Eugen Merzbacher

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Eugen Merzbacher

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Eugen Merzbacher (April 9, 1921 – June 6, 2013) was an American physicist.^[1]

Life and career

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Merzbacher was born in Berlin. Being a Jew, he emigrated in 1935 with his family from Germany to Turkey, where his father worked as a chemist. He received his licentiate from University of Istanbul in Turkey in 1943 and taught high school in Ankara for the next four years. In 1947, he moved to the United States to attend Harvard University, where he earned his M.A. (1948) and his Ph.D. with Julian Schwinger in 1950. During 1950/51, he worked at the Institute for Advanced Study. In 1951-52, Merzbacher was a visiting assistant professor at Duke University. In 1952, he joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. In 1959/60, he worked at the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, where he became closely acquainted with Niels Bohr; in 1967/68 he was visiting professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1977, he was the recipient of a U. S. Senior Scientist Humboldt Award at the University of Frankfurt. In 1986, he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Universities of Edinburgh and Stirling in Scotland. He was an active member of the American Physical Society (APS) and in 1990, he served as APS President. In 1991, he was Arnold Bernhard Visiting Professor at Williams College. In 1992, he received the Oersted Medal from the American Association of Physics Teachers. In 2009, Merzbacher was the recipient of the Francis Slack Award from the Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society.

Merzbacher's research has been in applications of quantum mechanics to atomic and nuclear collision theory. He was a co-founder of the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory, supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.

From 1977 to 1982 he served as chairman of the Department of Physics at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC). He was named a Kenan Professor in 1969. He received UNC's 1972 Thomas Jefferson Award. Merzbacher is probably best known for his influential graduate level quantum mechanics textbook, which has so far seen three editions, the most recent in 1998.

Personal life

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He married Ann Townsend Reid and together they had four children: Celia, Charles, Matthew and Mary (deceased). Merzbacher retired in 1991. In 1990, he was President of the American Physical Society. In 1993, UNC presented him with an honorary doctorate in science.^[2]

Books

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Quantum Mechanics, John Wiley, 1961, 1970, 3rd edition (completely revised) 1998, ISBN 0-471-88702-1

References

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^ "Eugen Merzbacher | Death Notices". NewsObserver.com. 2013-06-09. Archived from the original on 2013-06-18. Retrieved 2013-06-21.
^ "Eugen Merzbacher". Array of Contemporary American Physicists. American Institute of Physics. Archived from the original on December 11, 2015. Retrieved November 16, 2011.

External links

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v t e Presidents of the American Physical Society
1899–1925	Henry Augustus Rowland (1899) Albert A. Michelson (1901) Arthur Gordon Webster (1903) Carl Barus (1905) Edward Leamington Nichols (1907) Henry Crew (1909) William Francis Magie (1911) Benjamin Osgood Peirce (1913) Ernest Merritt (1914) Robert Andrews Millikan (1916) Henry A. Bumstead (1918) Joseph Sweetman Ames (1919) Theodore Lyman (1921) Thomas Corwin Mendenhall (1923) Dayton Miller (1925)
1926–1950	Karl Taylor Compton (1927) Henry Gale (1929) William Francis Gray Swann (1931) Paul D. Foote (1933) Arthur Compton (1934) Robert W. Wood (1935) Floyd K. Richtmyer (1936) Harrison M. Randall (1937) Lyman James Briggs (1938) John Torrence Tate Sr. (1939) John Zeleny (1940) George B. Pegram (1941) George Stewart (1941) Percy Williams Bridgman (1942) Albert W. Hull (1943) Arthur Jeffrey Dempster (1944) Harvey Fletcher (1945) Edward Condon (1946) Lee Alvin DuBridge (1947) J. Robert Oppenheimer (1948) Francis Wheeler Loomis (1949) Isidor Isaac Rabi (1950)
1951–1975	Charles Christian Lauritsen (1951) John Hasbrouck Van Vleck (1952) Enrico Fermi (1953) H. Bethe (1954) Raymond Thayer Birge (1955) E. Wigner (1956) Henry DeWolf Smyth (1957) Jesse Beams (1958) George Uhlenbeck (1959) Victor Weisskopf (1960) Frederick Seitz (1961) William V. Houston (1962) John Harry Williams (1963) Robert Bacher (1964) Felix Bloch (1965) John Archibald Wheeler (1966) Charles H. Townes (1967) John Bardeen (1968) Luis Walter Alvarez (1969) Edward Mills Purcell (1970) Robert Serber (1971) Philip M. Morse (1972) Joseph Edward Mayer (1973) Pief Panofsky (1974) Chien-Shiung Wu (1975)
1976–2000	William A. Fowler (1976) George Pake (1977) Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. (1978) Lewis M. Branscomb (1979) Herman Feshbach (1980) Arthur Leonard Schawlow (1981) Maurice Goldhaber (1982) Robert Marshak (1983) Mildred Dresselhaus (1984) Robert R. Wilson (1985) Sidney Drell (1986) Val Logsdon Fitch (1987) James A. Krumhansl (1989) Eugen Merzbacher (1990) Nicolaas Bloembergen (1991) Ernest M. Henley (1992) Donald N. Langenberg (1993) Burton Richter (1994) C. Kumar Patel (1995) J.R. Schrieffer (1996) D. Allan Bromley (1997) Andrew Sessler (1998) Jerome Isaac Friedman (1999) James S. Langer (2000)
2001–	George Trilling (2001) William F. Brinkman (2002) Myriam Sarachik (2003) Helen Quinn (2004) Marvin L. Cohen (2005) John Hopfield (2006) Leo Kadanoff (2007) Arthur Bienenstock (2008) Cherry A. Murray (2009) Curtis Callan (2010) Barry Barish (2011) Robert L. Byer (2012) Michael S. Turner (2013) Malcolm R. Beasley (2014) Sam Aronson (2015) Homer Neal (2016) Laura Greene (2017) Roger Falcone (2018) David Gross (2019) Philip H. Bucksbaum (2020) Sylvester James Gates Jr. (2021) Frances Hellman (2022) Robert Rosner (2023)

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