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Paul Ehrenfest
Paul Ehrenfest (; 18 January 1880 – 25 September 1933) was an Austrian Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist who made major contributions to statistical mechanics and its relation to quantum physics, quantum mechanics, including the theory of phase transition and the Ehrenfest theorem. He befriended Albert Einstein on a visit to Prague in 1912 and became a professor in Leiden, where he frequently hosted Einstein. Suffering from depression, in 1933 Ehrenfest killed his disabled son, Wassik, and then himself. Biography Paul Ehrenfest was born on 18 January 1880 in Vienna to Ashkenazi Jews, Jewish parents, who were originally from Loštice in Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic). His parents, Sigmund Ehrenfest and Johanna Jellinek, managed a grocery store. Although the family was not overly religious, Paul studied Hebrew language, Hebrew and Jewish history. Later, he always emphasized his Jewish ancestry. Ehrenfest excelled in grade school but did not do well at the Akad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tatyana Afanasyeva-Ehrenfest
Tatyana Alexeyevna Afanasyeva-Ehrenfest (; ; 19 November 1876 – 14 April 1964) was a Russian-Dutch mathematician and physicist who made contributions to the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics with her husband Paul Ehrenfest. Early life Tatyana Afanasyeva was born in Kiev, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. Her father was Alexander Afanassjev, a chief engineer on the Imperial Railways, who would bring Tatyana on his travels around the Russian Empire. Her father died while she was still young, so she moved to St Petersburg in Russia to live with her aunt Sonya, and uncle Peter Afanassjev, a professor at the Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, St Petersburg Polytechnic Institute. Afanasyeva attended normal school in St Petersburg with a specialty in mathematics and science. At the time, women were not allowed to attend universities in Russian territory, so after graduating from normal school, Tatyana began studying mathem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tatyana Van Aardenne-Ehrenfest
Tatyana Pavlovna van Aardenne-Ehrenfest, (; October 28, 1905 – November 29, 1984) was a Dutch mathematician. She is known for her contributions to De Bruijn sequences, low-discrepancy sequences, and the BEST theorem. Early life and education Tatyana Ehrenfest was born in Vienna in 1905 and spent her childhood in St Petersburg. She is the daughter of physicists Paul Ehrenfest and Tatyana Afanasyeva. In 1912 the Ehrenfests moved to Leiden where her father succeeded Hendrik Lorentz as professor at the University of Leiden. Until 1917 she was home schooled; after that, she attended the Gymnasium in Leiden and passed the final exams in 1922. She studied mathematics and physics at the University of Leiden. In 1928 she went to Göttingen where she took courses from Harald Bohr and Max Born. On December 8, 1931, she obtained her Ph.D. in Leiden, advised by Willem van der Woude. After that, she was never employed and, in particular, never held any academic position. Contributions D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gerhard Heinrich Dieke
Gerhard Heinrich Dieke (1901 in Rheda, Germany – August 26, 1965 in Aberdeen, Scotland) was a German/U.S. physicist. He was a pioneer in investigating the structure of atoms and molecules by spectroscopic methods. Dieke studied at the University of Leiden under Paul Ehrenfest, and received a Ph.D. in physics at the University of California in 1926. After completing his graduate studies, he worked at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research in Tokyo and in 1929 he was Dirk Coster's assistant at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Dieke joined the department of physics at Johns Hopkins University in 1930 as an associate professor, and he later served as chairman of the department, 1950-1965. Dieke was a man of wide interests, and was an expert on the taxonomy of lady beetles (Coccinellidae). In 1947 he authored a review of the genus ''Epilachna'' based on the collections of the Smithsonian Museum and others. Dieke was elected a correspondent of the Royal Nethe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viktor Trkal
Viktor Trkal (14 August 1888, Ostřetín – 3 September 1956, Prague) was a Czech physicist and mathematician who specialized in theoretical quantum physics. Life and work Trkal went to the Gymnasium in Vysoké Mýto where his teacher was Adolf Pařízek (1867-1920). From 1906 to 1910 he studied mathematics and physics in Prague. His mathematics professors were Karel Petr (1868–1950), Jan Sobotka (1862–1931) and then beginning Bohumil Bydžovský (1880–1969). He attended physics lectures by Čeněk Strouhal (1850–1922), Bohumil Kučera (1874–1921), František Koláček (1851–1913) and František Záviška (1879–1945). He obtained his doctorate in 1911 with a thesis on the Problem of Dirichlet and Neumann with integral equations. Then he did his one-year military service and afterwards taught at a business school in Prague in 1912-1914. During World War I Trkal was twice wounded and in March 1915 he was made prisoner of war by the Russians, after he first was cons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hendrik Casimir
Hendrik Brugt Gerhard Casimir (15 July 1909 – 4 May 2000) was a Dutch physicist who made significant contributions to the field of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. He is best known for his work on the Casimir effect, which describes the attractive force between two uncharged plates in a vacuum due to quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field. Hendrik Casimir is also known for his research on the two-fluid model of superconductors (together with C. J. Gorter) in 1934. Biography Casimir was born 15 July 1909. He studied theoretical physics at the University of Leiden under Paul Ehrenfest, where he received his Ph.D. in 1931. His Ph.D. thesis dealt with the quantum mechanics of a rigid spinning body and the group theory of the rotations of molecules. During that time he also spent some time in Copenhagen with Niels Bohr, where he helped Bohr support the latter's hypothesis of the gunslinger effect with mock shoot-outs on campus. From 1932 to mid-1933, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arend Joan Rutgers
