Nicolaas Bloembergen (March 11, 1920 – September 5, 2017) was a

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

and

Nobel laureate The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make o ...

, recognized for his work in developing driving principles behind

nonlinear optics Nonlinear optics (NLO) is the branch of optics that describes the behaviour of light in ''nonlinear media'', that is, media in which the polarization density P responds non-linearly to the electric field E of the light. The non-linearity is typic ...

for laser spectroscopy. During his career, he was a professor at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

and later at the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first ...

and at Leiden University in 1973 (as Lorentz Professor). Bloembergen shared the 1981

Nobel Prize in Physics ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...

along with

Arthur Schawlow Arthur Leonard Schawlow (May 5, 1921 – April 28, 1999) was an American physicist and co-inventor of the laser with Charles Townes. His central insight, which Townes overlooked, was the use of two mirrors as the resonant cavity to take maser ac ...

and

Kai Siegbahn Kai Manne Börje Siegbahn (20 April 1918 – 20 July 2007) was a Swedish physicist who was awarded the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics. Biography Siegbahn was born in Lund, Sweden, son of Manne Siegbahn the 1924 physics Nobel Prize winner. Siegb ...

because their work "has had a profound effect on our present knowledge of the constitution of matter" through the use of laser spectroscopy. In particular, Bloembergen was singled out because he "founded a new field of science we now call non-linear optics" by mixing "two or more beams of laser light... in order to produce laser light of a different wave length" and thus significantly broaden the laser spectroscopy frequency band.

Early life

Bloembergen was born in

Dordrecht Dordrecht (), historically known in English as Dordt (still colloquially used in Dutch, ) or Dort, is a city and municipality in the Western Netherlands, located in the province of South Holland. It is the province's fifth-largest city after ...

on March 11, 1920, where his father was a chemical engineer and executive.Nobel Foundatio
1981 Nobel Presentation Speech by Professor Ingvar Lindgren
He had five siblings, with his brother Auke later becoming a legal scholar. In 1938, Bloembergen entered the

University of Utrecht Utrecht University (UU; nl, Universiteit Utrecht, formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2018, it had an enrollme ...

to study physics. However, during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, the German authorities closed the university and Bloembergen spent two years in hiding.

Career

Graduate studies

Bloembergen left the war-ravaged Netherlands in 1945 to pursue graduate studies at

under Professor

Edward Mills Purcell Edward Mills Purcell (August 30, 1912 – March 7, 1997) was an American physicist who shared the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physics for his independent discovery (published 1946) of nuclear magnetic resonance in liquids and in solids. Nuclear mag ...

. Through Purcell, Bloembergen was part of the prolific academic lineage tree of J. J. Thomson, which includes many other Nobel Laureates, beginning with Thomson himself (Physics Nobel, 1906) and

Lord Rayleigh John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, (; 12 November 1842 – 30 June 1919) was an English mathematician and physicist who made extensive contributions to science. He spent all of his academic career at the University of Cambridge. A ...

(Physics Nobel, 1904),

Ernest Rutherford Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand physicist who came to be known as the father of nuclear physics. ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' considers him to be the greatest ...

(Chemistry Nobel 1908), Owen Richardson (Physics Nobel, 1928), and finally Purcell (Physics, Nobel 1952). Bloembergen's other influences include

John Van Vleck John Hasbrouck Van Vleck (March 13, 1899 – October 27, 1980) was an American physicist and mathematician. He was co-awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977, for his contributions to the understanding of the behavior of electronic magnetism i ...

(Physics Nobel, 1977) and

Percy Bridgman Percy Williams Bridgman (April 21, 1882 – August 20, 1961) was an American physicist who received the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the physics of high pressures. He also wrote extensively on the scientific method and on other as ...

(Physics Nobel, 1946). Six weeks before his arrival, Purcell and his graduate students Torrey and Pound discovered

nuclear magnetic resonance Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a physical phenomenon in which nuclei in a strong constant magnetic field are perturbed by a weak oscillating magnetic field (in the near field) and respond by producing an electromagnetic signal with a ...

