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An atom is a particle that consists of a nucleus of protons and neutrons surrounded by a cloud of electrons. The atom is the basic particle of the chemical elements, and the chemical elements are distinguished from each other by the number of protons that are in their atoms. For example, any atom that contains 11 protons is sodium, and any atom that contains 29 protons is copper. The number of neutrons defines the isotope of the element.
Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, was a New Zealand physicist who was a pioneering researcher in both atomic and nuclear physics. Rutherford has been described as "the father of nuclear physics", and the greatest experimentalist "since Michael Faraday". In 1908, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances." He was the first Oceanian Nobel laureate, and the first to perform the awarded work in Canada.
Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets the electromagnetic spectra that result from the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and matter as a function of the wavelength or frequency of the radiation. Matter waves and acoustic waves can also be considered forms of radiative energy, and recently gravitational waves have been associated with a spectral signature in the context of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).
Atomic, molecular, and optical physics (AMO) is the study of matter–matter and light–matter interactions, at the scale of one or a few atoms and energy scales around several electron volts. The three areas are closely interrelated. AMO theory includes classical, semi-classical and quantum treatments. Typically, the theory and applications of emission, absorption, scattering of electromagnetic radiation (light) from excited atoms and molecules, analysis of spectroscopy, generation of lasers and masers, and the optical properties of matter in general, fall into these categories.
A timeline of atomic and subatomic physics.
The emission spectrum of a chemical element or chemical compound is the spectrum of frequencies of electromagnetic radiation emitted due to an electron making a transition from a high energy state to a lower energy state. The photon energy of the emitted photon is equal to the energy difference between the two states. There are many possible electron transitions for each atom, and each transition has a specific energy difference. This collection of different transitions, leading to different radiated wavelengths, make up an emission spectrum. Each element's emission spectrum is unique. Therefore, spectroscopy can be used to identify elements in matter of unknown composition. Similarly, the emission spectra of molecules can be used in chemical analysis of substances.
Eric Allin Cornell is an American physicist who, along with Carl E. Wieman, was able to synthesize the first Bose–Einstein condensate in 1995. For their efforts, Cornell, Wieman, and Wolfgang Ketterle shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001.
Willis Eugene Lamb Jr. was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1955 "for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum." The Nobel Committee that year awarded half the prize to Lamb and the other half to Polykarp Kusch, who won "for his precision determination of the magnetic moment of the electron." Lamb was able to determine precisely a surprising shift in electron energies in a hydrogen atom. Lamb was a professor at the University of Arizona College of Optical Sciences.
Theodor Wolfgang Hänsch is a German physicist. He received one-third of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics for "contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique", sharing the prize with John L. Hall and Roy J. Glauber.
Doppler cooling is a mechanism that can be used to trap and slow the motion of atoms to cool a substance. The term is sometimes used synonymously with laser cooling, though laser cooling includes other techniques.
Daniel Kleppner, born 1932, is the Lester Wolfe Professor Emeritus of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and co-founder and co-director of the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms. His areas of science include atomic, molecular, and optical physics, and his research interests include experimental atomic physics, laser spectroscopy, and high precision measurements.
Peng Huanwu was a Chinese physicist. He was a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and a leader of Chinese nuclear weaponry projects.
Wilson Sibbett is a British physicist noted for his work on ultrashort pulse lasers and Streak cameras. He is the Wardlaw Professor of Physics at St Andrews University.
The Clifford Paterson Lecture is a prize lecture of the Royal Society now given biennially on an engineering topic. A £500 gift is given to the lecturer. The lectures, which honour Clifford Copland Paterson, founder-director of the GEC Wembley Research Laboratories 1918-1948, were instituted by the General Electric Company plc in 1975.
Roswell Clifton Gibbs was Chairman of the Department of Physics at Cornell University from 1934 to 1946. A graduate of Cornell, he became an assistant professor of Physics there in 1912, and a professor in 1918. His research primarily concerned spectroscopy, and he was the author or co-author of over forty research papers. As Chairman of the Department of Physics, he hired distinguished physicists including Stanley Livingston, Robert Bacher and Hans Bethe, who later won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work at Cornell. After World War II, Gibbs was Chairman of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Division of the National Research Council.
Paul Bruce Corkum is a Canadian physicist specializing in attosecond physics and laser science. He holds a joint University of Ottawa–NRC chair in Attosecond Photonics. He is one of the students of strong field atomic physics, i.e. atoms and plasmas in super-intense laser fields.
The timeline of quantum mechanics is a list of key events in the history of quantum mechanics, quantum field theories and quantum chemistry.
David Jeffrey Wineland is an American Nobel-laureate physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) physics laboratory. His work has included advances in optics, specifically laser-cooling trapped ions and using ions for quantum-computing operations. He was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Serge Haroche, for "ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems".
Miles John Padgett is a Royal Society Research Professor of Optics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Glasgow. He has held the Kelvin Chair of Natural Philosophy since 2011 and served as Vice Principal for research at Glasgow from 2014 to 2020.
Deepak Mathur is an Indian molecular and atomic physicist and was a Distinguished Professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He has been the J C Bose National Fellow at the Department of Atomic and Molecular Physics at Manipal Academy of Higher Education and Founding Director of the UM-DAE Centre for Excellence in Basic Science at the University of Mumbai. Known for his research on molecular and biological physics, Mathur is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and The World Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to physical sciences in 1991. Amongst other awards, he has been the Royal Society's Guest Fellow at Oxford University and winner of the European Union's Erasmus-Mundus prize in optical science which he held at Imperial College London. Currently he is an adjunct professor at Manipal Academy of Higher Education and is also learning to fly. His initial training was on a Grob G-115 2-seater training aircraft but he has now moved on to flying PA-28 4-seater aircraft.
References
- ↑ Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1999, obituaries:Alan James Duncan
- ↑ Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002 (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006. ISBN 0 902 198 84 X. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 January 2013. Retrieved 18 March 2016.