Hans Frauenfelder

Hans Frauenfelder

Born June 28, 1922
Schaffhausen, Switzerland
Residence United States
Citizenship American
Fields Physicist
Institutions Los Alamos National Laboratory
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Alma mater Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
Doctoral advisor Paul Scherrer
Other academic advisors Gregor Wentzel
Wolfgang Pauli
Known for Perturbed angular correlation

Hans Frauenfelder was born June 28, 1922 in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. He is notable for his 1951 discovery of perturbed angular correlation (PAC). Today, PAC spectroscopy is widely used in the study of condensed-matter physics.

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Education

He received his Dr. sc. nat. in physics in 1950 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich under Paul Scherrer. His thesis was on the study of radioactive surfaces. At ETH he was also taught by Gregor Wentzel and Wolfgang Pauli. Through Pauli, he also got to know many of the leading scientists such as Hendrik Kramers, Werner Heisenberg, Hans Jensen, and Wolfgang Paul.

Career

Frauenfelder migrated to the US in 1952, joining the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a research associate. He stayed at the UIUC till 1992, ultimately as Center for Advanced Study Professor of Physics, Chemistry, and Biophysics. His research interests included nuclear physics, particle physics, conservation laws, the Mössbauer effect, and biophysics. In 1992, Frauenfelder moved to the Los Alamos National Laboratory where he directed the Center for Nonlinear Studies (CNLS) until 1997. In 1997 he left CNLS and joined the theoretical biology and biophysics group at Los Alamos (T-10 recently renamed T-6) and continues research in biophysics.

Books by Frauenfelder

Honors

Frauenfelder is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

See also

External links