Nicholas Kemmer (7 December 1911 – 21 October 1998) was a Russian-born

nuclear Nuclear may refer to: Physics Relating to the nucleus of the atom: * Nuclear engineering *Nuclear physics *Nuclear power *Nuclear reactor *Nuclear weapon *Nuclear medicine *Radiation therapy *Nuclear warfare Mathematics *Nuclear space *Nuclear ...

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 caus ...

working in Britain, who played an integral and leading edge role in United Kingdom's nuclear programme, and was known as a mentor of

Abdus Salam Mohammad Abdus Salam Salam adopted the forename "Mohammad" in 1974 in response to the anti-Ahmadiyya decrees in Pakistan, similarly he grew his beard. (; ; 29 January 192621 November 1996) was a Punjabi Pakistani theoretical physicist and a ...

– a

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 out ...

in physics.

Life

Early life

Nicholas was born to Nicholas P. Kemmer and Barbara Stutzer in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

. His family moved to Germany in 1922, where he was educated at Bismarckschule

Hanover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

and then at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

. He received his doctorate in nuclear physics at the

University of Zurich The University of Zürich (UZH, german: Universität Zürich) is a public research university located in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 f ...

and worked as an assistant to

Wolfgang Pauli Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (; ; 25 April 1900 – 15 December 1958) was an Austrian theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of quantum physics. In 1945, after having been nominated by Albert Einstein, Pauli received the Nobel Prize in Physics fo ...

, who had to give strong arguments in 1936, before being allowed to employ a non-Swiss national. Later on, Kemmer moved to the Beit Fellowship at

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

British nuclear development

Kemmer moved to

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...

in 1940 to work on

Tube Alloys Tube Alloys was the research and development programme authorised by the United Kingdom, with participation from Canada, to develop nuclear weapons during the Second World War. Starting before the Manhattan Project in the United States, the Bri ...

, the wartime atomic energy project. In 1940, when

Egon Bretscher Egon Bretscher CBE (1901–1973) was a Swiss-born British chemist and nuclear physicist and Head of the Nuclear Physics Division from 1948 to 1966 at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, also known as Harwell Laboratory, in Harwell, United ...

and

Norman Feather Norman Feather FRS FRSE PRSE (16 November 1904 – 14 August 1978), was an English nuclear physicist. Feather and Egon Bretscher were working at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge in 1940, when they proposed that the 239 isotope of element ...

showed that a slow neutron reactor fuelled with uranium would in theory produce substantial amounts of

plutonium-239 Plutonium-239 (239Pu or Pu-239) is an isotope of plutonium. Plutonium-239 is the primary fissile isotope used for the production of nuclear weapons, although uranium-235 is also used for that purpose. Plutonium-239 is also one of the three main ...

as a by-product, Kemmer (who was lodging at the Bretschers') proposed the names

Neptunium Neptunium is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Np and atomic number 93. A radioactivity, radioactive actinide metal, neptunium is the first transuranic element. Its position in the periodic table just after uranium, named after ...

for the new element 93 and

Plutonium Plutonium is a radioactive chemical element with the symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibi ...

for 94 by analogy with the outer planets Neptune and Pluto beyond Uranus (uranium being element 92). The Americans

Edwin M. McMillan Edwin Mattison McMillan (September 18, 1907 – September 7, 1991) was an American physicist credited with being the first-ever to produce a transuranium element, neptunium. For this, he shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Glenn Seabor ...

and

Philip Abelson Philip, also Phillip, is a male given name, derived from the Greek (''Philippos'', lit. "horse-loving" or "fond of horses"), from a compound of (''philos'', "dear", "loved", "loving") and (''hippos'', "horse"). Prominent Philips who popularize ...

at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, who had made the same discovery, fortuitously suggested the same names.

Professorship

Kemmer spent 1944–1946 in Canada. In 1953 he became the third Tait Professor of

Mathematical Physics Mathematical physics refers to the development of mathematics, mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and t ...

at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

, succeeding the retiring

Max Born Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a n ...

