Victor Frederick Weisskopf

Born Sept. 19, 1908, in Vienna. Theoretical physicist. Member of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA since 1952.

Weisskopf graduated from the University of Göttingen in 1931. He taught at the University of Berlin (1932-33), Zürich Technological Institute (1933-35), and the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen (1935-37). In 1937 he emigrated to the USA. He was professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1946-61 and since 1965). From 1961 to 1965 he was director of the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN). Weisskopf has made a great contribution to modern nuclear physics. He has done valuable research in the field of quantum electrodynamics. He developed the theory of polarization of the vacuum and studied the Lamb shift—that is, the change in the energy of a hydrogen atom, connected with the quantum nature of the electromagnetic field. He is also a member of the Paris (1957) and Danish (1961) academies of sciences.