistant professor of physics at the University of Göttingen and immigrated to the United States in the same year, where he permanently affiliated himself with Princeton University. After serving as a lecturer in physics for a year, he became a part-time professor of mathematical physics from 1931 to 1937, with an exception of a sabbatical in 1931 when he worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. In 1937-1938, he held a position as a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin but returned to Princeton in 1938, where he obtained a professorship in mathematical physics. Wigner's main scientific contribution was the application of group theory, a specific branch of mathematics, to quantum mechanics, a rapidly developing field in the 1930s. His early research focused on reaction rates of chemical reactions, as well as the theory of metallic bonding, atomic and nuclear structure, and characteristics of nuclear reactions. In 1933, just a year after the discovery of the neutron by English physicist James Chadwick, Wigner showed that the forces binding protons and neutrons together must only act at very close distances and be much stronger than the long-range electric forces attracting electrons to the atomic nucleus. Together with his former classmate John von Neumann, he applied group theory to link the energy levels of the nucleus with its observable behavior. This work proved particularly useful in explaining the existence of what Wigner called magic numbers. Nuclei containing a magic number of protons or neutrons, as empirically established, turned out to be unusually stable and abundant. Wigner's research contributed to the successful efforts of Maria Goeppert-Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen, who independently found the profound source of magic numbers in the quantum mechanical motions of protons and neutrons in the nucleus.
Contributions to the Field
Wigner was one of the first physicists to recognize the power of symmetry principles in predicting the invariances of physical processes. These principles concern the preservation of certain characteristics that exist before a transition in the final products after the transition. For example, symmetry principles and requirements of invariance can help predict which nuclear reactions are possible and which are not. With the discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner, which soon led to the outbreak of World War II in 1939, American physicists were concerned that Nazi Germany might attempt to create nuclear weapons. Wigner joined forces with Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, and other scientists in advocating for the U.S. government to fund nuclear research, and in 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt approved the Manhattan Project for the development of atomic bombs.
From 1941 to 1942, Wigner served as a consultant in the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development. He then took a leave of absence from Princeton in 1942 to join the Manhattan Project. At the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago, he conducted theoretical research and participated in the development of a nuclear reactor for plutonium production. His work greatly contributed to the understanding of neutron processes and allowed for the prediction of the behavior of supercritical masses of nuclear material. On December 2, 1942, Wigner was present for the first controlled nuclear chain reaction. After the war, from 1946 to 1947, he worked as the director of research and development at the Clinton Laboratories of the United States Atomic Energy Commission in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where he led a team of 400 scientists and engineers producing isotopes for peaceful purposes. The first such material, carbon-14, was used by Barnard Free Skin at the Oncological Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri.
Upon returning to Princeton after the war, Wigner actively spoke out against the consequences of nuclear research. Leading a conference on the future of atomic science held on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Princeton University in 1946, he urged his fellow scientists to be socially responsible for the implications of nuclear technology. Two years later, at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., he insisted that atomic energy for peaceful purposes should only be used with adequate safety assurances. He later expressed his disappointment that the emergence of the hydrogen bomb did not prompt the United Nations to become an effective body "for its neutralization." Wigner contributed to the development of atomic reactors for power generation and isotope production for research, analysis, and medical purposes. He was concerned about the nuclear arms race and disagreed with the view that nuclear technology had purely military applications and should be controlled by the military. In his post-war research, Wigner utilized his work on group theory to describe the interactions of high-energy elementary particles.
Nobel Prize and Later Life
Wigner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles." He shared the prize with Maria Goeppert-Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen. According to Ivar Waller, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences presenting the laureate, "an important step in the investigation of these forces [between nucleons] was taken by Wigner in 1933 when he found... that the force between two nucleons is very weak except when their separation is extremely small, but then it becomes millions of times stronger than the electric forces between electrons in the outer part of atoms... Wigner made many other important discoveries in nuclear physics. He developed the general theory of nuclear reactions and made a decisive contribution to the practical use of nuclear energy; he, together with younger scientists, opened up new avenues in many other branches of physics." In 1971, Wigner became an emeritus professor at Princeton. He maintained an active interest in the philosophical questions of quantum mechanics and the future interaction between science and society. He served as the director of the Civil Defense Project for the National Academy of Sciences in 1963 and director of a similar project in Oak Ridge from 1964 to 1965.
Wigner married Amelia Tsipora Frank in 1936, who passed away the following year. Four years later, he married Mary Annette Wheeler, a physics professor at Vassar College, and they had a son and a daughter. Mary Wigner died in 1977, and in 1979, he married Eileen C.P. Hamilton. He became a citizen of the United States in 1937.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Wigner was awarded the Medal for Merit by the U.S. government in 1946, the Enrico Fermi Award by the United States Atomic Energy Commission in 1958, the Max Planck Medal by the German Physical Society in 1961, the National Medal of Science by the National Science Foundation in 1969, and numerous other honors. He received honorary degrees from more than twenty colleges and universities in the United States and Europe. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, American Mathematical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and American Physical Society. He was also a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences.
