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Genzel, Reinhard

(Encyclopedia)Genzel, Reinhard, 1952–, German astrophysicist, Ph.D. Univ. of Bonn, 1978. He was on the faculty at the Univ. of California, Berkeley, from 1980 to 1986, when he left to become director at the Max P...

Alferov, Zhores Ivanovich

(Encyclopedia)Alferov, Zhores Ivanovich, 1930–2019, Russian physicist, b. Vitebsk (now in Belarus), Ph.D. V. I. Ulyanov Electrotechnical Institute, 1952. He joined the research staff of the A. F. Ioffe Physico-Te...

Hamilton, Sir William Rowan

(Encyclopedia)Hamilton, Sir William Rowan, 1805–65, Irish mathematician and astronomer, b. Dublin. A child prodigy, he had mastered 13 languages by the age of 13 and was still an undergraduate when he became prof...

Riemann, Bernhard

(Encyclopedia)Riemann, Bernhard (Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann) gāˈôrk frēˈdrĭkh bĕrnˈhärt rēˈmän [key], 1826–66, German mathematician. He studied at the universities of Göttingen and Berlin and w...

Bloembergen, Nicolaas

(Encyclopedia)Bloembergen, Nicolaas nēˈkəläs blo͞omˈbĕrgən, –bûrgən [key], 1920–2017, American physicist, b. Dordrecht, the Netherlands. Educated in the Netherlands, he began work at Harvard in 1946, ...

Ashkin, Arthur

(Encyclopedia)Ashkin, Arthur, 1922–2020, American physicist, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., Ph.D. Cornell, 1952. Ashkin worked for four decades at Bell Laboratories, retiring in 1992. Ashkin researched microwaves, nonlinear ...

Young, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Young, Thomas, 1773–1829, English physicist, physician, and Egyptologist. He established (1799) a medical practice in London and was elected (1811) to the staff of St. George's Hospital there. His l...

European Southern Observatory

(Encyclopedia)European Southern Observatory (ESO), an intergovernmental organization for astronomical research with headquarters in Garching, near Munich, Germany. The ESO began in 1962 as a consortium among Belgiu...

Schawlow, Arthur Leonard

(Encyclopedia)Schawlow, Arthur Leonard shôˈlō [key], 1921–99, American physicist, b. Mount Vernon, N.Y., grad. Univ. of Toronto (Ph.D. 1949). Although his research focused on optics, in particular, lasers and ...

Michelson, Albert Abraham

(Encyclopedia)Michelson, Albert Abraham mīˈkəlsən [key], 1852–1931, American physicist, b. Strelno, Prussia, grad. Annapolis, 1873, and studied at Berlin, Heidelberg, and Paris. He was professor of physics at...

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