Ernest Courant

Ernest Courant (born March 26, 1920) is an American accelerator physicist and a fundamental contributor to modern large-scale particle accelerator concepts. His most notable discovery is his 1952 work with Milton S. Livingston and Hartland Snyder on the Strong focusing principle, a critical step in the development of modern particle accelerators like the synchrotron.

Currently, Ernest Courant is a member the National Academy of Sciences, and remains active as a distinguished scientist emeritus at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He has played a part in the work of Brookhaven for sixty years and has also been mentor to several generations of students. In this kind of generative academic influence, he can be compared to his father, the mathematician Richard Courant.

The first of their four children, he was born March 26, 1920 in Göttingen, Germany, to Richard Courant and Nerina Runge Courant, a year after their marriage.

He has written that he "came by science naturally". His mother's father, Carl Runge, is credited with the Runge-Kutta method for numerical solutions of differential equations. A maternal great-grandfather (Runge's father-in-law ) was Emil DuBois-Reymond, a pioneer in electrophysiology. Affinity for science and mathematics extended further than his biological family. Ernest Courant's childhood neighbors included the mathematician David Hilbert (his father's thesis director, in whose honor Ernest received the middle name of David) and the physicists Max Born and James Franck. Further, his father's students and colleagues became friends of the family, and often visited.

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