The James Franck Institute of the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

conducts interdisciplinary research in physics, chemistry and materials science. Scientists at the institute include those interested in condensed matter physics, physical chemistry, materials chemistry, atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics, geophysics, and biophysics. Founded in 1945 by university President

Robert Maynard Hutchins Robert Maynard Hutchins (January 17, 1899 – May 14, 1977) was an American educational philosopher. He was president (1929–1945) and chancellor (1945–1951) of the University of Chicago, and earlier dean of Yale Law School (1927–1929). His& ...

as the Institute for the Study of Metals, it was renamed for Nobel Prize winning physicist

James Franck James Franck (; 26 August 1882 – 21 May 1964) was a German physicist who won the 1925 Nobel Prize for Physics with Gustav Hertz "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom". He completed his doctorate i ...

in 1967. It had its beginnings in the

Metallurgical Laboratory The Metallurgical Laboratory (or Met Lab) was a scientific laboratory at the University of Chicago that was established in February 1942 to study and use the newly discovered chemical element plutonium. It researched plutonium's chemistry and m ...

, the World War II project that initiated the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, using the metal uranium. The Institute's founding director was

Cyril Stanley Smith Cyril Stanley Smith (4 October 1903 – 25 August 1992) was a British metallurgist and historian of science. He is most famous for his work on the Manhattan Project where he was responsible for the production of fissionable metals. A graduate ...

, former head of metallurgy at Los Alamos and the institute made early advances in pseudopotential theory and study of the

Fermi surface In condensed matter physics, the Fermi surface is the surface in reciprocal space which separates occupied from unoccupied electron states at zero temperature. The shape of the Fermi surface is derived from the periodicity and symmetry of the crys ...

. The Institute was an early pioneer in interdisciplinary research in wide-ranging subjects: as it was organized like a "benevolent anarchy", a large percent of its early papers did not even deal with metals but other aspects of chemistry and physics.

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External links

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Video of west stands of Stagg Field, Institute for the Study of Metals (Metallurgical Laboratory), Enrico Fermi, and an active experiment using CP-1
{{authority control Research institutes of the University of Chicago Nuclear research institutes Organizations established in 1945 Physics institutes Materials science institutes

See also

References

External links