Edward Granville Ramberg (June 14, 1907 – January 9, 1995) was an American physicist who contributed to the early development of

electron microscopy An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of accelerated electrons as a source of illumination. As the wavelength of an electron can be up to 100,000 times shorter than that of visible light photons, electron microscopes have a hi ...

and color

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

. He was the uncle of

Mario Capecchi Mario Ramberg Capecchi (born 6 October 1937) is an Italian-born molecular geneticist and a co-awardee of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering a method to create mice in which a specific gene is turned off, known as knoc ...

, a 2007 Nobel laureate.

Life and education

Ramberg was born in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

to American painter, Lucy Ramberg (née Dodd), and father Walter Gustave Ramberg a German archaeologist. Ramberg and his family (he had two older siblings, Walter Gustav Charles Ramberg and Lucy Elizabeth Ramberg) lived in a villa in Florence until the outbreak of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

putting Germany and Italy on different sides. The family evacuated to

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

where the father was drafted into the German army and was killed in action. After the war, the mother took the family to her family home in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

but she and her daughter returned to the family villa in Florence as Europe returned to normal after the war. While in Portland, Ramberg graduated from Lincoln High School in 1922. That year he enrolled in

Reed College Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at ...

, but two years later he transferred to

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

where he was joined by his older brother returning from Europe. During the years 1925 to 1927, he took a hiatus and worked for

Bausch & Lomb Bausch + Lomb is an eye health products company based in Vaughan, Ontario, Canada. It is one of the world's largest suppliers of contact lenses, lens care products, pharmaceuticals, intraocular lenses, and other eye surgery products. The compan ...

optical computing Optical computing or photonic computing uses light waves produced by lasers or incoherent sources for data processing, data storage or data communication for computing. For decades, photons have shown promise to enable a higher bandwidth than the ...

. Upon receipt of his bachelor's degree from Cornell in 1928, he stayed at the University to work with

Floyd K. Richtmyer Floyd Karker Richtmyer (October 12, 1881 – November 7, 1939) was a physicist and educator in the United States. Biography Richtmyer was born October 12, 1881, in the rural community of Cobleskill, New York. He studied with Perley Nutting at C ...

. In 1930, Ramberg went to study with

Arnold Sommerfeld Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld, (; 5 December 1868 – 26 April 1951) was a German theoretical physicist who pioneered developments in atomic and quantum physics, and also educated and mentored many students for the new era of theoretica ...

at the

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...

. He was granted his Ph.D. in 1932.Ramberg Biography
– American Philosophical Society Edward and his wife (Sarah) were

Quakers Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abil ...

and, for that reason, 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 vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

he did alternative services that include: working at a mental institution, clearing swamps and served for testing vaccines against tropical diseases.Mario Capecchi - Biographical
– Nobel Prize Website After the war, his sister and her 9-year-old son Mario Capecchi returned from Europe, and the Ramberg's took charge of Mario's education.

Career

Upon return to the United States from Munich, Ramberg returned to Cornell and continued the work on which he based his thesis: X-ray satellites and line widths. In 1935, he left Cornell to take a position at

RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...

to work on both theoretical and experimental work on

secondary emission In particle physics, secondary emission is a phenomenon where primary incident particles of sufficient energy, when hitting a surface or passing through some material, induce the emission of secondary particles. The term often refers to the emi ...

pickup tube Video camera tubes were devices based on the cathode ray tube that were used in television cameras to capture television images, prior to the introduction of charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensors in the 1980s. Several different types of tubes ...

s, and

field electron emission Field electron emission, also known as field emission (FE) and electron field emission, is emission of electrons induced by an electrostatic field. The most common context is field emission from a solid surface into a vacuum. However, field emissio ...

. He later took part in the development of the theory of thermoelectric refrigeration and image tube aberrations and in demonstrating the mathematical operability of a multistage electrostatic electron multiplier. He also took part in construction of one of the first

electron microscope An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of accelerated electrons as a source of illumination. As the wavelength of an electron can be up to 100,000 times shorter than that of visible light photons, electron microscopes have a hi ...

s in the mid-1940s. He remained at RCA until 1972. In addition to working at RCA, he was a visiting professor at the University of Munich in 1949 and, he was a Fulbright lecturer at the

Technische Hochschule A ''Technische Hochschule'' (, plural: ''Technische Hochschulen'', abbreviated ''TH'') is a type of university focusing on engineering sciences in Germany. Previously, it also existed in Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands (), and Finland (, ). ...

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it th ...

1960-1961. In addition to co-authoring a number of books, he also translated ''Electrodynamik'', Arnold Sommerfeld's third volume in his six-volume ''Lectures on Theoretical Physics''.

Awards

*1957 – Elected a Fellow of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

*1964 –

David Sarnoff David Sarnoff (February 27, 1891 – December 12, 1971) was an American businessman and pioneer of American radio and television. Throughout most of his career, he led the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in various capacities from shortly afte ...

Outstanding Team Award in Science from RCA *1972 – David Sarnoff Award (co-sponsored by RCA and the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

) for his work on electron optics, electron physics, and television. *1989 – Karl Ferdinand Braun Prize from the

Society for Information Display The Society for Information Display (SID) is an industry organization for displays, generally electronic displays such as televisions and computer monitors. SID was founded in September 1962. Its main activities are publishing technical journals ...

*Fellow of the

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 a ...

*Fellow of the

Selected Literature

*Arnold Sommerfeld and E. Ramberg ''Das Drehmoment eines permanenten Magneten im Felde eines permeablen Mediums'', ''Annalen der Physik'' 8 46-54 (1950) as cited i
Sommerfeld Bibliography
– Sommerfeld Project.

Books

*V. K. Zworykin and E. G. Ramberg ''Photoelectricity And Its Application'' (John Wiley and Sons, 1934) *E. E. Zworykin, G. A. Morton, E. G. Ramberg, J. Hillier, and A. W. Vance ''Electron Optics and the Electron Microscope'' (John Wiley & Sons, 1945) *Arnold Sommerfeld, translated from the German by Edward G. Ramberg ''Electrodynamics - Lectures on Theoretical Physics Volume III'' (Academic Press, 1952) *V. K. Zworykin, E. G. Ramberg, and L. E. Flory ''Television in Science and Industry'' (John Wiley and Sons, 1958) *A. M. Morell and E. G. Ramberg ''Color Television Picture Tubes'' (Academic Press, 1974)

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ramberg, Edward 1907 births 1995 deaths 20th-century American physicists Reed College alumni Cornell University alumni Fellows of the American Physical Society German expatriates in Italy German emigrants to the United States