Victor Frederick Weisskopf, 1908-2002 - Theoretical Physics at LBNL

VICTOR FREDERICK WEISSKOPFcharge placed in a polarizable medium to conclude thatvacuum polarization produces an unobservable (though infinite)constant factor multiplying all charges and electromagneticfield operators.It had become clear to Viki by 1936 that an Austrian Jewhad better leave Europe for the United States. This was fareasier said than done, however, because there were hardlyany positions available in the United States, or elsewherefor that matter, and many highly qualified physicists whoanticipated a Nazi onslaught were competing for them. Tofurther his chances Viki decided that he should publishsomething on the new rage (nuclear physics) and do so inEnglish. He carried this off brilliantly with the second ofhis Copenhagen papers—an original application of statisticalmechanics to the evaporation of neutrons from nuclei—and published his results in Physical Review (1937).Viki’s first opportunities to leave were a professorshipin Kiev and a senior research position in Moscow. In late1936 he and Ellen visited the Soviet Union and promptlyrealized that the political climate had deteriorated drasticallysince Viki’s earlier visit to Russia. He would thereforeonly consider a position there if nothing else were available.In those years Bohr went regularly to England andAmerica to “sell’’ the refugees at his institute. In 1937 Bohrconvinced the University of Rochester to offer Viki a poorlypaid instructorship, which he accepted.ROCHESTER AND LOS ALAMOSIn the fall of 1937 Viki began a new phase of his careerwith a new country, a new language, and a largely newfield. In his five and a half years at Rochester, nuclear physicsbecame a major focus of his research, with studies ofCoulomb excitation 5 and radiative transitions (1941) beingespecially noteworthy. He continued to work on QED and13