James Rainwater

Leo James Rainwater
Leo James Rainwater
Born	(1917-12-09)December 9, 1917 Council, Idaho
Died	May 31, 1986(1986-05-31) (aged 68) New York
Institutions	Columbia University Manhattan Project
Alma mater	Columbia University Caltech
Thesis	Neutron beam spectrometer studies of boron, cadmium, and the energy distribution from paraffin (1946)
Doctoral advisor	John R. Dunning
Notable awards	Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award (1963) Nobel Prize in Physics (1975)

Leo James Rainwater (December 9, 1917 – May 31, 1986) was an American physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1975 for his part in determining the asymmetrical shapes of certain atomic nuclei.

During World War II, he worked on the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bombs. In 1949, he began developing his theory that, contrary to what was then believed, not all atomic nuclei are spherical. His ideas were later tested and confirmed by Aage Bohr's and Ben Mottelson's experiments. He also contributed to the scientific understanding of X-rays and participated in the United States Atomic Energy Commission and naval research projects.

Rainwater joined the physics faculty at Columbia in 1946, where he reached the rank of full professor in 1952 and was named Pupin Professor of Physics in 1982. He received the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award for Physics in 1963 and in 1975 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, "for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this connection".

Leo James Rainwater was born on December 9, 1917, in Council, Idaho, the son of a former civil engineer who ran the local general store, Leo Jaspar Rainwater and his wife Edna Eliza née Teague. He never used his first name and was always referred to as James or Jim. His father died in the great influenza epidemic of 1918 and Rainwater and his mother moved to Hanford, California, where she married George Fowler, a widower with two sons, Freeman and John. In time he also acquired a half-brother, George Fowler, Jr., who became naval officer. At high school he excelled in mathematics, chemistry and physics and was admitted to the California Institute of Technology on the strength of a chemistry competition. He received his Bachelor of Science degree as a physics major in 1939.