Swiss-American physicist (1905?1983)
Felix Bloch
(23 October 1905 ? 10 September 1983) was a Swiss-American
physicist
and Nobel physics laureate who worked mainly in the U.S.
[1]
He and
Edward Mills Purcell
were awarded the 1952
Nobel Prize for Physics
for "their development of new ways and methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements."
[2]
In 1954?1955, he served for one year as the first director-general of
CERN
. Felix Bloch made fundamental theoretical contributions to the understanding of
ferromagnetism
and electron behavior in
crystal lattices
. He is also considered one of the developers of
nuclear magnetic resonance
.
Biography
[
edit
]
Early life, education, and family
[
edit
]
Bloch was born in
Zurich
, Switzerland to
Jewish
[3]
parents Gustav and Agnes Bloch. Gustav Bloch, his father, was financially unable to attend University and worked as a wholesale grain dealer in Zurich.
[4]
Gustav moved to Zurich from
Moravia
in 1890 to become a Swiss citizen. Their first child was a girl born in 1902 while Felix was born three years later.
[4]
Bloch entered public elementary school at the age of six and is said to have been teased, in part because he "spoke Swiss German with a somewhat different accent than most members of the class".
[4]
He received support from his older sister during much of this time, but she died at the age of twelve, devastating Felix, who is said to have lived a "depressed and isolated life" in the following years.
[4]
Bloch learned to play the piano by the age of eight and was drawn to arithmetic for its "clarity and beauty".
[4]
Bloch graduated from elementary school at twelve and enrolled in the Cantonal Gymnasium in Zurich for secondary school in 1918. He was placed on a six-year curriculum here to prepare him for University. He continued his curriculum through 1924, even through his study of engineering and physics in other schools, though it was limited to mathematics and languages after the first three years. After these first three years at the Gymnasium, at age fifteen Bloch began to study at the
Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule
(ETHZ), also in Zurich. Although he initially studied engineering he soon changed to physics. During this time he attended lectures and seminars given by
Peter Debye
and
Hermann Weyl
at ETH Zurich and
Erwin Schrodinger
at the neighboring
University of Zurich
. A fellow student in these seminars was
John von Neumann
.
Bloch graduated in 1927, and was encouraged by Debye to go to
Leipzig
to study with
Werner Heisenberg
.
[5]
Bloch became Heisenberg's first graduate student, and gained his doctorate in 1928.
[5]
His doctoral thesis established the
quantum theory of solids
, using waves to describe
electrons
in periodic lattices.
On March 14, 1940, Bloch married Lore Clara Misch (1911?1996), a fellow physicist working on
X-ray crystallography
, whom he had met at an
American Physical Society
meeting.
[6]
They had four children, twins George Jacob Bloch and Daniel Arthur Bloch (born January 15, 1941), son Frank Samuel Bloch (born January 16, 1945), and daughter Ruth Hedy Bloch (born September 15, 1949).
[5]
[7]
Career
[
edit
]
Bloch remained in European academia, working on superconductivity with
Wolfgang Pauli
in Zurich; with
Hans Kramers
and
Adriaan Fokker
in Holland; with Heisenberg on
ferromagnetism
, where he developed a description of boundaries between magnetic domains, now known as "
Bloch walls
", and theoretically proposed a concept of
spin waves
, excitations of magnetic structure; with
Niels Bohr
in
Copenhagen
, where he worked on a theoretical description of the stopping of charged particles traveling through matter; and with
Enrico Fermi
in Rome.
[5]
In 1932, Bloch returned to Leipzig to assume a position as "Privatdozent" (lecturer).
[5]
In 1933, immediately after
Hitler
came to power, he left Germany because he was Jewish, returning to Zurich, before traveling to Paris to lecture at the
Institut Henri Poincare
.
[8]
In 1934, the chairman of
Stanford
Physics invited Bloch to join the faculty.
[5]
Bloch accepted the offer and emigrated to the United States. In the fall of 1938, Bloch began working with the 37 inch cyclotron at the
University of California, Berkeley
to determine the magnetic moment of the neutron. Bloch went on to become the first professor for theoretical physics at Stanford. In 1939, he became a
naturalized citizen
of the United States.
During
WWII
, Bloch briefly worked on the
atomic bomb project
at
Los Alamos
. Disliking the military atmosphere of the laboratory and uninterested in the theoretical work there, Bloch left to join the
radar
project at
Harvard University
.
