Victor Weisskopf
| Victor Weisskopf | |
|---|---|
Victor Frederick Weisskopf in the 1940s.
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| Born |
September 19, 1908 Vienna, Austria-Hungary |
| Died | April 22, 2002 (aged 93) Newton, Massachusetts, United States |
| Residence | Austria, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, United States |
| Nationality | Austria, United States |
| Fields | Physicist |
| Institutions |
University of Leipzig University of Berlin ETH Zurich Niels Bohr Institute University of Rochester Manhattan Project MIT CERN |
| Alma mater | University of Göttingen |
| Doctoral advisor | Max Born |
| Doctoral students |
Kerson Huang J. David Jackson Murray Gell-Mann Kurt Gottfried Lawrence Biedenharn |
| Notable awards | Max Planck Medal (1956) Oersted Medal (1976) National Medal of Science (1980) Wolf Prize (1981) Enrico Fermi Award (1988) Public Welfare Medal (1991) |
Victor Frederick "Viki" Weisskopf (September 19, 1908 – April 22, 2002) was an Austrian-born American theoretical physicist. He did postdoctoral work with Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Wolfgang Pauli and Niels Bohr. During World War II he was Group Leader of the Theoretical Division of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, and later campaigned against the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Weisskopf was born in Vienna to Jewish parents and earned his doctorate in physics at the University of Göttingen in Germany in 1931. His brilliance in physics led to work with the great physicists exploring the atom, especially Niels Bohr, who mentored Weisskopf at his institute in Copenhagen. By the late 1930s, he realized that, as a Jew, he needed to get out of Europe. Bohr helped him find a position in the United States.
In the 1930s and 1940s, 'Viki', as everyone called him, made major contributions to the development of quantum theory, especially in the area of Quantum Electrodynamics. One of his few regrets was that his insecurity about his mathematical abilities may have cost him a Nobel prize when he did not publish results (which turned out to be correct) about what is now known as the Lamb shift.
From 1937 to 1943 he was a Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester.
After World War II, Weisskopf joined the physics faculty at MIT, ultimately becoming head of the department. At MIT, he encouraged students to ask questions, and, even in undergraduate physics courses, taught his students to think like physicists, not just to learn physics. He was a memorable teacher.
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