Bloch, Felix

Bloch, Felix

(born Oct. 23, 1905, Zürich, Switz.—died Sept. 10, 1983, Zürich) Swiss-born U.S. physicist. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1933 and taught at Stanford University (1934–71). He worked on atomic energy at Los Alamos and on radar countermeasures at Harvard University during World War II. In 1954 he became the first director general of CERN. For developing the nuclear magnetic resonance method of measuring the magnetic fields of atomic nuclei, he shared with Edward Purcell (1912–97) the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physics.

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Bloch, Felix (1905–83) physicist; born in Zurich, Switzerland. He made pioneering contributions to studies of superconductivity and magnetism while affiliated with several European universities. After Hitler's regime caused his emigration to the U.S.A. (1934), he went to Stanford (1934–41), investigated uranium isotopes for the Manhattan Project (1941–44), performed counter-radar research for Harvard (1944–45), then returned to Stanford (1945–71). He was the first director general of the European Commission for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva (1954–55). He was awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize (with E. M. Purcell) for developing nuclear magnetic resonance, a technique that revolutionized analytical chemistry and medical diagnostics. Several concepts and features dealing with superconductivity have been named after Bloch.

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Bloch, Felix 

Born Oct. 23, 1905, in Zürich. American physicist and member of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (1948).

Bloch studied at the Higher Technical School in Zürich and at the University of Leipzig. He has held the Chair of Theoretical Physics at Stanford University (California) since 1934. He worked at the Los Alamos Laboratory from 1942 to 1945.

Bloch is the founder of contemporary methods of solid-state physics. He laid the foundations of the quantum theory of crystals (the zone theory), and of low-temperature ferromagnetism. He developed the fundamentals of the theory and carried out the first experiments in the investigation of nuclear magnetic resonance (Nobel Prize, 1952). Bloch was the first to introduce the concept of spin waves.

REFERENCES

“Quantenmechanik der Elektronen in Kristallgittern.” Zeitschrift für Physik, 1928, vol. 52, no. 7.
In Russian translation:
Molekuliarnaia teoriia magnetizma. Leningrad-Moscow, 1936.