Arend Joan Rutgers (20 October 1903 – 2 September 1998) was a Dutch- Belgian physical chemist. Arend Joan Rutgers went to high school in Almelo, after which he studied chemistry at the University of Amsterdam. He later obtained his master's degree in 1926 he went to Leiden, where he studied theoretical physics under Paul Ehrenfest. In 1930, he obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Leiden and completed a thesis titled ''"Bijdrage tot de theorie der thermoelectriciteit in kristallen."'' (Contribution to the theory of thermo-electricity in crystals). In 1931, he returned to Amsterdam and worked as a research assistant. In 1933, he became a lecturer at Ghent University in Belgium. In 1938, he was promoted to full professor, and he remained in Ghent until his retirement in 1974. Most of his scientific research was on colloids and surface chemistry, focussing on electrokinetics. Rutgers was elected a correspondent of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jan Tinbergen
Jan Tinbergen ( , ; 12 April 1903 – 9 June 1994) was a Dutch economist who was awarded the first Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1969, which he shared with Ragnar Frisch for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes. He is widely considered to be one of the most influential economists of the 20th century and one of the founding fathers of econometrics.Magnus, Jan & Mary S. Morgan (1987) ''The ET Interview: Professor J. Tinbergen'' in: 'Econometric Theory 3, 1987, 117-142. His important contributions to econometrics include the development of the first macroeconometric models, the solution of the identification problem, and the understanding of dynamic models. Tinbergen was a founding trustee of Economists for Peace and Security. In 1945, he founded the Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) and was the agency's first director. Biography Tinbergen was the eldest of five children of Dirk Cornelis Tinbergen and Jean ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Uhlenbeck
George Eugene Uhlenbeck (December 6, 1900 – October 31, 1988) was a Dutch-American theoretical physicist, known for his significant contributions to quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics. He co-developed the concept of electron spin, alongside Samuel Goudsmit, in 1925. The formalization of Langevin equation for the Brownian motion as a stochastic process, is known as the Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process, derived in 1930 from his work with Leonard Ornstein. I. I. Rabi said that Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit's omission for the Nobel Prize in Physics "will always be a mystery to me". Background and education George Uhlenbeck was the son of Eugenius and Anne Beeger Uhlenbeck. He attended the Hogere Burgerschool (High School) in The Hague, from which he graduated in 1918. He subsequently entered Delft University of Technology as a student in chemical engineering. During the next year, he transferred to Leiden University, to study physics and mathematics, and he earned his bachelor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Goudsmit
Samuel Abraham Goudsmit (July 11, 1902 – December 4, 1978) was a Dutch-American physicist famous for jointly proposing the concept of electron spin with George Eugene Uhlenbeck in 1925. Life and career Goudsmit was born in The Hague, Netherlands, of Dutch Jewish descent. He was the son of Isaac Goudsmit, a manufacturer of water-closets, and Marianne Goudsmit-Gompers, who ran a millinery shop. In 1943, his parents were deported to a concentration camp by the German occupiers of the Netherlands and were murdered there. Goudsmit studied physics at the University of Leiden under Paul Ehrenfest, where he obtained his PhD in 1927. After receiving his PhD, Goudsmit served as a professor at the University of Michigan between 1927 and 1946. In 1930 he co-authored a text with Linus Pauling titled ''The Structure of Line Spectra.'' During World War II he worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As scientific head of the Alsos Mission, he successfully reached a Germa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dirk Coster
Dirk Coster (5 October 1889 – 12 February 1950) was a Dutch physicist. He was a professor of physics and meteorology at the University of Groningen. Coster is known as the co-discoverer of hafnium (element 72) in 1923, along with George de Hevesy, by means of X-ray spectroscopic analysis of zirconium ore. Its name is derived from ''Hafnia'', the Latin name for Copenhagen, as the discovery took place in that city. He helped Lise Meitner escape from Nazi Germany. Childhood and education Coster was born in Amsterdam. Coster grew up in a large working-class family; he was the third child of Barend Coster, a blacksmith, and Aafje van der Mik. The Coster family valued education. Ten of their children survived to adulthood and all received enough education to go onto middle-class professions. From 1904 to 1908 Dirk went to the Teacher's College in Haarlem, then was a teacher until 1913. With the aid of private support he was able to study mathematics and physics at the Universi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johannes Martinus Burgers
Johannes (Jan) Martinus Burgers (January 13, 1895 – June 7, 1981) was a Dutch physicist and the brother of the physicist Wilhelm G. Burgers. Burgers studied in Leiden under Paul Ehrenfest, where he obtained his PhD in 1918. He is known for the Burgers' equation, the Burgers vector in dislocation theory and the Burgers material in viscoelasticity. Jan Burgers was one of the co-founders of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM) in 1946, and was its secretary-general from 1946 until 1952. In 1931 he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1955 he became foreign member. Early life and education Burgers was born in Arnhem, Netherlands. There he attended both primary and secondary school. He attended Leiden University from 1914 until 1917. Burgers became a Doctor of Mathematical and Physical Sciences in 1918, writing a thesis entitled "Het Atoommodel van Rutherford-Bohr" (The Model of the Atom according to Rutherford ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ludwig Boltzmann
Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann ( ; ; 20 February 1844 – 5 September 1906) was an Austrian mathematician and Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist. His greatest achievements were the development of statistical mechanics and the statistical explanation of the second law of thermodynamics. In 1877 he provided the current definition of entropy, S = k_ \ln \Omega, where Ω is the number of microstates whose energy equals the system's energy, interpreted as a measure of the statistical disorder of a system. Max Planck named the constant the Boltzmann constant. Statistical mechanics is one of the pillars of modern physics. It describes how macroscopic observations (such as temperature and pressure) are related to microscopic parameters that fluctuate around an average. It connects thermodynamic quantities (such as heat capacity) to microscopic behavior, whereas, in classical thermodynamics, the only available option would be to measure and tabulate such quantities for various mat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
