Herman Feshbach

Herman Feshbach (February 2, 1917, in New York City – 22 December, 2000, in Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an American physicist. He was an Institute Professor Emeritus of physics at MIT. Feshbach is best known for Feshbach resonance and for writing, with Philip M. Morse, Methods of Theoretical Physics.

Feshbach was born in New York City and graduated from the City College of New York in 1937. He was a member of the same family as Dr. Murray Feshbach, the Sovietologist and retired Georgetown University professor. He then went on to receive his Ph.D. in physics from MIT in 1942.

Feshbach was invited to stay at MIT after he received his doctorate. He remained on the physics faculty for over fifty years. From 1967 to 1973, he was the director of MIT's Center for Theoretical Physics, and from 1973 to 1983, he was chairman of the physics department. In 1983, Feshbach was named as an Institute Professor, the highest faculty honor at MIT.

Prof. Feshbach was active in the nuclear disarmament movement and was a founder and first chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists. In 1969, he participated in a protest against military research at MIT.

He became concerned about the condition of scientists behind the Iron Curtain, and worked to establish contacts between Western scientists and their Eastern Bloc counterparts. Prof. Feshbach also championed the cause of Andrei Sakharov and other Soviet refuseniks. He first met Sakharov in the mid-1970s; Feshbach wrote about meeting Sakharov after his release from internal exile, in an article that appeared in Physics Today.

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