- Person
- Isidor Isaac Rabi
- Lived
- 1898–1988
- Field
- Physics
- From
- Polish-born American
The story
In September 1940, with Britain fighting for survival, the British Tizard Mission brought a set of secret technologies to the United States. Among them was the cavity magnetron, a compact device that generates powerful microwaves and promised to revolutionise radar. Alfred Lee Loomis of the National Defense Research Committee set up a new laboratory at MIT to develop it, with Lee DuBridge as director. The name Radiation Laboratory was chosen as both unremarkable and a tribute to the Berkeley laboratory of the same name.
Isidor Isaac Rabi of Columbia was among the first physicists recruited, bringing his former students Jerrold Zacharias and Norman Ramsey with him. Rabi's group made early progress improving the magnetron's power output, and he formed an advanced development group under Ramsey to build an experimental radar at the shorter wavelength of 3 centimetres, which promised sets that were smaller, lighter and more precise. By mid-May 1941 this system, the first to use a waveguide, was returning echoes from ground objects six miles away.
When the laboratory was reorganised in March 1942, Rabi became associate director and head of its research division, responsible for the scientific programme. Colleagues also treated him as a roving consultant and scientific oracle whom anyone could approach with a problem. That same year he set up a satellite laboratory at Columbia to develop magnetrons at even shorter wavelengths, close to Bell Labs. In 1944 he started the project that became the 28-volume MIT Radiation Laboratory Series, so that the wartime knowledge would be shared widely rather than confined to a single company.
The 3-centimetre magnetron work his groups began proved foundational to several of the war's most important radar systems, including the H2X airborne bombing radar and high-resolution shipboard sets. The Radiation Laboratory drew researchers from 69 universities and became a model for large, collaborative science after the war. Rabi and Ramsey drew directly on that experience when they organised Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Rabi was one of the first scientists in the United States to work on the cavity magnetron. The same device later made the domestic microwave oven possible, carrying the wartime technology into kitchens around the world.
Why it matters
Microwave radar helped the Allies win the war and laid groundwork for civilian aviation safety and weather forecasting.
About Isidor Isaac Rabi
Galician-born physicist who discovered nuclear magnetic resonance in molecular beams, won the 1944 Nobel Prize, and helped found Brookhaven and CERN, the root of today’s MRI and atomic clocks.
More about Isidor Isaac Rabi
- Rabi helped found Brookhaven National LaboratoryIsidor Isaac Rabi and Norman Ramsey rallied nine universities to found Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, established in 1947.
- Rabi's team found the deuteron is not roundPrecise measurements by Isidor Isaac Rabi's group in the late 1930s showed the deuteron has an electric quadrupole moment, a key clue to the nuclear force.
- Rabi helped create the President's science advisersAfter Sputnik in 1957, Isidor Isaac Rabi's advice to President Eisenhower helped create the President's Science Advisory Committee.
- I. I. Rabi discovered how to make atomic nuclei 'ring'In 1937 Isidor Isaac Rabi's Columbia team invented the molecular-beam magnetic resonance method, winning him the 1944 Nobel Prize in Physics.
- I. I. Rabi opposed the hydrogen bomb on moral groundsIn 1949 Isidor Isaac Rabi joined Enrico Fermi on the AEC's advisory committee in opposing the hydrogen bomb on moral as well as technical grounds.
- I. I. Rabi planted the idea that became CERNAt a UNESCO meeting in Florence in June 1950, Isidor Isaac Rabi called for regional laboratories to rebuild European science; in 1952 European nations created CERN’s provisional council.
- I. I. Rabi proposed the atomic clock in 1945In a 1945 lecture Isidor Isaac Rabi proposed using the magnetic resonance of atoms to keep time; his colleagues soon built the first atomic clocks.
- Rabi's discovery is the root of the MRI scannerIsidor Isaac Rabi's magnetic resonance research led to MRI; in his final illness he was examined in a scanner descended from his own experiments.
Sources
- Isidor Isaac Rabi Wikipedia
- MIT Radiation Laboratory Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.