Biographical Memoirs Volume 74 (1998) / Chapter Skim
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Gregory Breit
Gregory Breit
Pages 26-57
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The most important of this work, with Merle Tuve, was the use of raclio to demonstrate the existence of the postulates! ionosphere by receiving return signals of a puisec!
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, early studies of the nucleon-nucleon interaction, en c! with Eugene Wigner the theory of nuclear resonances, which continues to be the basis for unclerstancling many nuclear reactions.
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on Coulomb wave functions for calculating nuclear reactions (before high speec! computers macle the tables unnecessary)
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clearance to clo war work. Gregory, on the other hancI, responclec!
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When YaTe's mandatory retirement policy sent Breit from New Haven in 196S, I hac! gotten him an appointment as clistinguishec!
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Anne Herb recalls that the late Ray Herb acimirec! Gregory above most of his colleagues at Wisconsin, en c!
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took the trouble to write clirectly to Willis with useful comments en c! encouragement a rare instance of a referee abandoning the customary anonymity, en c!
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Gerry Brown, who remembers Breit as a seconc! father, was regularly a target, en c!
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The sessions at Gregory's home also were opportunities for us to meet the great physicists of the time. Jack McIntosh especially remembers Werner Heisenberg, for example (as I clo, someone hac!
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PROFESSIONAL HISTORY Breit's professional positions began with an appointment as assistant professor at the University of Minnesota (192324~. He then began an extended association with the Carnegie Institution of Washington as a mathematical physicist (192429, with a residency at the Technische Hochschule, Zurich, in 1928)
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he retiree! from that position in 1968 (at Yale's mandatory retirement age of sixty-eight!
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When he took a position in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Foundation, he invites! Merle Tuve to join him in attempting to demonstrate the existence of an ionizer!
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As the papers of Schroeclinger, Heisenburg, en c! Dirac appeared, Breit wrote interpretive comments where he thought they conic!
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him the National Mecial of Science for his work in nuclear physics en c! his wartime work in orcinance.
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His participation in the invention of the betatron principle has aIreacly been noted. He was the first American physicist to realize that to incluce nuclear reactions with artificial sources (accelerators)
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. Two HILACs were built, with design input from Bob Gluckstern, one of the authors of the heavy ion paper.
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hyperfine structure of hydrogen spectra. Over the next several years, this approach was user!
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in 1950, 1952, en c! 1953 with attempts to use our increasing knowlecige of nuclear forces to unclerstanc!
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These solutions are caller! Coulomb wave functions (when only the Coulomb force acts)
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the phase shifts that clefine it. This fact was user!
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Both phase shifts en c! the early moclels of the attractive nuclear forces suggestec!
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. As the nearly sixty papers reported with Breit's participation attests, en c!
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the phase shifts to derive phenomenological potentials to use in studying the properties of nuclear matter, with satisfactory results an appropriate justification of Breit's expectation in undertaking the stucly in the first place. Breit is, perhaps, remembered in the physics community for his work in nuclear reactions as much as for any other of his areas of interest.
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by nuclei of arbitrary spin, which, among other interests, informs the angular distribution of nuclear reactions particularly pick-up and stripping (Brett had published a paper on angular distribution of reaction products in ~947)
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en c! with Gluckstern treats Coulomb excitation extensively (inclucling reorientation effects)
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My own contemporaries, Tack McIntosh, Gerry Brown, Bob Gluckstern, and Arthur Broyles revived many memories, and Gary Herling, a later student, gave a good account of Breit's work after the Breit group began to dissolve. The Breit symposium was organized and the proceedings edited by Allan Bromley and Vernon Hughes; I am grateful for both activities.
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The obituary from The New York Times allowed a quote from Edward Teller that I otherwise would not have known.
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I have, in consideration for Academy guiclelines, incluclec! only the first of the many papers on Coulomb wave functions.
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Hull, Jr. Advances in knowledge of nuclear forces.
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Reorientation effect in Coulomb excitation.
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