Felix Bloch (23 October 1905 – 10 September 1983) was a Swiss-Americantheoretical physicist[2] who shared the 1952Nobel Prize in Physics withEdward Mills Purcell "for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith".[3]
Bloch was born on 23 October 1905 inZurich, Switzerland, toJewish[4] parents, Gustav Bloch and Agnes Mayer. Gustav was financially unable to attend university and worked as a wholesale grain dealer in Zurich.[5] Gustav moved to Zurich fromMoravia in 1890 to become a Swiss citizen. Their first child was a girl born in 1902, while Felix was born three years later.[5]
Bloch entered public elementary school at the age of six and is said to have been teased, in part because he "spokeSwiss German with a somewhat different accent than most members of the class".[5] He received support from his older sister during much of this time, but she died at the age of 12, devastating Felix, who is said to have lived a "depressed and isolated life" in the following years.[5] Bloch learned to play the piano by the age of 8 and was drawn to arithmetic for its "clarity and beauty".[5] Bloch graduated from elementary school at twelve and enrolled in the Cantonal Gymnasium in Zurich for secondary school in 1918. He was placed on a six-year curriculum here to prepare him for university. He continued his curriculum through 1924, even through his study of engineering and physics in other schools, though it was limited to mathematics and languages after the first three years.
After these first three years at the Gymnasium, at the age of 15, Bloch began to study at theETH Zurich. Although he initially studied engineering, he soon changed to physics. During this time, he attended lectures and seminars given byPeter Debye andHermann Weyl at the ETH Zurich andErwin Schrödinger at the neighboringUniversity of Zurich. A fellow student in these seminars wasJohn von Neumann.
Bloch graduated in 1927, and was encouraged by Debye to go to theUniversity of Leipzig to study underWerner Heisenberg.[6] Bloch became Heisenberg's first graduate student, and gained his doctorate in 1928.[6] His doctoral thesis established thequantum theory of solids, using waves to describeelectrons in periodic lattices.
In 1934, the chairman ofStanford Physics invited Bloch to join the faculty.[6] Bloch accepted the offer and emigrated to the United States. In the fall of 1938, Bloch began working with the 37 inchcyclotron at theUniversity of California, Berkeley, to determine the magnetic moment of the neutron. Bloch went on to become the first professor of theoretical physics at Stanford. In 1939, he became anaturalized citizen of the United States.
WhenCERN was being set up in the early 1950s, its founders were searching for someone of stature and international prestige to head the fledgling international laboratory, and in 1954 Professor Bloch became CERN's first director-general,[13] at the time when construction was getting under way on the presentMeyrin site and plans for the first machines were being drawn up. After leaving CERN, he returned toStanford University, where he in 1961 was made Max Stein Professor of Physics.
On 14 March 1940, Bloch married Lore Clara Misch (1911–1996), a fellow physicist working onX-ray crystallography, whom he had met at anAmerican Physical Society meeting.[17] They had four children, twins George Jacob Bloch and Daniel Arthur Bloch (born 15 January 1941), son Frank Samuel Bloch (born 16 January 1945), and daughter Ruth Hedy Bloch (born 15 September 1949).[6][18]
Bloch died on 10 September 1983 inZurich at the age of 77.[17]
^"Bloch, Felix",Current Biography,H. W. Wilson Company, 1954. Accessed 24 February 2013. "Because of his Jewish faith, his position soon became uncomfortable and he went to Paris, where he lectured at the Institut Henri Poincaré."
^Charles, Weiner (15 August 1968)."Oral Histories: Felix Bloch". American Institute of Physics. Retrieved11 November 2017.
