John Hasbrouck Van Vleck

Infobox Scientist
name = John Hasbrouck Van Vleck


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birth_date = March 13, 1899
birth_place = Middletown, Connecticut
death_date = October 27, 1980
death_place =
nationality = United States
field = Physics
work_institutions = University of Minnesota
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Harvard University
University of Oxford
Balliol College
alma_mater = Harvard
doctoral_advisor = Edwin C. Kemble
doctoral_students = Robert Serber
Edward Mills Purcell
known_for =
influences =
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prizes = nowrap|Nobel Prize in Physics (1977)
footnotes =

John Hasbrouck Van Vleck (March 13, 1899 – October 27, 1980) was an American physicist. Born in Middletown, Connecticut the son of mathematician Edward Burr Van Vleck and grandson of astronomer John Monroe Van Vleck, he grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, and went to Harvard for undergraduate and graduate studies. He joined the University of Minnesota as an assistant professor in 1923, then moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison before settling at Harvard. Van Vleck developed fundamental theories of the quantum mechanics of magnetism and the bonding in metal complexes (crystal field theory).

Van Vleck participated in the Manhattan Project by serving on the Los Alamos Review committee in 1943. The committee, established by General Leslie Groves, also consisted of W.K. Lewis of MIT, Chairman; E.L. Rose, of Jones & Lamson; E.B. Wilson of Harvard; and Richard C. Tolman, Vice Chairman of NDRC. The committee's important contribution (originating with Rose) was a reduction in the size of the firing gun for the Little Boy bomb. This concept eliminated additional design-weight and sped up production of the bomb for its eventual release over Hiroshima. ["Now It Can Be Told": Leslie R. Groves, Lieutenant General, U.S. Army, Retired; Harper, 1962, pp. 162-63]

In the year 1961-62 he was George Eastman Visiting Professor at University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow of Balliol College. He was awarded the Lorentz Medal in 1974. For his contributions to the understanding of electrons in magnetic solids, van Vleck was awarded the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Philip W. Anderson and Sir Nevill Mott. Van Vleck transformations are also named after him.

Japanese art collector

Van Vleck and his wife Abigail were also important art collectors, particularly in the medium of Japanese woodblock prints (principally ukiyo-e). He began collecting early, around 1909, but became a serious collector in the late 1920s, when he acquired approximately 4,000 prints that had been owned by Frank Lloyd Wright. His collection, one of the largest in the world outside the Library of Congress, features more than 2,000 prints by Utagawa Hiroshige as well as many prints by Hokusai, and fine examples of "shin hanga" (new prints) made well into the 20th century. His collection now resides at the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, Wisconsin.

References

Bibliography

* [http://www.archive.org/details/theoryofelectric031070mbp "The Theory Of Electric And Magnetic Susceptibilities"] (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1932)

External links

* [http://www.nobel-winners.com/Physics/john_hasbrouck_van_vleck.html John Hasbrouck van Vleck]
* [http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1977/vleck-autobio.html Autobiography]
* Duncan, Anthony and Janssen, Michel. "On the verge of "Undeutung" in Minnesota: Van Vleck and the correspondence principle. Part one," "Archive for History of Exact Sciences" 2007, 61:6, pages 553-624. [http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002818/01/duncan-janssen.pdf]
* [http://www.chazen.wisc.edu/home.htm Chazen Museum of Art]
* [http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4931_1.html Oral history interview transcript with John Hasbrouck Van Vleck 28 February 1966, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives]