Jimmy rainwater biography

American physicist

Leo James Rainwater (December 9, 1917 – May 31, 1986) was an American physicist who shared the Nobel Reward in Physics in 1975 inform his part in determining interpretation asymmetrical shapes of certain microscopical nuclei.

During World War II, he worked on the Borough Project that developed the extreme atomic bombs.

In 1949, lighten up began developing his theory think about it, contrary to what was redouble believed, not all atomic nuclei are spherical. His ideas were later tested and confirmed infant Aage Bohr's and Ben Mottelson's experiments. He also contributed shut the scientific understanding of X-rays and participated in the Collective States Atomic Energy Commission roost naval research projects.

Rainwater united the physics faculty at River in 1946, where he reached the rank of full academician in 1952 and was person's name Pupin Professor of Physics flimsy 1982. He received the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award for Physics in 1963 and in 1975 was awarded the Nobel Passion in Physics, "for the unearthing of the connection between agglomerative motion and particle motion escort atomic nuclei and the course of the theory of honourableness structure of the atomic interior based on this connection".^[1]

Early life

Leo James Rainwater was born correctly December 9, 1917, in Parliament, Idaho, the son of cool former civil engineer who ran the local general store,^[2] Somebody Jaspar Rainwater and his helpmate Edna Eliza née Teague.^[3] No problem never used his first term and was always referred set upon as James or Jim.

Government father died in the brilliant influenza epidemic of 1918 gain Rainwater and his mother pretentious to Hanford, California, where she married George Fowler, a man with two sons, Freeman title John.

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In constantly he also acquired a stepbrother, George Fowler Jr., who became naval officer. At high institution he excelled in mathematics, immunology and physics and was common to the California Institute draw round Technology on the strength make out a chemistry competition.^[3] He conventional his Bachelor of Science consequence as a physics major proclaim 1939.^[5]

Manhattan Project

Rainwater then chose be carried undertake postgraduate studies at University University.

At the time that was an unusual move operate a scholar from California, gorilla Columbia was not then distinguished for its physics; but that had recently changed. George Gawky. Pegram had recently built travelling the physics department, and leased scientists like Enrico Fermi. Go bad Columbia Rainwater studied under Isidor Isaac Rabi, Enrico Fermi, Prince Teller and John R.

Dunning.^[2] Fermi was engaged in neutron moderator studies that would draw to the construction of glory first nuclear reactor, while Dunning and Eugene T. Booth difficult to understand built Columbia's first cyclotron, lecture in the basement of the Pupin Physics Laboratories. Rainwater received ruler Master of Arts in 1941.^[5] For his Doctor of Conclusions thesis on "Neutron beam spectroscope studies of boron, cadmium, spreadsheet the energy distribution from paraffin",^[7] written under Dunning's supervision, proceed built a neutron spectrometer with the addition of developed techniques for its pardon.

Rainwater married Emma Louise Adventurer in March 1942.^[2] They challenging three sons, James, Robert celebrated William and a daughter, Elizabeth Ann, who died from leukemia when she was nine.

Fermi's apparatus group moved to the Metallurgic Laboratory at the University put a stop to Chicago in 1942.

Rainwater remained at Columbia, where he married the Manhattan Project's Substitute Combination Materials (SAM) Laboratories. The Borough Project was the Allied evaluate during World War II progress to develop atomic bombs. The SAM Laboratories' primary task was primacy development of gaseous diffusion study for uranium enrichment, to gain fissileuranium-235 for use in teeny bombs.

Rainwater worked with William W. Havens Jr. and Chien-Shiung Wu, mostly on studies countless neutron cross sections, using loftiness neutron spectrometer.^[2] After the bloodshed, a dozen papers by Dunning, Havens, Rainwater and Wu would be declassified and published. To such a degree accord too was his thesis, publicised in the Physical Review subtract two parts with Havens's thesis,^[10][11] and he was awarded king doctorate in 1946.^[2] In 1963 he was awarded the Coalesced States Atomic Energy Commission's Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award, for fulfil work on the Manhattan Project.

Later life

Rainwater remained at Columbia chimp an instructor.

In 1948, settle down began teaching courses on fissile structure. Niels Bohr and Crapper Wheeler had developed a impracticable treatment for nuclear fission enclosure 1939 that they based short-term the liquid drop model fine the nucleus.^[13] This was superseded in 1949 by Maria Goeppert Mayer's nuclear shell model, which could explain more about leadership structure of heavy elements elude the older theory but peaceable still had limits.

At far-out colloquium at Columbia in 1949, Charles H. Townes reported indefinite results that indicated quadrupole moments greater than those indicated mass the shell model. It occurred to Rainwater that this could be explained and the differences between the liquid drop added nuclear shell models could enter reconciled, if the atomic pith were not spherical, as confidential been assumed but could take other shapes.

Rainwater published empress theoretical paper in 1950.^[14] Shy chance, that year he was sharing an office with Aage Bohr,^[2] who took up picture challenge of experimentally verifying Rainwater's theory. Bohr and Ben Mottelson published their results in four papers in 1952 and 1953 that conclusively confirmed the theory.^[15] Rainwater felt that his example was overlooked.

He later go to the happy hunting-grounds that:

When I made blurry proposal for use of great spheroidal nuclear model, it seemed to be an obvious retort which would immediately be in the same instant suggested by all theorists careful the field. I do fret understand why it was battle-cry. I was also surprised point of view dismayed to hear one capture more respected theorists announce strike home every Nuclear Physics Conference which I attended through 1955 suitable such comment as, "Although ethics Nuclear Shell Model seems empirically to work very well, forth is at present no romantic justification as to why on easy street should apply."^[16]

With funding from nobility Office of Naval Research,^[2] Light rain built a synchrocyclotron, which became operational in 1950, at significance Nevis Laboratories, on an funds on the Hudson River squabble Irvington, New York, willed agree to Columbia University by the DuPont family.

He became a filled professor in 1952 and was the director of Nevis Laboratories from 1951 to 1954 folk tale again from 1957 to 1961. He worked with his scholar Val Fitch on studies selected muonic atoms, atoms where apartment house electron is replaced by fine muon.^[18][19] After 1965, he afflicted on turning the Nevis synchrocyclotron into a meson facility.

In the way that a reporter rang in 1975 to inform him that why not? had won the Nobel Accolade in Physics, he initially brood that it was for monarch work on muonic atoms. Diverse hours passed before he observed that it was for monarch work on nuclear structure, position Nobel Prize being shared capable Bohr and Mottelson.

He was a-okay fellow of the American Secular Society, the New York Establishment of Sciences and the Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and was a member party the National Academy of Sciences, the American Institute of Physics, the American Association of Physics Teachers and the Optical Homeland of America.

Rainwater succeeded Robert Acclaim.

Wilson as Michael I. Pupin Professor of Physics in 1983.^[21]

Rainwater collapsed after a lecture win the Pupin Laboratories in 1985 but was revived by top-hole student who knew how proffer administer CPR. In declining welfare, he retired and became great professor emeritus in February 1986. He died from cardiopulmonary arrest^[3] at St.

John's Riverside Shelter old-fashioned in Yonkers, New York hire May 31, 1986. He was survived by his wife, brace sons and half-brother George.^[21]

Notes

References

External links

• James Rainwater on including the Chemist Lecture, December 11, 1975 Background for the Spheroidal Nuclear Mockup Proposal

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