Francis Bitter

Infobox Scientist
name=Francis Bitter


caption=
birth_date = birth date|1902|7|22|df=y
birth_place = Weehawken Township, New Jersey
death_date = death date and age|1967|7|26|1902|7|22|df=y
death_place =
nationality =
alma_mater = Columbia
Berlin
work_institution = Caltech
Westinghouse
MIT
field=Physics
known_for = Bitter electromagnet
doctoral_students = Robert C. Richardson, Jean Brossel, Luke Vano
doctoral_advisor = Albert Potter Wills
prizes=
societies=

Francis Bitter (July 22, 1902 - July 26, 1967) was an American physicist.

Bitter invented the Bitter plate used in resistive magnets (also called Bitter electromagnets). He is the one who thought of using dust to visualize a magnetic field. (Many grade school children put metal filings on a paper with a magnet underneath to help visualize magnetic field lines.) He built the Bitter electromagnet by using stacked copper plates, rather than coiled wire. Previous to this time there was no way to cool the magnets so their power was limited.

Early life

Francis Bitter was born in the Weehawken Township, New Jersey. His father, Karl Bitter, was a prominent sculptor.

Education and early career

Bitter entered the University of Chicago in 1919, but chose to leave his studies there in 1922 in order to visit Europe. He later transferred to Columbia University and graduated in 1925.

He continued his studies in Berlin from 1925-26 and received a Ph.D. at Columbia in 1928. At Columbia, Bitter began his life-long fascination with magnets.

Under a National Research Council fellowship, Bitter studied gases at Caltech with Robert Andrews Millikan, from 1928 to 1930. While at Caltech, he married Alice Coomara. She had been a moderately successful singer working under the stage name Ratan Devi.

In 1930, Bitter went to work for Westinghouse, where he worked on various theoretical and applied problems concerning ferromagnetism.

With a Guggenheim Fellowship, Bitter travelled to England in 1933 and worked at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University. There. he worked with Peter Kapitza on pulsed magnetic fields.

The following year, Bitter returned to America and his work at Westinghouse. Later in 1934, he joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and continued to consult for Westinghouse.

Career at MIT

Bitter joined the Department of Mining and Metallurgy as an associate professor in 1934. (The department is now known as Materials Science and Engineering.)

While at MIT, he developed the Bitter electromagnet which was/is the most powerful electromagnet design. He established a magnet laboratory in 1938, where he built a solenoid magnet that produced a constant field of 100,000 gauss (10 teslas).

He also did work in the first characterization of the Zeeman effect with George Harrison.

During the Second World War, Bitter worked for the Naval Bureau of Ordinance. He often travelled to England to work finding out ways to demagnetize German sea mines laid in the English Channel. (It is possible that he worked with Francis Crick, who was researching the same problem.)

After the War, Bitter returned to MIT and joined the faculty of the physics department. He became a full professor in 1951, and from 1956 to 1960, he served as the associate dean of MIT's school of science. From 1962 to 1965, Bitter was the housemaster of Ashdown House, MIT's graduate dormitory.

Legacy

The Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory, formerly a national laboratory, in Boston is named in his honor.

ee also

* MIT Physics Department

External links

* [http://web.mit.edu/fbml/ Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory website]

Persondata
NAME= Bitter, Francis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION= American Physicist
DATE OF BIRTH= 22 July 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH= Weehawken Township, New Jersey
DATE OF DEATH= 26 July 1967
PLACE OF DEATH=