Harold Max Rosenberg

Infobox Scientist
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name = Harry Rosenberg


image_size = 300px
caption = Harold Max Rosenberg
birth_date = 26 August, 1922
birth_place = London, UK
death_date = 21 November, 1993
death_place = Brazil
residence = UK
citizenship =
nationality = British
ethnicity =
fields = Physicist
workplaces = University of Oxford
alma_mater = University College London
University of Oxford
doctoral_advisor = Kurt Mendelssohn
academic_advisors =
doctoral_students = Peter V. E. McClintock
notable_students =
known_for = Solid-state physics
Low temperature physics
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author_abbrev_zoo =
influences =
influenced =
awards = Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit
religion =


footnotes =

Harold Max Rosenberg (26 August, 1922, London- 21 November, 1993, Brazil), was a distinguished experimental physicist who is notable for two successful textbooks: "Low Temperature Solid State Physics" (1963) and "The Solid State" (1975) and over one hundred papers mainly about the electrical, thermal and mechanical properties of solids, especially at low temperatures.

Early Life & Education

Harry Rosenberg was the son of a small shopkeeper in East Ham, UK. He left school at 16 and went into the Civil Service in a clerical post. He was called up and served throughout the war in the RAF working on radio which he had studied in his spare time. On demobilization he was given a further education, a training grant, and studied at University College London (UCL). He graduated with a first class honours degree in physics from UCL, and then at University of Oxford, he obtained a DPhil, in 1953, under Kurt Mendelssohn.

Career

Six years later he became a university lecturer and in 1978 was appointed a Reader. He also became a fellow of the newlyfounded Linacre College, Oxford a graduate college, and subsequently, in 1970, a tutorial fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford.

Harry Rosenberg's initial research was in the area of metals, but in 1962 new phenomena associated with magnetism and the interaction between magnetism and phonons (the quantized vibrations that store and transport heat in insulating as well as metallic solids) began to interest him. This occupied his attention for the next decade. Then, in 1972, he began the work on composite, disordered and amorphous materials that lasted until his retirement.

On his 60th birthday, in 1982, Rosenberg was gloomily contemplating the need to find a new topic of research to last until his retirement, when a note from an old colleague, Ray Orbach in California, showed that his experimental results on the low temperature properties of amorphous solids found a natural explanation in terms of the newly discovered mathematical theory of fractals, by now of course familiar through the strange and beautiful pictures that they generate.

This new approach to the interpretation of excitations in disordered solids was first expressed in the paper "Fractal interpretation of vibrational properties of cross-linked polymers, glasses and irradiated quartz," [Alexander, Laermans, Orbach, and Rosenberg, "Phys Rev" (1993) B28 4615-4619] which, according to Orbach, was a very controversial piece of work, greeted with considerable skepticism.

Rosenberg was regarded as a gifted lecturer, not only to undergraduates and to colleagues at conferences, but also to a much wider audience, both on the radio and on television.

Death

He died on 21 November, 1993, whilst on holiday in Brazil, survived by his wife Mildred Anna and three daughters.

Honors

He was a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and received the Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit.

Books by Rosenberg

* Harold Max Rosenberg, "The Solid-State", Oxford University Press (1975), ISBN 0198518323
* Harold Max Rosenberg, "Low Temperature Solid State Physics," Oxford University Press (1963), ISBN 0198519109

Notes

References

* F. N. H. Robinson, "Obituary," "Cryogenics," Vol. 34, No. 7, pp. 617-618, 1994.

External links

* [http://www.genealogy.ams.org/id.php?id=76490 Rosenberg's math genealogy]