(NMR). Bloembergen was hired to develop the first NMR machine. At Harvard he attended lectures by Schwinger, Van Vleck, and Kemble. Bloembergen's NMR systems are the predecessors of modern-day MRI machines, which are used to examine internal organs and tissues. Bloembergen's research on NMR led to an interest in

maser A maser (, an acronym for microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) is a device that produces coherent electromagnetic waves through amplification by stimulated emission. The first maser was built by Charles H. Townes, James ...

s, which were introduced in 1953 and are the predecessors of lasers. Bloembergen returned to the Netherlands in 1947, and submitted his thesis ''Nuclear Magnetic Relaxation'' at the

University of Leiden Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, as a reward to the city of Le ...

. This was because he had completed all the preliminary examinations in the Netherlands, and Cor Gorter of Leiden offered him a postdoctoral appointment there. He received his Ph.D. degree from Leiden in 1948, and then was a postdoc at Leiden for about a year.

Professorship

In 1949, he returned to Harvard as a Junior Fellow of the

Society of Fellows The Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginnings of their careers by Harvard University for their potential to advance academic wisdom, upon whom are bestowed distinctive opportunities to foster their individual and intel ...

. In 1951, he became an associate professor; he then became Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics in 1957; Rumford Professor of Physics in 1974; and Gerhard Gade University Professor in 1980. In 1990 he retired from Harvard. In addition, Bloembergen served as a visiting professor. From 1964 to 1965, Bloembergen was a visiting professor at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

. In 1996–1997, he was a visiting scientist at the College of Optical Sciences of the

; he became a professor at Arizona in 2001. Bloembergen was a member of the Board of Sponsors of the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
' and Honorary Editor of the ''

Journal of Nonlinear Optical Physics & Materials The ''Journal of Nonlinear Optical Physics & Materials'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that was established in 1992 and is published by World Scientific. It covers developments in the field of nonlinear interactions of light with matter, ...

''.

Laser spectroscopy

By 1960 while at Harvard, he experimented with microwave spectroscopy. Bloembergen had modified the

Charles Townes Charles Hard Townes (July 28, 1915 – January 27, 2015) was an American physicist. Townes worked on the theory and application of the maser, for which he obtained the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics associated wit ...

, and in 1956, Bloembergen developed a crystal maser, which was more powerful than the standard gaseous version. With the advent of the laser, he participated in the development of the field of laser spectroscopy, which allows precise observations of atomic structure using lasers. Following the development of

second-harmonic generation Second-harmonic generation (SHG, also called frequency doubling) is a nonlinear optical process in which two photons with the same frequency interact with a nonlinear material, are "combined", and generate a new photon with twice the energy o ...

Peter Franken Peter A. Franken (November 10, 1928 – March 11, 1999) was an American physicist who contributed to the field of nonlinear optics. He was president of the Optical Society of America in 1977. In 1961, Professor Peter Franken and his coworkers in t ...

and others in 1961, Bloembergen studied how when one bombards

matter In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic part ...

with a focused and high-intensity beam of

photons A photon () is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are Massless particle, massless ...

, a new structure of matter is revealed. This he termed the study of

. In reflection to his work in a Dutch newspaper in 1990, Bloembergen said: "We took a standard textbook on optics and for each section we asked ourselves what would happen if the intensity was to become very high. We were almost certain that we were bound to encounter an entirely new type of physics within that domain". From this theoretical work, Bloembergen found ways to combine two or more laser sources consisting of photons in the visible light frequency range to generate a single laser source with photons of different frequencies in the

infrared Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of Light, visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from ...

and

ultraviolet Ultraviolet (UV) is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelength from 10 nm (with a corresponding frequency around 30 PHz) to 400 nm (750 THz), shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays. UV radiation ...

ranges, which extends the amount of atomic detail that can be gathered from laser spectroscopy.

Awards

He was awarded the

Lorentz Medal Lorentz Medal is a distinction awarded every four years by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. It was established in 1925 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the doctorate of Hendrik Lorentz. The medal is given for impor ...

in 1978. He received the Bijvoet Medal of the Bijvoet Center for Biomolecular Research of

Utrecht University Utrecht University (UU; nl, Universiteit Utrecht, formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2018, it had an enrollme ...

in 2001. Bloembergen shared the 1981

with

, along with

. The Nobel Foundation awarded Bloembergen and Schawlow "for their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy".

