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Nobel 1963

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Events, Laws of Nature, and Invariance Principles

The Shell Model

Glimpses at the History of the Nuclear Structure Theory

"for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles"

"for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure"

Eugene Paul Wigner	Maria Goeppert-Mayer	J. Hans D. Jensen

1/2 of the prize	1/4 of the prize	1/4 of the prize
USA	USA	Federal Republic of Germany
Princeton University Princeton, NJ, USA	University of California La Jolla, CA, USA	University of Heidelberg Heidelberg, Federal Republic of Germany
b. 1902 (in Budapest, Hungary) d. 1995	b. 1906 (in Kattowitz, then Germany) d. 1972	b. 1907 d. 1973

Biography: Eugene Paul Wigner

Eugene Paul Wigner, born in Budapest, Hungary, on November 17, 1902, naturalized a citizen of the United States on January 8, 1937, has been since 1938 Thomas D. Jones Professor of Mathematical Physics at Princeton University - he retired in 1971. His formal education was acquired in Europe; he obtained the Dr. Ing. degree at the Technische Hochschule Berlin. Married in 1941 to Mary Annette Wheeler, he is the father of two children, David and Martha. His son, David, is teaching mathematics at the University of California in Berkeley. His daughter, Martha, is with the Chicago area transportation system, an organization endeavoring to improve the internal transportation system of that city. Dr.Wigner worked on the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago during World War II, from 1942 to 1945, and in 1946-1947 became Director of Research and Development at Clinton Laboratories. Official recognition of his work in nuclear research includes the U. S. Medal for Merit, presented in 1946; the Enrico Fermi Prize (U.S.A.E.C.) awarded in 1958; and the Atoms for Peace Award, in 1960. Dr. Wigner holds the Medal of the Franklin Society, the Max Planck Medal of the German Physical Society, the George Washington Award of the American-Hungarian Studies Foundation (1964), the Semmelweiss Medal of the American-Hungarian Medical Association (1965), and the National Medal of Science (1969). He has received honorary degrees from the University of Wisconsin, Washington University, Case Institute, University of Alberta ( Canada ), University of Chicago, Colby College, University of Pennsylvania, Yeshiva University, Thiel College, Notre Dame University, Technische Universität Berlin, Swarthmore College, Université de Louvain, Université de Liège, University of Illinois, Seton Hall, Catholic University and The Rockefeller University. He is a past vice- president and president of the American Physical Society, of which he remains a member. He is a past member of the board of directors of the American Nuclear Society and still a member; he holds memberships in the American Philosophical Society, the American Mathematical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, the National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and Letters, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, he is corresponding member of the Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, Gottingen, and foreign member of the Royal Society of Great Brittain. He was a member of the General Advisory Committee to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission from 1952-1957, was reappointed to this committee in 1959 and served on it until 1964.

Autobiography: Maria Goeppert-Mayer

I was born on June 28, 1906 in Kattowitz, Upper Silesia, then Germany, the only child of Friedrich Goeppert and his wife Maria, nee Wolff. On my father's side, I am the seventh straight generation of university professors.

In 1910 my father went as Professor of Pediatrics to Gottingen where I spent most of my life until my marriage. I went to private and public schools in Gottingen and had the great fortune to have very good teachers. It somehow was never discussed, but taken for granted by my parents as well as by me that I would go to the University. Yet, at that time it was not trivially easy for a woman to do so. In Gottingen there was only a privately endowed school which prepared girls for the "abitur", the entrance examination for the university. This school closed its doors during the inflation, but our teachers continued instructing us. I finally took the abitur examination in Hannover in 1924, being examined by teachers I had never seen in my life.

In the spring of 1924 I enrolled at the University at Gottingen, with the intention of becoming a mathematician. But soon I found myself more attracted to physics. This was the time when quantum mechanics was young and exciting.

Except for one term which I spent in Cambridge, England, where my greatest profit was to learn English, my entire university career took place in Gottingen. I am deeply indebted to Max Born, for his kind guidance of my scientific education. I took my doctorate in 1930 in theoretical physics. There were three Nobel prize winners on my doctoral committee, Born, Franck and Windaus.

Shortly before I had met Joseph Edward Mayer, an American Rockefeller fellow working with James Franck. In 1930 I went with him to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. This was the time of the depression, and no university would think of employing the wife of a professor. But I kept working, just for the fun of doing physics.

Karl F. Herzfeld took an interest in my work, and under his influence and that of my husband, I slowly developed into a chemical physicist.

I wrote various papers with Herzfeld and with my husband, and started to work on the color of organic molecules.

In 1939 we went to Columbia. I taught one year at Sarah Lawrence College, but mainly I worked at the S. A. M. Laboratory, dedicated to the separation of isotopes of uranium, with Harold Urey as director. Urey usually assigned me not to the main line of research of the laboratory, but to side issues, for instance, to the investigation of the possibility of separating isotopes by photochemical reactions. This was nice, clean physics although it did not help in the separation of isotopes.

In 1946 we went to Chicago. This was the first place where I was not considered a nuisance, but greeted with open arms. I was suddenly a Professor in the physics department and in the Institute for Nuclear Studies. I was also employed by the Argonne National Laboratory with very little knowledge of Nuclear Physics! It took me some time to find my way in this, for me, new field. But in the atmosphere of Chicago, it was rather easy to learn nuclear physics. I owe a great deal to very many discussions with Edward Teller, and in particular with Enrico Fermi, who was always patient and helpful.

In 1948 I started to work on the magic numbers, but it took me another year to find their explanation, and several years to work out most of the consequences. That Haxel, Jensen and Suess, whom I had never met, gave the same explanation at the same time helped to convince me that it was right. I met Jensen in 1950. A few years later the competitors from both sides of the Atlantic decided to write a book together.

In 1960 we came to La Jolla where I am professor of physics. I am a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a corresponding member of the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Heidelberg. I have received honorary degrees of Doctor of Science from Russel Sage College, Mount Holyoke College and Smith College.

We have two children, both born in Baltimore, Maria Ann Wentzel, now in Ann Arbor, and a son, Peter Conrad, a graduate student of economics in Berkeley.

Biography: J. Hans D. Jensen

J. Hans D. Jensen was born in Hamburg on 25th June 1907, the son of a gardener Karl Jensen. From 1926 he studied physics, mathematics, physical chemistry and philosophy at the Universities of Hamburg and Freiburg i. Br. He obtained his Ph.D in 1932 in Hamburg (physics, Dr.rer.nat.). He became scientific assistant at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of Hamburg. In 1936 he obtained D. Sc. in Hamburg (Dr. habil.), and he became docent in 1937, and Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Technische Hochschule in Hannover in 1941. In 1949 he was appointed Professor at the University of Heidelberg; since 1969 he is emeritus praecox. In 1947 he was honored with a professorship h. c. at the University of Hamburg, and in 1964 with a doctorate h.c. at the Technische Universitat Hannover. In 1969 he was appointed honorary citizen of Fort Lauderdale (Florida).

He has been a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences since 1947, a corresponding member of the Max Planck Gesellschaft since 1960, and a member of the Sacri Romani Imperii Academia Naturae Coriosorum (Leopoldina, Halle) since 1964.

He was visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin (1951), the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton (1952), the University of California at Berkeley (1952), the California Institute of Technology (1953), the Indiana University (1953), the University of Minnesota (1956), and the University of California at La Jolla (1961).

Since 1955 he has been, with O. Haxel, co-editor of the Zeitschrift für Physik.

Nobel Lecture: Eugene Paul Wigner

Events, Laws of Nature, and Invariance Principles

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