"for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum"

"for his precision determination of the magnetic moment of the electron"

 

Willis Eugene Lamb	Polykarp Kusch
1/2 of the prize	1/2 of the prize
USA	USA
Stanford University Stanford, CA, USA	Columbia University New York, NY, USA
b. 1913 d. 2008	b. 1911 (in Blankenburg, then Germany) d. 1993

 

Biography: Willis E. Lamb

 Willis Eugene Lamb, Jr. was born on July 12, 1913 in Los Angeles, California. His father Willis Eugene Lamb, born in Minnesota, was by profession a telephone engineer and his mother Marie Helen Metcalf came from Nebraska.

Except for three years schooling in Oakland, Calif., he was educated in the public schools of Los Angeles, Calif. In 1930 he entered the University of California at Berkeley and received a B.S. (Chemistry) in 1934. His graduate work in theoretical physics at the same university led to the Ph.D. degree in 1938. His thesis research on the electromagnetic properties of nuclear systems was directed by Professor J.R. Oppenheimer.

He went to Columbia University as Instructor in Physics in 1938, became an Associate (1943), Assistant Professor (1945), Associate Professor (1947) and Professor in 1948. From 1943 to 1951, he was associated also with the Columbia Radiation Laboratory where the research described in the Nobel Lecture was done. In 1951 he went to Stanford University in California as Professor of Physics. During 1953-1954 he was Morris Loeb Lecturer at Harvard University. From 1956 to 1962 he was a Fellow of New College and Wykeham Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, England. In 1962 he became Henry Ford II Professor of Physics at Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

His research has been on the following subjects: theory of the interactions of neutrons and matter, field theories of nuclear structure, theories of beta decay, range of fission fragments, fluctuations in cosmic ray showers, pair production, order-disorder problems, ejection of electrons by metastable atoms, quadrupole interactions in molecules, diamagnetic corrections for nuclear resonance experiments; theory and design of magneton oscillators, theory of a microwave spectroscope, study of the fine structure of hydrogen, deuterium and helium; theory of electrodynamic energy level displacements.

In 1953 he received the Rumford Premium of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The University of Pennsylvania conferred an honorary degree of D.Sc. upon him in 1954. He received the Research Corporation Award in 1955. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

In 1939 he married Ursula Schaefer, a student from Germany.

 

Biography: Polykarp Kusch

Polykarp Kusch was born in Blankenburg, Germany, on the 26th January, 1911, the son of a clergyman. He has lived in the United States since 1912 and is a citizen of that country. He received his early education in the midwest of the United States. His original professional goal was in the field of chemistry, but soon after beginning his course of studies at the Case Institute of Technology, Cleveland, Ohio, his interest rapidly shifted to physics. In 1931 he received the B.S. degree in physics. He carried on his graduate study at the University of Illinois which awarded him the M.S. degree in 1933 and the Ph.D. degree in 1936. At Illinois he worked on problems in the field of optical molecular spectroscopy under the guidance of Professor F. Wheeler Loomis. He worked with Professor John T. Tate at the University of Minnesota in the field of mass spectroscopy during 1936-1937.

Since 1937 Kusch has been associated with the Department of Physics of Columbia University, New York City, except for interruptions engendered by World War II. These years were spent in research and development on microwave generators at the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, the Bell Telephone Laboratories and Columbia University. The experience was important not only in that it gave him knowledge of microwave methods, but also in that it suggested application of the special techniques of vacuum tube technology to a large range of problems in experimental physics.

Kusch has been a Professor of Physics at Columbia University since 1949. From his first days at Columbia, he has been intimately associated with Professor I.I. Rabi in his programme of research on atomic, molecular and nuclear properties and phenomena by the method of molecular beams. The direction in which his own research has been directed has been greatly influenced by this long association. His research has dealt principally with the small details of the interactions of the constituent particles of atoms and of molecules with each other and with externally applied fields. The establishment of the reality of the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron and the precision determination of its magnitude was part of an intensive programme of postwar research with atomic and molecular beams. Later, he has also become interested in problems in chemical physics to whose experimental study he has applied the molecular beams technique.

Professor Kusch has been awarded honorary Sc.D. degrees of the Case Institute of Technology, the Ohio State University, the University of Illinois and Colby College. He was elected to the membership in the National Academy of Sciences (USA) in 1956.

In recent years he is increasingly concerned with problems of education, especially that of educating the young to understand a civilization strongly affected by the knowledge of science and by the techniques that result from this knowledge.

Kusch married Edith Starr McRoberts; they had three daughters. His wife died in 1959 and he was married to Betty Pezzoni in 1960.

Nobel Lecture: Willis E. Lamb

Fine Structure of the Hydrogen Atom

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Nobel Lecture: Polykarp Kusch

The Magnetic Moment of the Electron

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