Personal life and death

Bloembergen met Huberta Deliana Brink (Deli) in 1948 while on vacation with his university's Physics Club. She was able to travel with Bloembergen to the United States in 1949 on a student hospitality exchange program; he proposed to her when they arrived in the States, and were married by 1950 on return to Amsterdam. They were both

naturalized Naturalization (or naturalisation) is the legal act or process by which a non-citizen of a country may acquire citizenship or nationality of that country. It may be done automatically by a statute, i.e., without any effort on the part of the in ...

as citizens of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

in 1958. They had three children. Bloembergen died on September 5, 2017, at an assisted living facility in his hometown

Tucson, Arizona , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive map ...

of cardiorespiratory failure, at the age of 97.

Biography

In 2016 a Dutch biography was published, and in 2019 an English one.

Legacy

On March 11, 2020, the day of Bloembergen's 100th birthday, a team of researchers at the

University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-intensiv ...

published an article in

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

, demonstrating for the first time the successful coherent control of the nucleus of a single atom using only electric fields, an idea first proposed by Bloembergen back in 1961.

Honors

* Corresponding member,

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...

, Amsterdam, 1956 *

Fellow of the American Physical Society The American Physical Society honors members with the designation ''Fellow'' for having made significant accomplishments to the field of physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its mot ...

, 1955 * Fellow,

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

, 1956 * Member,

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...

, Washington, D.C., 1960 * Foreign Honorary Member,

Indian Academy of Sciences The Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore was founded by Indian Physicist and Nobel Laureate C. V. Raman, and was registered as a society on 24 April 1934. Inaugurated on 31 July 1934, it began with 65 founding fellows. The first general meet ...

, Bangalore, 1978 * Associé Étranger,

Académie des Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at ...

, Paris, 1981 * Member,

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

, 1982 *

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

, 1957 * Oliver Buckley Prize, American Physical Society, 1958 *

IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award The initially called Morris Liebmann Memorial Prize provided by the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE), the IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award was created in 1919 in honor of Colonel Morris N. Liebmann. It was initially given to awardees who h ...

Institute of Radio Engineers The Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) was a professional organization which existed from 1912 until December 31, 1962. On January 1, 1963, it merged with the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) to form the Institute of Electrical ...

, 1959 * Stuart Ballantine Medal,

Franklin Institute The Franklin Institute is a science museum and the center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin National Memori ...

, Philadelphia, 1961 *

National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...

, President of the United States of America, 1974 *

, Amsterdam, 1978
Frederic Ives Medal

Optical Society of America Optica (formerly known as The Optical Society (OSA) and before that as the Optical Society of America) is a professional society of individuals and companies with an interest in optics and photonics. It publishes journals and organizes conference ...

, 1979 * Von Humboldt Senior Scientist, 1980 * Member,

German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (german: Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina – Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften), short Leopoldina, is the national academy of Germany, and is located in Halle (Saale). Founde ...

, 1983 * Member Emeritus,

United States National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academ ...

, 1984

References

External links

* including the Nobel Lecture, December 8, 1981 ''Nonlinear Optics and Spectroscopy''
Freeview video 'An Interview with Nicolaas Bloembergen' by the Vega Science Trust

Oral history interview transcript with Nicolaas Bloembergen on 22 March 1977, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
- interview conducted by

Katherine Sopka Katherine Sopka (born Katherine J. Russell) was a science interviewer, physics professor and historian of physics. She is known for her interviews held with leading scientists, and for work on the history of quantum physics and the physics communi ...

Oral History interview transcript with Nicolaas Bloembergen on 27 June 1983, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
- interview conducted by Joan Bromberg and Paul L. Kelley at

* NICOLAAS BLOEMBERGEN (2008
From Millisecond to Attosecond Laser Pulses
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bloembergen, Nicolaas 1920 births 2017 deaths Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences American Nobel laureates 20th-century American physicists American agnostics Dutch emigrants to the United States Dutch Nobel laureates 20th-century Dutch physicists Experimental physicists Optical physicists Harvard University alumni Harvard University faculty IEEE Medal of Honor recipients Leiden University alumni Utrecht University alumni Members of the French Academy of Sciences Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences National Medal of Science laureates Nobel laureates in Physics Lorentz Medal winners People from Dordrecht University of Arizona faculty Spectroscopists Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize winners Fellows of the Optical Society Members of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina Bijvoet Medal recipients Fellows of the American Physical Society Members of the American Philosophical Society Presidents of the American Physical Society