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Robert H. Dicke

Robert Henry Dicke
Robert Henry Dicke.jpg
Born (1916-05-06)May 6, 1916
St. Louis, Missouri
Died March 4, 1997(1997-03-04) (aged 80)
Princeton, New Jersey
Nationality United States
Fields Physics
Alma mater Princeton University (B.S.)
University of Rochester (Ph.D)
Doctoral advisor Lee Alvin DuBridge
Known for Inventor of the Lock-in amplifier
Brans–Dicke theory
Dicke effect
Dicke radiometer
Influences George Gamow
Paul Dirac
Influenced Arno Penzias
Robert Woodrow Wilson
Alan Guth
Notable awards National Medal of Science (1970)
(1973)
Elliott Cresson Medal (1974)
Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize (1992)
Signature

Robert Henry Dicke (/ˈdɪki/; May 6, 1916 – March 4, 1997) was an American physicist who made important contributions to the fields of astrophysics, atomic physics, cosmology and gravity.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Dicke completed his bachelor's degree at Princeton University and his doctorate, in 1939, from the University of Rochester in nuclear physics. During the Second World War he worked in the Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he worked on the development of radar and designed the Dicke radiometer, a microwave receiver. He used this to set a limit on the temperature of the microwave background radiation, from the roof of the Radiation Laboratory, of less than 20 kelvins.

In 1946, he returned to Princeton University, where he remained for the rest of his career. He did some work in atomic physics, particularly on the laser and measuring the gyromagnetic ratio of the electron. An important contribution to the field of spectroscopy and radiative transfer was his prediction of the phenomenon called Dicke narrowing: When the mean free path of an atom is much smaller than the wavelength of one of its radiation transitions, the atom changes velocity and direction many times during the emission or absorption of a photon. This causes an averaging over different Doppler states and results in an atomic linewidth that is much narrower than the Doppler width. Dicke narrowing occurs at relatively low pressures in the millimeter wave and microwave regions (where it is used in atomic clocks to improve precision). Dicke narrowing is analogous to the Mössbauer effect for gamma rays.


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