Brillouin, Leon N.

Brillouin, Leon N. (Nicholas)

(1889–1969) physicist; born in Sevres, France. He taught in France before coming to the U.S.A. in 1941. After doing defense research at Columbia University (1943–45), he moved to Harvard (1946–49). A solid-state physicist who specialized in wave theory, he determined that at high frequencies, sound waves approximate thermal waves. He became director of electronics education at International Business Machines in 1949.