Rabi, I(sidor) I(saac)

born July 29, 1898, Rymanów, Austria-Hungary

died Jan. 11, l988, New York, N.Y., U.S.

Polish-born U.S. physicist.

He earned his Ph.D. at Columbia University, where he later taught physics (from 1929). In 1940–45 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology he led a group of scientists who helped develop radar, and he succeeded J. Robert Oppenheimer as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission's General Advisory Committee (1952–56). He was the first to propose the joint European laboratory CERN, and he helped found New York's Brookhaven National Laboratory. His method for measuring the magnetic properties of atoms, atomic nuclei, and molecules (1937) led to the atomic clock, the maser, the laser, magnetic resonance imaging, and the central technique for molecular and atomic beam experimentation; it also won him a 1944 Nobel Prize.

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