Siegbahn was born inÖrebro, Sweden, the son of Georg Siegbahn and his wife, Emma Zetterberg.[5]
He graduated in Stockholm 1906 and began his studies atLund University in the same year.[6] During his education he was secretarial assistant toJohannes Rydberg.[7] In 1908 he studied at the University of Göttingen.[8] He obtained his doctorate (PhD) at the Lund University in 1911, his thesis was titledMagnetische Feldmessungen (magnetic field measurements). He became acting professor for Rydberg when his (Rydberg's) health was failing, and succeeded him as full professor in 1920.[9] However, in 1922 he left Lund for a professorship atUppsala University.[10]
In 1937, Siegbahn was appointed Director of the Physics Department of the Nobel Institute of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1988 this was renamed the Manne Siegbahn Institute (MSI).[11] The institute research groups have been reorganized since, but the name lives on in the Manne Siegbahn Laboratory hosted byStockholm University.
Manne Siegbahn began his studies of X-ray spectroscopy in 1914. Initially he used the same type ofspectrometer asHenry Moseley had done for finding the relationship between thefrequency ofcharacteristic X-rays someelements and their place at theperiodic system. Shortly thereafter he developed improved experimental apparatus which allowed him to make very accurate measurements of the X-ray wavelengths produced by atoms of different elements. Also, he found that several of thespectral lines that Moseley had discovered consisted of more components. By studying these components and improving the spectrometer, Siegbahn got an almost complete understanding of theelectron shell.[12] He developed a convention for naming the different spectral lines that are characteristic to elements in X-ray spectroscopy, theSiegbahn notation. Siegbahn's precision measurements drove many developments inquantum theory andatomic physics.[13]
Title page toThe Spectroscopy of X-Rays (1925)
Table of contents toThe Spectroscopy of X-Rays (1925)
Siegbahn married Karin Högbom in 1914. They had two children:Bo Siegbahn (1915–2008), a diplomat and politician, andKai Siegbahn (1918–2007), a physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1981 for his contribution to the development ofX-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.
^Litzén, Ulf (2015).Fysik i Lund under 300 år (in Swedish). Lund: Lunds universitetshistoriska sällskap. p. 87.ISBN9789175453200.
^Hulthén, Erik (1951). "1900–1925, fysikalisk forskning i Lund under ett kvartsekel".Manne Siegbahn : 1886 3/12 1951 (in Swedish). Uppsala. p. 3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
