Established | 1945 |
---|---|
Field of research | physics, chemistry and materials science |
Director | Margaret Gardel |
Location | Chicago, Illinois |
Affiliations | University of Chicago |
Website | jfi |
The James Franck Institute of the University of Chicago conducts interdisciplinary research in physics, chemistry and materials science. Scientists at the institute include those interested in condensed matter physics, physical chemistry, materials chemistry, atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics, geophysics, and biophysics. [1]
Founded in 1945 by university President Robert Maynard Hutchins as the Institute for the Study of Metals, it was renamed for Nobel Prize winning physicist James Franck in 1967. [2] [3] [4] It had its beginnings in the Metallurgical Laboratory, the World War II project that initiated the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, using the metal uranium. The Institute's founding director was Cyril Stanley Smith, former head of metallurgy at Los Alamos and the institute made early advances in pseudopotential theory and study of the Fermi surface. [3] The Institute was an early pioneer in interdisciplinary research in wide-ranging subjects: as it was organized like a "benevolent anarchy", a large percent of its early papers did not even deal with metals but other aspects of chemistry and physics. [3]
Enrico Fermi was an Italian and naturalized American physicist, renowned for being the creator of the world's first artificial nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1, and a member of the Manhattan Project. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and the "architect of the atomic bomb". He was one of very few physicists to excel in both theoretical physics and experimental physics. Fermi was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment and for the discovery of transuranium elements. With his colleagues, Fermi filed several patents related to the use of nuclear power, all of which were taken over by the US government. He made significant contributions to the development of statistical mechanics, quantum theory, and nuclear and particle physics.
Maria Goeppert Mayer was a German-American theoretical physicist, and Nobel laureate in Physics for proposing the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus. She was the second woman to win a Nobel Prize in physics, the first being Marie Curie. In 1986, the Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award for early-career women physicists was established in her honor.
Argonne National Laboratory is a federally funded research and development center in Lemont, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1946, the laboratory is owned by the United States Department of Energy and administered by UChicago Argonne LLC of the University of Chicago. The facility is the largest national laboratory in the Midwest.
James Franck was a German physicist who won the 1925 Nobel Prize for Physics with Gustav Hertz "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom". He completed his doctorate in 1906 and his habilitation in 1911 at the Frederick William University in Berlin, where he lectured and taught until 1918, having reached the position of professor extraordinarius. He served as a volunteer in the German Army during World War I. He was seriously injured in 1917 in a gas attack and was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class.
Leo James Rainwater was an American physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1975 for his part in determining the asymmetrical shapes of certain atomic nuclei.
The Institute for Nuclear Studies was founded September 1945 as part of the University of Chicago with Samuel King Allison as director. On November 20, 1955, it was renamed The Enrico Fermi Institute for Nuclear Studies. The name was shortened to The Enrico Fermi Institute (EFI) in January 1968.
Frank Harold Spedding was a Canadian-American chemist. He was a renowned expert on rare earth elements, and on extraction of metals from minerals. The uranium extraction process helped make it possible for the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bombs.
John Bannister Goodenough was an American materials scientist, a solid-state physicist, and a Nobel laureate in chemistry. From 1986 he was a professor of Materials Science, Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is credited with identifying the Goodenough–Kanamori rules of the sign of the magnetic superexchange in materials, with developing materials for computer random-access memory and with inventing cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries.
Materials science has shaped the development of civilizations since the dawn of humankind. Better materials for tools and weapons has allowed people to spread and conquer, and advancements in material processing like steel and aluminum production continue to impact society today. Historians have regarded materials as such an important aspect of civilizations such that entire periods of time have defined by the predominant material used. For most of recorded history, control of materials had been through alchemy or empirical means at best. The study and development of chemistry and physics assisted the study of materials, and eventually the interdisciplinary study of materials science emerged from the fusion of these studies. The history of materials science is the study of how different materials were used and developed through the history of Earth and how those materials affected the culture of the peoples of the Earth. The term "Silicon Age" is sometimes used to refer to the modern period of history during the late 20th to early 21st centuries.
The Metallurgical Laboratory was a scientific laboratory at the University of Chicago that was established in February 1942 to study and use the newly discovered chemical element plutonium. It researched plutonium's chemistry and metallurgy, designed the world's first nuclear reactors to produce it, and developed chemical processes to separate it from other elements. In August 1942 the lab's chemical section was the first to chemically separate a weighable sample of plutonium, and on 2 December 1942, the Met Lab produced the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, in the reactor Chicago Pile-1, which was constructed under the stands of the university's old football stadium, Stagg Field.
Armand Paul Alivisatos is a Greek-American etymologist, chemist and academic administrator who has served as the 14th president of the University of Chicago since September 2021. He is a pioneer in nanomaterials development and an authority on the fabrication of nanocrystals and their use in biomedical and renewable energy applications. He was ranked fifth among the world's top 100 chemists for the period 2000–2010 in the list released by Thomson Reuters.
Samuel King Allison was an American physicist, most notable for his role in the Manhattan Project, for which he was awarded the Medal for Merit. A professor who studied X-rays, he was director of the Metallurgical Laboratory from 1943 until 1944, and later worked at the Los Alamos Laboratory — where he "rode herd" on the final stages of the project as part of the "Cowpuncher Committee", and read the countdown for the detonation of the Trinity nuclear test. After the war, he returned to the University of Chicago to direct the Institute for Nuclear Studies and was involved in the "scientists' movement", lobbying for civilian control of nuclear weapons.
George Arthur Cowan was an American physical chemist, a businessman and philanthropist.
Siegfried S. Hecker is an American metallurgist and nuclear scientist. He served as Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1986 to 1997 and is now affiliated with Stanford University, where he is research professor emeritus in the Department of Management Science and Engineering in the School of Engineering, and senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. During this time, he was also elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering (1988) for outstanding research on plutonium and the forming of materials, and for leadership in developing energy and weapons systems.
Walter Henry Zinn was a Canadian-born American nuclear physicist who was the first director of the Argonne National Laboratory from 1946 to 1956. He worked at the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory during World War II, and supervised the construction of Chicago Pile-1, the world's first nuclear reactor, which went critical on December 2, 1942, at the University of Chicago. At Argonne he designed and built several new reactors, including Experimental Breeder Reactor I, the first nuclear reactor to produce electric power, which went live on December 20, 1951.
Leona Harriet Woods, later known as Leona Woods Marshall and Leona Woods Marshall Libby, was an American physicist who helped build the first nuclear reactor and the first atomic bomb.
Herbert Lawrence Anderson was an American nuclear physicist who was Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago.
Thomas Felix Rosenbaum is an American condensed matter physicist, professor of physics, and the current president of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Previously, Rosenbaum served as a faculty member and Provost of the University of Chicago. He has also served as the vice president for research at Argonne National Laboratory.
The POFMetallurgical Laboratory is a research and development laboratory located near the Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF) in Wah Cantonment, Punjab, Pakistan. It's a part of POF Materials Testing Laboratories.
Risa H. Wechsler is an American cosmological physicist, Professor of Physics at Stanford University, and Professor of Particle Physics and Astrophysics at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. She is the director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology.