William Vermillion Houston ( /ˈhaʊstən/ HOW-stən; [a] January 19, 1900 – August 22, 1968) was an American physicist who made contributions to spectroscopy, quantum mechanics, and solid-state physics as well as being a teacher and administrator. He became the second president of Rice University in 1946.
Houston began his college education in 1916 at Ohio State University (OSU) where he earned his baccalaureate degree in physics. He served in the military during 1918 and 1919. After teaching physics at the University of Dubuque for one year, he entered graduate studies at the University of Chicago and studied under Albert A. Michelson, who had won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1907, and Robert Millikan who would win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1923 for his measurement of the charge on the electron and for his work on the photoelectric effect. It was at this time that Houston began his experimental work on the fine structure of hydrogen and was awarded an M.S. in 1922. [1] In 1922, he returned to Ohio State, where he was an instructor in physics and studied spectroscopy under A. D. Cole. Houston was granted his Ph.D. in 1925, [2] after which he went to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) on a National Research Fellowship, largely because Millikan had left Chicago for Caltech in 1922. At Caltech Houston continued his work in spectroscopy and making improvements in Fabry–Pérot interferometry. At Caltech, he taught a spectroscopy course out of Atombau und Spektrallinien, which became the “bible” [3] of atomic theory for the new generation of physicists who developed atomic and quantum physics. In 1927 and 1928, Houston was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, which he used to go to Germany to do postgraduate study with Arnold Sommerfeld at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Werner Heisenberg at the University of Leipzig. Also studying with Sommerfeld concurrently with Houston were Carl Eckart, Edwin C. Kemble, and Rudolf Peierls. At that time, the winter semester of 1927, [4] Sommerfeld, in his special lectures, treated the theory of electrons in metals for the first time. As a course of study, Sommerfeld suggested to Houston that he investigate the mean free path of electrons and its relationship to resistance in metals as a function of temperature. Sommerfeld showed Houston the proof of a paper soon be published on the subject of Fermi statistics applied to phenomena in metals. Houston's [5] and Eckart's [6] works on the subject were published in the papers following Sommerfeld's article. [7] After spending the winter semester of 1927 with Sommerfeld, Houston went to spend the spring semester of 1928 with Heisenberg in Leipzig. There, he studied the spin-orbit interaction in two-electron spectra. Houston was able to show the transition from Russell-Saunders coupling to jj-coupling in two-electron systems and its influence on the Zeeman effect. It was at this time that Houston formed a professional and personal friendship with Felix Bloch, who did pioneering work on the motion of electrons in periodic structures. [8] [9] [10] [11]
After his study and research in Germany, Houston returned to Caltech and served as an assistant professor (1927–1929), associate professor (1929–1931), and professor (1931–1946). [9] He again took up his experimental work on spectroscopy and the theory of electrons in atoms and solids. His work on the Zeeman effect resulted in a correction to the accepted value of the e/m ratio, as well as stimulating R. T. Birge and J. W. M. DuMond to work up a consistent set of precise atomic constants. In solid-state physics he studied the surface photoelectric effect and made the first suggestion and analysis of the use of soft x-rays to investigate the energy bands of solids. At Caltech, and later at Rice University, he taught a course on mathematical physics, for which he wrote a textbook. [8]
During World War II, through the influence of Dr. Frank B. Jewett of the National Academy of Sciences, Houston became involved in undersea warfare research and development, for which he also had supervisory responsibility at installations at Harvard University, San Diego, and Key West. [8]
In 1946, Houston became the second president of Rice Institute (now Rice University) in Houston, Texas, where he served as president and professor until 1961. He resigned as president after a serious illness in 1961, but continued his teaching responsibilities. In 1951, Houston published a textbook "Principles of Quantum Mechanics" which was widely used for teaching quantum mechanics courses. As president, Houston brought many advancements to the university, including enlargement of the graduate school, a five-year engineering program, lowering of the student-teacher ratio to 10:1, and fostering a closer relationship between the students and faculty. [8]
In 1948 during W. V. Houston’s presidency, a debate raged in the letters page of the campus newspaper, the Thresher, regarding integration of the university, explicitly forbidden by the university’s original charter. This debate included letters from the executive secretary of the Houston branch of the NAACP, civil rights advocate James Dombrowski of the Southern Conference Educational Fund, and segregationist Gov. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. After watching several months of back and forth, under pressure from Rice's board of trustees, Houston sent a note to the Thresher pointing out that this debate was “academic” because of the language of the founding charter. Rice remained segregated until a changed board filed suit to break the racial exclusion in the charter and Black students were admitted in 1963. [12]
In 1953, Houston wrote a review of Sommerfeld’s first volume of the six-volume Lectures on Theoretical Physics , based on Sommerfeld’s six-semester course on theoretical physics. [13]
Houston was productive until the day he died in Edinburgh, Scotland on August 22, 1968. He was survived by his wife, Mildred née White, whom he married in 1924. [8]
Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld, was a German theoretical physicist who pioneered developments in atomic and quantum physics, and also educated and mentored many students for the new era of theoretical physics. He served as doctoral supervisor and postdoc supervisor to seven Nobel Prize winners and supervised at least 30 other famous physicists and chemists. Only J. J. Thomson's record of mentorship offers a comparable list of high-achieving students.
In quantum physics and chemistry, quantum numbers are quantities that characterize the possible states of the system. To fully specify the state of the electron in a hydrogen atom, four quantum numbers are needed. The traditional set of quantum numbers includes the principal, azimuthal, magnetic, and spin quantum numbers. To describe other systems, different quantum numbers are required. For subatomic particles, one needs to introduce new quantum numbers, such as the flavour of quarks, which have no classical correspondence.
Albrecht Otto Johannes Unsöld was a German astrophysicist known for his contributions to spectroscopic analysis of stellar atmospheres.
Walter Heinrich Heitler was a German physicist who made contributions to quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory. He brought chemistry under quantum mechanics through his theory of valence bonding.
Otto Laporte was a German-born American physicist who made contributions to quantum mechanics, electromagnetic wave propagation theory, spectroscopy, and fluid dynamics. His name is lent to the Laporte rule in spectroscopy and to the Otto Laporte Award of the American Physical Society.
Alfred Landé was a German-American physicist known for his contributions to quantum theory. He is responsible for the Landé g-factor and an explanation of the Zeeman effect.
Paul Sophus Epstein was a Russian-American mathematical physicist. He was known for his contributions to fluid dynamics and to the development of quantum mechanics.
Karl Ferdinand Herzfeld was an Austrian-American physicist.
LotharWolfgang Nordheim was a German-born Jewish American theoretical physicist. He was a pioneer in the applications of quantum mechanics to solid-state problems, such as thermionic emission, work function of metals, field electron emission, rectification in metal-semiconductor contacts and electrical resistance in metals and alloys. He also worked in the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics, cosmic rays and in nuclear physics.
Erwin Richard Fues, was a German theoretical physicist who made contributions to atomic physics and molecular physics, quantum wave mechanics, and solid-state physics.
B. Adolf Kratzer was a German theoretical physicist who made contributions to atomic physics and molecular physics, and was an authority on molecular band spectroscopy. He was born in Günzburg and died in Münster.
Helmut Hönl was a German theoretical physicist who made contributions to quantum mechanics and the understanding of atomic and molecular structure.
Carl Henry Eckart was an American physicist, physical oceanographer, geophysicist, and administrator. He co-developed the Wigner–Eckart theorem and is also known for the Eckart conditions in quantum mechanics, the Eckart–Young theorem in linear algebra., and his work on non-equilibrium thermodynamics and continuum mechanics, including a relativistic treatment
Edwin Crawford Kemble was an American physicist who made contributions to the theory of quantum mechanics and molecular structure and spectroscopy. During World War II, he was a consultant to the Navy on acoustic detection of submarines and to the Army on Operation Alsos.
Karl Wilhelm Meissner was a German-American physicist specializing in hyperfine spectroscopy. He spent the greater part of his career in the United States at Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Otto Scherzer was a German theoretical physicist who made contributions to electron microscopy.
Fritz Eduard Josef Maria Sauter was an Austrian-German physicist who worked mostly in quantum electrodynamics and solid-state physics.
Friedrich Arnold "Fritz" Bopp was a German theoretical physicist who contributed to nuclear physics and quantum field theory. He worked at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Physik and with the Uranverein. He was a professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and a President of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. He signed the Göttingen Manifesto.
The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory(German: Physikalischen Prinzipien der Quantentheorie publisher: S. Hirzel Verlag, 1930) by Nobel laureate (1932) Werner Heisenberg and subsequently translated by Carl Eckart and Frank C. Hoyt. The book was first published in 1930 by University of Chicago Press. Then in 1949, according to its copyright page, Dover Publications reprinted the "unabridged and unaltered" 1930's version.
Lectures on Theoretical Physics is a six-volume series of physics textbooks translated from Arnold Sommerfeld's classic German texts Vorlesungen über Theoretische Physik. The series includes the volumes Mechanics, Mechanics of Deformable Bodies, Electrodynamics, Optics, Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics, and Partial Differential Equations in Physics. Focusing on one subject each semester, the lectures formed a three-year cycle of courses that Sommerfeld repeatedly taught at the University of Munich for over thirty years. Sommerfeld's lectures were famous and he was held to be one of the greatest physics lecturers of his time.