Jensen, J. Hans D.

▪ German physicist

in full  Johannes Hans Daniel Jensen 

born June 25, 1907, Hamburg, Ger.

died Feb. 11, 1973, Heidelberg, W.Ger.

 German physicist who shared half of the 1963 Nobel Prize for Physics with Maria Goeppert Mayer (Mayer, Maria Goeppert) for their proposal of the shell nuclear model. (shell nuclear model) (The other half of the prize was awarded to Eugene P. Wigner (Wigner, Eugene Paul) for unrelated work.)

      After obtaining his Ph.D. at the University of Hamburg in 1932, Jensen served on the faculties of Hamburg, the Institute of Technology in Hannover, and the University of Heidelberg. He and Mayer proposed the shell model independently of each other in 1949. The shell nuclear model holds that an atomic nucleus should be thought of not as a random aggregation of neutrons and protons but rather as a structure of shells, or spherical layers, of differing radii, each of which is filled with neutrons and protons. Jensen collaborated with Mayer in writing Elementary Theory of Nuclear Shell Structure (1955).

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