Eugene Wigner: Difference between revisions
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===Early Life=== | ===Early Life=== | ||
Born in 1902, Wigner had two sisters, Bertha and Margit. He was the son of Elisabeth and Anthony Wigner. He was 9 years old when he became interested in mathematics, which only grew from then. He studied chemical engineering at Technische Hochschule in Berlin, where he met physicist Leo Szilard who then became friends. From then, he accepted jobs working on a variety of projects involving x-ray crystallography and quantum mechanics which started his most notable works. | Born in 1902, Wigner had two sisters, Bertha and Margit. He was the son of Elisabeth and Anthony Wigner. He was 9 years old when he became interested in mathematics, which only grew from then. He studied chemical engineering at Technische Hochschule in Berlin, where he met physicist Leo Szilard who then became friends. From then, he accepted jobs working on a variety of projects involving x-ray crystallography and quantum mechanics which started his most notable works. | ||
===Family Life=== | |||
Eugene Wigner married twice. His first wife, Amelia Frank, died unexpectedly in 1937. He later remarried to Mary Annette Wheeler, a physics professor at Vassar College in 1941. They had two children, David and Martha, before she died in 1977. | |||
===Scientific Significance=== | ===Scientific Significance=== | ||
Revision as of 16:02, 1 December 2015
Topic under construction by Courtney Branson 12/1/15
Eugene Wigner was a Hungarian American born in Austria-Hungary in 1902. He recieved part of the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics due to his work with the theory of the atomic nucleus. He worked with such greats as Albert EInstein, Leo Szilard, and Franklin D. Roosevelt to prepare the United States for the Manhattan Project, a project to build an atomic bomb during World War II.
Personal Life
Early Life
Born in 1902, Wigner had two sisters, Bertha and Margit. He was the son of Elisabeth and Anthony Wigner. He was 9 years old when he became interested in mathematics, which only grew from then. He studied chemical engineering at Technische Hochschule in Berlin, where he met physicist Leo Szilard who then became friends. From then, he accepted jobs working on a variety of projects involving x-ray crystallography and quantum mechanics which started his most notable works.
Family Life
Eugene Wigner married twice. His first wife, Amelia Frank, died unexpectedly in 1937. He later remarried to Mary Annette Wheeler, a physics professor at Vassar College in 1941. They had two children, David and Martha, before she died in 1977.
Scientific Significance
Wigner's work with quantum mechanics lead to the formation of group theory in quantum mechanics. In Group Theory and Its Application to the Quantum Mechanics of Atomic Spectra Wigner described his own theory of symmetry in quantum mechanics, which helped to form the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics. He then extended his research to apply it to atomic nuclei. He began to work with Princeton in the United States. In 1939, Eugene Wigner participated in a meeting with Leo Szilard and Albert Einstein to write a letter, later called the Einstein-Szilard letter, to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wigner, scared of Germany creating the first atomic bomb, helped form this letter that convinced the president to begin a project to start the Manhattan Project.
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See also
- The Manhattan Project
- Atomic Bomb
- Einstein-Szilard letter
Further reading
- The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences by Eugene Wigner
-Group Theory and Its Application to the Quantum Mechanics of Atomic Spectra by Eugene Wigner
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