Eugen Merzbacher (April 9, 1921 – June 6, 2013) was an American physicist.[1]
Merzbacher was born inBerlin. Being a Jew, he emigrated in 1935 with his family from Germany toTurkey, where his father worked as a chemist. He received hislicentiate fromUniversity of Istanbul in Turkey in 1943 and taught high school inAnkara for the next four years. In 1947, he moved to theUnited States to attendHarvard University, where he earned his M.A. (1948) and his Ph.D. withJulian Schwinger in 1950. During 1950/51, he worked at theInstitute for Advanced Study. In 1951-52, Merzbacher was a visiting assistant professor at Duke University. In 1952, he joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. In 1959/60, he worked at the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, where he became closely acquainted withNiels Bohr; in 1967/68 he was visiting professor at theUniversity of Washington inSeattle. In 1977, he was the recipient of a U. S. Senior Scientist Humboldt Award at the University of Frankfurt. In 1986, he was a visiting research fellow at the Universities of Edinburgh and Stirling in Scotland. He was an active member of the American Physical Society (APS) and in 1990, he served as APS President. In 1991, he was Arnold Bernhard Visiting Professor at Williams College. In 1992, he received theOersted Medal from the American Association of Physics Teachers. In 2009, Merzbacher was the recipient of the Francis Slack Award from the Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society.
Merzbacher's research was in applications of quantum mechanics to atomic and nuclear collision theory. He was a co-founder of the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory, supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. From 1977 to 1982 he served as chairman of the Department of Physics at theUniversity of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC). He was named a Kenan Professor in 1969. He received UNC's 1972Thomas Jefferson Award.
Merzbacher is probably best known for his influential graduate levelquantum mechanics textbook, which has so far seen three editions, the most recent in 1998.
He married Ann Townsend Reid and together they had four children: Celia, Charles, Matthew and Mary (deceased). Merzbacher retired in 1991. In 1990, he was president of theAmerican Physical Society. In 1993, UNC presented him with an honorary doctorate in science.[2]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |
   | This article about an American physicist is astub. You can help Wikipedia byexpanding it. |
