Robert Hofstadter (February 5, 1915 – November 17, 1990) was an American physicist. He was the joint winner of the 1961

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 " ...

(together with

Rudolf Mössbauer Rudolf Ludwig Mössbauer (German spelling: ''Mößbauer''; ; 31 January 1929 – 14 September 2011) was a German physicist best known for his 1957 discovery of ''recoilless nuclear resonance fluorescence'' for which he was awarded the 1961 Nobe ...

) "for his pioneering studies of

electron scattering Electron scattering occurs when electrons are deviated from their original trajectory. This is due to the electrostatic forces within matter interaction or, if an external magnetic field is present, the electron may be deflected by the Lorentz f ...

atomic nuclei The atomic nucleus is the small, dense region consisting of protons and neutrons at the center of an atom, discovered in 1911 by Ernest Rutherford based on the 1909 Geiger–Marsden gold foil experiment. After the discovery of the neutron ...

and for his consequent discoveries concerning the structure of

nucleon In physics and chemistry, a nucleon is either a proton or a neutron, considered in its role as a component of an atomic nucleus. The number of nucleons in a nucleus defines the atom's mass number (nucleon number). Until the 1960s, nucleons were ...

s".R. W. McAllister & Robert Hofstadter, "Elastic Scattering of 188 MeV Electrons from Proton and the Alpha Particle," ''Physical Review'', V102, p. 851 (1956). including his Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1961 ''The Electron-Scattering Method and Its Application to the Structure of Nuclei and Nucleons''

Biography

Hofstadter was born into a Jewish family in New York City on February 5, 1915, to Polish immigrants, Louis Hofstadter, a salesman, and Henrietta,

née A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...

Koenigsberg. He attended elementary and high schools in New York City and entered City College of New York, graduating with a B.S. degree '' magna cum laude'' in 1935 at the age of 20, and was awarded the Kenyon Prize in Mathematics and Physics. He also received a Charles A. Coffin Foundation Fellowship from the General Electric Company, which enabled him to attend graduate school at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

, where he earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at the age of 23. His doctoral dissertation was titled "Infra-red absorption by light and heavy formic and acetic acids." He did his post-doctoral research at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

and was an assistant professor at Princeton before joining

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. Hofstadter taught at Stanford from 1950 to 1985. In 1942 he married Nancy Givan (1920–2007), a native of

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

. They had three children: Laura, Molly (who was disabled and not able to communicate), and

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...

-winner Douglas Hofstadter.

Opus

Thallium-activated sodium iodide gamma ray detector

In 1948 Hofstadter filed a patent on this for the detection of ionizing radiation by this crystal. These Thallium-activated sodium iodide detectors are widely used for gamma ray detection to this day.

Coining of the fermi (unit) and 1961 Nobel Lecture

Robert Hofstadter coined the term

fermi Enrico Fermi (; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian (later naturalized American) physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and ...

, symbol fm, in honor of the Italian

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 ...

Enrico Fermi (1901–1954), one of the founders of nuclear physics, in Hofstadter's 1956 paper published in the ''

Reviews of Modern Physics ''Reviews of Modern Physics'' (abbreviated RMP) is a quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Physical Society. It was established in 1929 and the current editor-in-chief is Michael Thoennessen. The journal publishes r ...

'' journal, "Electron Scattering and Nuclear Structure". The term is widely used by nuclear and

particle In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from ...

physicists. When Hofstadter was awarded the 1961 Nobel Prize in Physics, it subsequently appears in the text of his 1961 Nobel Lecture, "The electron-scattering method and its application to the structure of nuclei and nucleons" (December 11, 1961).

Compton Gamma Ray Observatory and EGRET Telescope

In his last few years, Hofstadter became interested in astrophysics and applied his knowledge of scintillators to the design of the

EGRET Egrets ( ) are herons, generally long-legged wading birds, that have white or buff plumage, developing fine plumes (usually milky white) during the breeding season. Egrets are not a biologically distinct group from herons and have the same build ...

gamma-ray telescope of the

Compton Gamma Ray Observatory The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) was a space observatory detecting photons with photon energy, energies from 20 kElectronvolt#Properties, eV to 30 GeV, in Earth orbit from 1991 to 2000. The observatory featured four main tele ...

named for fellow Nobel Laureate in Physics (1927),

Arthur Holly Compton Arthur Holly Compton (September 10, 1892 – March 15, 1962) was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1927 for his 1923 discovery of the Compton effect, which demonstrated the particle nature of electromagnetic radi ...

's Department of Physics credits Hofstadter with being "one of the principal scientists who developed the Compton Observatory."

Awards and honors

* 1958, elected to National Academy of Sciences. * 1961

, joint winner with

, "for his ofstadter'spioneering studies of

and for his consequent discoveries concerning the structure of

s." *

has an annual lecture series named after Hofstadter, th
Robert Hofstadter Memorial Lectures
which consists of two lectures each year, one oriented toward the general public and the other oriented toward scientists. * 1970, elected to the

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 ...

. * 1984 Golden Plate Award of the

American Academy of Achievement The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet ...

. * 1986, elected to the

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 ...

References

Publication list

Technical reports: *Hofstadter, R.
Detection of Neutrons with Scintillation Counters
,

Brookhaven National Laboratory Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Upton, Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base and Japanese internment c ...

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...

(through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), (November 1948). *Hahn, B., Ravenhall, D. G. and R. Hofstadter.
High-energy Electron Scattering and the Charge Distributions of Selected Nuclei
"

(through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission),

Office of Naval Research The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is an organization within the United States Department of the Navy responsible for the science and technology programs of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Established by Congress in 1946, its mission is to plan ...

and

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Aerial warfare, air military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part ...

, (October 1955). *Chambers, E.E. and R. Hofstadter.
The Structure of the Proton
,

(through predecessor agency the Energy Research and Development Administration),

and

(April 1956). *Hofstadter, R.
Structure in the Proton and the Neutron
,

(through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), (June 1958). *Collard, H., Hofstadter, R., Hughes, E. B., Johansson, A., Yearian, M. R., Day, R. B. and R. T. Wagner.
Elastic Electron Scattering from Tritium and Helium-3
,

(through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission),

Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in ...

Air Force Research Laboratory The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is a scientific research organization operated by the United States Air Force Materiel Command dedicated to leading the discovery, development, and integration of aerospace warfighting technologies, pl ...

, (October 1964). *Hofstadter, R.
K-edge Subtraction Angiography with Synchrotron X-Rays: Final Technical Report, (February 1, 1984 to January 31, 1987)
,

, (September 1987).

External links

* including his Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1961 ''The Electron-Scattering Method and Its Application to the Structure of Nuclei and Nucleons''
Robert Hofstadter: An Oral History
Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program, 1985. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hofstadter, Robert 1915 births 1990 deaths Nobel laureates in Physics American Nobel laureates 20th-century American physicists City College of New York alumni Experimental physicists National Medal of Science laureates American nuclear physicists American people of German-Jewish descent Jewish American scientists Jewish physicists Scientists from New York City Princeton University alumni Stanford University Department of Physics faculty University of Pennsylvania staff American people of Polish-Jewish descent Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Physical Society Members of the American Philosophical Society Members of the National Academy of Medicine