Rolf Widerøe (11 July 1902 – 11 October 1996) was a
Norwegian accelerator physicist who was the originator of many
particle acceleration
In acoustics, particle acceleration is the acceleration (rate of change in speed and direction) of particles in a sound transmission medium. When sound passes through a medium it causes particle displacement and as such causes changes in their ac ...
concepts,
including the ''resonance accelerator'' and the
betatron
A betatron is a type of cyclic particle accelerator for electrons. It consists of a torus-shaped vacuum chamber with an electron source. Circling the torus is an iron transformer core with a wire winding around it. The device functions simil ...
accelerator.
Early life
Widerøe was born in
Kristiania
Oslo ( or ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of 1,064,235 in 2022, an ...
(now Oslo) in 1902 as a son of the mercantile agent Theodor Widerøe (1868–1947) and Carla Johanne Launer (1875–1971). He was a brother of the aviator and entrepreneur
Viggo Widerøe who became the founder of the Norwegian airline
Widerøe.
After his A-level exams (
Examen artium) in the summer of 1920 at the Halling School in
Oslo
Oslo ( or ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of 1,064,235 in 2022 ...
, Widerøe left for the
university of Karlsruhe
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; ) is both a German public university, public research university in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, and a research center of the Helmholtz Association.
KIT was created in 2009 when the University of Ka ...
,
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
, to study
electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
.
[
]
Betatron accelerator concept
There he conceived the concept of
electromagnetic induction
Electromagnetic or magnetic induction is the production of an electromotive force, electromotive force (emf) across an electrical conductor in a changing magnetic field.
Michael Faraday is generally credited with the discovery of induction in 1 ...
to accelerate electrons, which became the basis of what would be known as
betatron
A betatron is a type of cyclic particle accelerator for electrons. It consists of a torus-shaped vacuum chamber with an electron source. Circling the torus is an iron transformer core with a wire winding around it. The device functions simil ...
.
This idea was to use a
vortex
In fluid dynamics, a vortex (: vortices or vortexes) is a region in a fluid in which the flow revolves around an axis line, which may be straight or curved. Vortices form in stirred fluids, and may be observed in smoke rings, whirlpools in th ...
field surrounding a magnetic field for cyclic acceleration of electrons in a tube.
Return to Germany
In 1924, he returned to Norway for a short time period, working in a locomotive facility of the
Norwegian State Railways
Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to:
*Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe
*Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway
*Demographics of Norway
*Norwegian language, including the two ...
, where he fulfilled his 72-day military service. He went back to Germany in 1925. There he studied at the
Technical University at Aachen, where he proposed a thesis in 1927 for an experimental
betatron
A betatron is a type of cyclic particle accelerator for electrons. It consists of a torus-shaped vacuum chamber with an electron source. Circling the torus is an iron transformer core with a wire winding around it. The device functions simil ...
accelerator, incorporating the work of Swedish scientist
Gustav Ising of 1924,
which was not successful at first.
Thus, Widerøe instead built a linear accelerator prototype based on Isings proposal and made this the topic of his
dissertation under
Walter Rogowski. In 1928, he relocated to
Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
and started building
protective relay
In electrical engineering, a protective relay is a relay device designed to trip a circuit breaker when a Electrical fault, fault is detected. The first protective relays were electromagnetic devices, relying on coils operating on moving parts ...
s during his work at
AEG The initials AEG are used for or may refer to:
Common meanings
* AEG (German company)
; AEG) was a German producer of electrical equipment. It was established in 1883 by Emil Rathenau as the ''Deutsche Edison-Gesellschaft für angewandte El ...
.
In 1933 Hitler came to power in Germany and Widerøe decided to return to Norway.
Resonance accelerator
From his betatron experiment, he developed further ideas of particle acceleration without the necessity of high voltage. The method was resonating particles with a
radio frequency
Radio frequency (RF) is the oscillation rate of an alternating electric current or voltage or of a magnetic, electric or electromagnetic field or mechanical system in the frequency range from around to around . This is roughly between the u ...
electric field to add energy to each traversal of the field. This experiment was successful and published in 1928,
and became the progenitor of all high-energy particle accelerators. Widerøe's article was studied by
Ernest Lawrence
Ernest Orlando Lawrence (August 8, 1901 – August 27, 1958) was an American accelerator physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron. He is known for his work on uranium-isotope separation for ...
in the United States, and used as the basis for his creation of the
cyclotron
A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator invented by Ernest Lawrence in 1929–1930 at the University of California, Berkeley, and patented in 1932. Lawrence, Ernest O. ''Method and apparatus for the acceleration of ions'', filed: Januar ...
in 1929.
