Episode 85
Isidor Isaac Rabi
Sat, 2017-Jul-29 00:47 UTC
Length - 3:45
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.
The featured article for Saturday, 29 July 2017 is Isidor Isaac Rabi.
Isidor Isaac Rabi (; born Israel Isaac Rabi, 29 July 1898 – 11 January 1988) was an American physicist and Nobel laureate, recognized in 1944 for his discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance, which is used in magnetic resonance imaging. He was also one of the first scientists in the US to work on the cavity magnetron, which is used in microwave radar and microwave ovens.
Born into a traditional Jewish family in Rymanów, Galicia, in what was then part of Austria-Hungary, Rabi came to the United States as a baby and was raised in New York's Lower East Side. He entered Cornell University as an electrical engineering student in 1916, but soon switched to chemistry. Later, he became interested in physics. He continued his studies at Columbia University, where he was awarded his doctorate for a thesis on the magnetic susceptibility of certain crystals. In 1927, he headed for Europe, where he met and worked with many of the finest physicists of the time.
In 1929 Rabi returned to the United States, where Columbia offered him a faculty position. In collaboration with Gregory Breit, he developed the Breit-Rabi equation and predicted that the Stern–Gerlach experiment could be modified to confirm the properties of the atomic nucleus. His techniques for using nuclear magnetic resonance to discern the magnetic moment and nuclear spin of atoms earned him a Nobel Prize for Physics in 1944. Nuclear magnetic resonance became an important tool for nuclear physics and chemistry. The subsequent development of magnetic resonance imaging from it has made it important to medicine as well.
During World War II he worked on radar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory (RadLab) and on the Manhattan Project. After the war, he served on the General Advisory Committee (GAC) of the Atomic Energy Commission, and was chairman from 1952 to 1956. He also served on the Science Advisory Committees (SACs) of the Office of Defense Mobilization and the Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory, and was Science Advisor to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was involved with the establishment of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1946, and later, as United States delegate to UNESCO, with the creation of CERN in 1952. When Columbia created the rank of University Professor in 1964, Rabi was the first to receive such a chair. A special chair was named after him in 1985. He retired from teaching in 1967 but remained active in the department and held the title of University Professor Emeritus and Special Lecturer until his death.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:47 UTC on Saturday, 29 July 2017.
For the full current version of the article, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isidor_Isaac_Rabi.
This podcast is produced by Abulsme Productions based on Wikipedia content and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
Abulsme Productions also produces Curmudgeon's Corner, a weekly current events podcast where the hosts discuss whatever is hot in the news each week. Check it out in your podcast player of choice.
This has been Nicole. Thank you for listening to featured Wiki of the Day. If you enjoyed this podcast, you can find our archive, and our sister podcasts popular Wiki of the Day and random Wiki of the Day at wikioftheday.com. Subscribe and tell your friends to listen as well!
|
|
Buy WotD Stuff!!