. He founded the Tait Institute of Mathematical Physics in 1955 and taught at Edinburgh until 1979. He was elected as a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

in 1954. His proposers were

, Sir

Edmund Whittaker Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker (24 October 1873 – 24 March 1956) was a British mathematician, physicist, and historian of science. Whittaker was a leading mathematical scholar of the early 20th-century who contributed widely to applied mathema ...

and Alexander Aitken. He served as the Society's Vice-President from 1971 to 1974. Kemmer was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

in 1956 and won its

Hughes Medal The Hughes Medal is awarded by the Royal Society of London "in recognition of an original discovery in the physical sciences, particularly electricity and magnetism or their applications". Named after David E. Hughes, the medal is awarded with ...

in 1966. He was awarded the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize in 1975. Nicholas Kemmer was also a mentor and a teacher of the only Pakistani Nobel laureate, Dr. Abdus Salam. Kemmer is credited to trained and work with Salam in

Neutron scattering Neutron scattering, the irregular dispersal of free neutrons by matter, can refer to either the naturally occurring physical process itself or to the man-made experimental techniques that use the natural process for investigating materials. Th ...

by using relativity equations.

Work and legacy

Duffin–Kemmer–Petiau equation

The Duffin–Kemmer–Petiau equation (DKP equation, also called ''Duffin–Kemmer equation'' or ''Kemmer equation'') plays a role in the description of the

standard model The Standard Model of particle physics is the theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces (electromagnetism, electromagnetic, weak interaction, weak and strong interactions - excluding gravity) in the universe and classifying a ...

of particles, together with the Yang-Mills field. The Duffin–Kemmer–Petiau equation is closely linked to the

Proca equation In physics, specifically field theory (physics), field theory and particle physics, the Proca action describes a massive spin (physics), spin-1 quantum field, field of mass ''m'' in Minkowski spacetime. The corresponding equation is a relativisti ...

Sergey Kruglov: ''Symmetry and electromagnetic interaction of fields with multi-spin. A Volume in Contemporary Fundamental Physics'', , 2000
p. 26
/ref> and the

Klein–Gordon equation The Klein–Gordon equation (Klein–Fock–Gordon equation or sometimes Klein–Gordon–Fock equation) is a relativistic wave equation, related to the Schrödinger equation. It is second-order in space and time and manifestly Lorentz-covariant. ...

.Anton Z. Capri: ''Relativistic quantum mechanics and introduction to quantum field theory'', World Scientific, 2002,
p. 25
/ref> The DKP equation suffers the same drawback as the Klein–Gordon equation in that it calls for negative probabilities. The equation involves matrices which obey the

Duffin–Kemmer–Petiau algebra In mathematical physics, the Duffin–Kemmer–Petiau algebra (DKP algebra), introduced by R.J. Duffin, Nicholas Kemmer and G. Petiau, is the algebra which is generated by the Duffin–Kemmer–Petiau matrices. These matrices form part of the Duffi ...

. The work leading to the DKP equation, culminating in Kemmer's article, has been quoted as "the first attempt at writing down a satisfactory relativistic theory of elementary particles beyond the electron", and these equations have later been brought in unified form with the

Dirac equation In particle physics, the Dirac equation is a relativistic wave equation derived by British physicist Paul Dirac in 1928. In its free form, or including electromagnetic interactions, it describes all spin- massive particles, called "Dirac par ...

Homi J. Bhabha Homi Jehangir Bhabha, (30 October 1909 – 24 January 1966) was an Indian nuclear physicist, founding director, and professor of physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). Colloquially known as "Father of Indian nuclear pro ...

. Animesh Datta: ''High-spin field theories and relativistic quantum mechanics of bosons'', In Emerson D. Seifer (ed.): ''Bosons, ferromagnetism and crystal growth research'', pp. 119–150, Nova Science Publishers, 2006,
p. 122
/ref>

Recognition

Nicholas Kemmer Road in

Edinburgh University The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1582 ...

King's Buildings The King's Buildings (colloquially known as just King's or KB) is a campus of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Located in the suburb of Blackford, the site contains most of the schools within the College of Science and Engineering, ex ...

complex is named in his honour.

References

External links

The Papers of Professor Nicholas Kemmer
held at the

Churchill Archives Centre The Churchill Archives Centre (CAC) at Churchill College at the University of Cambridge is one of the largest repositories in the United Kingdom for the preservation and study of modern personal papers. It is best known for housing the papers of ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kemmer, Nicholas 1911 births 1998 deaths People associated with the University of Zurich Fellows of the Royal Society 20th-century British physicists People associated with the nuclear weapons programme of the United Kingdom Manhattan Project people White Russian emigrants to Germany German emigrants to the United Kingdom Academics of the University of Edinburgh Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom 20th-century German physicists Scientists from Hanover Winners of the Max Planck Medal