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Victor Frederick WeisskopfAmerican physicist
Date of Birth: 19.09.1908
Country: ![]() |
Content:
- Early Life and Education
- Academic Career
- The Manhattan Project
- Post-War MIT Career
- Advocacy for Nuclear Safety
- CERN Leadership
- Return to MIT and Retirement
- Contributions to Physics
- - Quantum field theory (in collaboration with Pauli)
Early Life and Education
Born in Vienna on September 19, 1908, Victor Weisskopf was an Austrian-American physicist. He graduated from the University of Göttingen in 1931, where he worked for two years before receiving his Ph.D. in physics in 1934.
Academic Career
After his doctorate, Weisskopf joined the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, where he remained until 1936. He also interned with Niels Bohr at the University of Copenhagen. In 1937, he moved to the United States, escaping Nazi Austria. He became an instructor at the University of Rochester, rising to assistant professor.
The Manhattan Project
In 1943, Weisskopf joined the Manhattan Project alongside other scientists to develop the atomic bomb. The same year, he became a U.S. citizen.
Post-War MIT Career
After the war, Weisskopf was hired as an associate professor of physics at MIT, but allowed to finish his Manhattan Project work. In 1946, he returned as a full professor and headed the nuclear physics theory group. He and John Blatt co-authored the influential textbook "Theoretical Nuclear Physics."
Advocacy for Nuclear Safety
Weisskopf served on Albert Einstein's Committee on the Security of Scientists, which advocated for atomic weapons control. He signed the 1950 manifesto against the hydrogen bomb and promoted scientific exchange between the U.S. and other countries.
CERN Leadership
In 1961, Weisskopf became Director-General of CERN in Geneva, leading the international research facility with the second-largest particle accelerator. Under his guidance, CERN became a world-renowned scientific institute.
Return to MIT and Retirement
In 1966, Weisskopf returned to MIT as an Institute Professor. He chaired the Physics Department from 1967-1973, establishing a research group that later became the institute's Center for Theoretical Physics. He officially retired on July 20, 1974.
Contributions to Physics
Weisskopf's significant contributions to physics include research on:- The internal electron radiation of atoms (under Niels Bohr)
- The effect of nuclear size on atomic level structure (Bohr-Weisskopf effect)
- The uncertainty principle and its impact on spectral line broadening
- Quantum field theory (in collaboration with Pauli)
- The quantization of charged bosons- Vacuum polarization theory
- The statistical theory of the nucleus (with Bethe and Landau)
- Nuclear Coulomb excitation
- The scattering of charge carriers in solids
- The optical model of the atomic nucleus (with Feshbach and Porter)