[9]
After the war, he concentrated on investigations into nuclear induction and
nuclear magnetic resonance
, which are the underlying principles of
MRI
.
[10]
[11]
[12]
In 1946 he proposed the
Bloch equations
which determine the time evolution of nuclear magnetization. He was elected to the United States
National Academy of Sciences
in 1948.
[13]
Along with
Edward Purcell
, Bloch was awarded the 1952
Nobel Prize in Physics
for his work on nuclear magnetic induction.
When
CERN
was being set up in the early 1950s, its founders were searching for someone of stature and international prestige to head the fledgling international laboratory, and in 1954 Professor Bloch became CERN's first director-general,
[14]
at the time when construction was getting under way on the present
Meyrin
site and plans for the first machines were being drawn up. After leaving CERN, he returned to
Stanford University
, where he in 1961 was made
Max Stein
Professor of Physics.
In 1964, he was elected a foreign member of the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
.
[15]
He was also a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
and the
American Philosophical Society
.
[16]
[17]
Bloch died in Zurich in 1983.
[6]
See also
[
edit
]
- ^
Hofstadter, Robert
(March 1984).
"Obituary: Felix Bloch"
.
Physics Today
.
37
(3): 115?116.
Bibcode
:
1984PhT....37c.115H
.
doi
:
10.1063/1.2916128
. Archived from
the original
on 30 September 2013.
- ^
Sohlman, M (Ed.)
Nobel Foundation directory 2003.
Vastervik, Sweden: AB CO Ekblad; 2003.
- ^
Fraser, Gordon (2012).
"Chapter 7"
.
The Quantum Exodus
. Oxford University Press. p. 182.
ISBN
978-0-19-959215-9
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
Hofstadter, Richard
(1994). "3".
Read "Biographical Memoirs: V.64" at NAP.edu
.
doi
:
10.17226/4547
.
ISBN
978-0-309-04978-8
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Hofstadter, Robert; Chodorow, Marvin; Schawlow, Arthur; Walecka, Dirk.
"Memorial Resolution: Felix Bloch (1905 - 1983)"
(PDF)
. Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on 11 March 2017
. Retrieved
11 November
2017
.
- ^
a
b
Former Fellows of The Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783 ? 2002
Archived
19 September 2015 at the
Wayback Machine
. royalsoced.org.uk
- ^
"Guide to the Felix Bloch Papers"
.
- ^
"Bloch, Felix"
,
Current Biography
,
H. W. Wilson Company
, 1954. Accessed 24 February 2013. "Because of his Jewish faith, his position soon became uncomfortable and he went to Paris, where he lectured at the Institut Henri Poincare."
- ^
Charles, Weiner (15 August 1968).
"Oral Histories: Felix Bloch"
. American Institute of Physics
. Retrieved
11 November
2017
.
- ^
Alvarez, Luis W.
; Bloch, F. (1940). "A Quantitative Determination of the Neutron Moment in Absolute Nuclear Magnetons".
Physical Review
.
57
(2): 111?122.
Bibcode
:
1940PhRv...57..111A
.
doi
:
10.1103/PhysRev.57.111
.
- ^
Bloch, F.;
Hansen, W. W.
; Packard, Martin (1 February 1946).
"Nuclear Induction"
.
Physical Review
.
69
(3?4): 127.
Bibcode
:
1946PhRv...69..127B
.
doi
:
10.1103/PhysRev.69.127
.
- ^
Shampo, M A; Kyle R A (September 1995). "Felix Bloch?developer of magnetic resonance imaging".
Mayo Clin. Proc.
70
(9): 889.
doi
:
10.4065/70.9.889
.
PMID
7643644
.
- ^
"Felix Bloch"
.
www.nasonline.org
. Retrieved
5 October
2022
.
- ^
"People and things : Felix Bloch"
.
CERN Courier
. CERN. 1983
. Retrieved
1 September
2015
.
- ^
"F. Bloch (1905 - 1983)"
. Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
. Retrieved
22 May
2016
.
- ^
"Felix Bloch"
.
American Academy of Arts & Sciences
. Retrieved
5 October
2022
.
- ^
"APS Member History"
.
search.amphilsoc.org
. Retrieved
5 October
2022
.
References
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Further reading
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External links
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