Kurt Gottfried
| Kurt Gottfried | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1929 (age 87–88) Vienna, Austria |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | McGill University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Thesis | Investigations based on the Bohr-Mottelson nuclear model (1955) |
| Doctoral advisor | Victor Weisskopf |
 Kurt Gottfried, “Science Policy, Politics and Human Rights”, 2005, MIT
|
Kurt Gottfried (born 1929) is professor emeritus of physics at Cornell University, known for his work in the areas of quantum mechanics and particle physics. He is also a co-founder with Henry Way Kendall of the Union of Concerned Scientists. He has written extensively in the areas of physics and arms control.
Gottfried was born in Vienna, Austria in 1929. In 1939, after their home in Austria was raided on Kristallnacht, his family emigrated to Montreal, Canada. Gottfried attended McGill University, studying both theoretical and engineering physics.
Gottfried studied with Victor Weisskopf at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1952 to 1955, completing his Ph.D. thesis, Investigations Based on the Bohr-Mottelson Nuclear Model. There he studied deformed nuclei, developing models to describe wave functions and energy levels associated with nucleonic motion in a nonspherical force field, and comparing the results of those models to empirical data. His roommate at MIT was Henry Kendall.
Gottfried married Sorel Dickstein in 1955. He then held short-term academic positions at Harvard University (1955–1958), CERN, the Niels Bohr Institute, and again at Harvard (1961–1964) before accepting a position in the physics department at Cornell University in 1964.
Gottfried became an associate professor at Cornell in 1964, a professor in 1968, and professor emeritus in 1998. He was a visiting professor at MIT from 1968-1969, and took a leave of absence to work at CERN from 1970-1973. He served as Department Chair of the Physics department at Cornell University from 1991-1994.
...
Wikipedia