[
][
]
War time
In 1941 his younger brother
Viggo Widerøe was arrested for resistance work. In 1943 the Germans "invited" Rolf Widerøe to Germany to continue to work on the
Betatron
A betatron is a type of cyclic particle accelerator for electrons. It consists of a torus-shaped vacuum chamber with an electron source. Circling the torus is an iron transformer core with a wire winding around it. The device functions simil ...
. Inspired by the opportunity to continue his research and promises that his brother would have a better situation in his imprisonment, he agreed to go to Hamburg and start building a German Betatron.
During this period, already in 1943, he introduced the theoretical concept of colliding particles head-on to increase interaction energy and a
storage ring
A storage ring is a type of circular particle accelerator in which a continuous or pulsed particle beam may be kept circulating, typically for many hours. Storage of a particular particle depends upon the mass, momentum, and usually the charge o ...
device.
Several sources claims that his Norwegian citizenship was ultimately revoked for working with the Nazi government,
but this is not correct. His Norwegian passport was confiscated for some time and he accepted a penalty notice of NOK 5000, loss of civil liberties and to forfeit NOK 120000 of the amount he was paid in licence fees for use of his patent rights during the betatron development.
In the end, early in 1946, he received an intermediate passport and emigrated to Switzerland.
Later years
In 1946 he filed a patent in Norway for an accelerator based on synchronous acceleration.
He would go on to publish over 180 papers in scientific and engineering journals, and filed over 200 patent applications over his lifetime. In his later life he devoted much time to medicinal technology, focusing on
cancer treatment
Cancer treatments are a wide range of treatments available for the many different types of cancer, with each cancer type needing its own specific treatment. Treatments can include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, hormonal therapy, targ ...
, including developing megavolt
radiation therapy
Radiation therapy or radiotherapy (RT, RTx, or XRT) is a therapy, treatment using ionizing radiation, generally provided as part of treatment of cancer, cancer therapy to either kill or control the growth of malignancy, malignant cell (biology), ...
technologies.
He would collaborate with
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...
beginning in 1952 doing the preliminary studies for the
Proton Synchrotron
The Proton Synchrotron (PS, sometimes also referred to as CPS) is a particle accelerator at CERN. It is CERN's first synchrotron, beginning its operation in 1959. For a brief period the PS was the world's highest energy particle accelerator. It ...
,
lectured at
ETH Zurich
ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...
in 1953, and collaborated at
DESY
DESY, short for Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (English: ''German Electron Synchrotron''), is a national research centre for fundamental science located in Hamburg and Zeuthen near Berlin in Germany. It operates particle accelerators used to ...
in 1959 in Hamburg.
Rolf Widerøe died on 11 October 1996 in
Obersiggenthal,
Switzerland
Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
.
Since 2011 the
European Physical Society has awarded
a prize in Widerøe's memory every three years to individuals in recognition of outstanding work in the field of accelerator physics.
Honors
*Doctorate Honoris Causa-RWTH Aachen (1962)
*Honorary Medical Doctorate-Zurich University (1964)
*
Röntgen Medal (1969)
*
Röntgen prize (1972)
*
JRC gold medal (1973)
*
Robert R. Wilson Prize (1992)
Robert R. Wilson Prize of APS (1992)
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Memberships
* Norwegian Academy of Science
*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 ...
* American Radium Society
* British Institute of Radiology
* Deutsche Röntgengesellschaft
* European Society for Radiation Therapy ESTRO
* European Physical Society
* Naturforschende Gesellschaft
* Norwegian Society of Radiology
* Norwegian Society of Physics
* Schweizerische Physikalische Gesellschaft
* Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Radiobiologie
* Scandinavian Society for Medical Physics
* Society of Nuclear Medicine
References
External links
Archival collections
Images of Rolf Widerøe at the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Niels Bohr Library & Archives
Rolf Wideröe papers, 1942-1945, Niels Bohr Library & Archives
Wideröe, Rolf (1902-1996): Briefe, Materialien zum Werk, Diverses, Bildmaterial, ETH Zurich University Archives
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wideroe, Rolf
1902 births
1996 deaths
Norwegian physicists
Experimental physicists
Accelerator physicists
Academic staff of ETH Zurich
People associated with CERN
Norwegian expatriates in Germany
RWTH Aachen University alumni