- Heinrich Rohrer
Infobox Scientist
name = Heinrich Rohrer
box_width =
imagesize =150px
caption = Heinrich Rohrer
birth_date =June 6 ,1933
birth_place =St. Gallen
nationality =Switzerland
field =Physics
known_for =scanning tunneling microscope
prizes =Nobel Prize in Physics for1986 Heinrich Rohrer (bornJune 6 ,1933 ) is a Swissphysicist andNobel laureate .He was born in
St. Gallen half an hour after his twin sister. He enjoyed a carefree country childhood until the family moved toZürich in 1949. He enrolled in theSwiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in 1951, where he studied withWolfgang Pauli . His doctoral dissertation was on his work measuring the length changes of superconductors at the magnetic-field-induced superconducting transition, a project begun byJörgen Lykke Olsen . In the course of his research, he found that he had to do most of his research at night after the city was asleep because his measurements were so sensitive to vibration.His studies were interrupted by his military service in the Swiss mountain infantry. In 1961, he married Rose-Marie Egger. Their honeymoon trip to the
United States included a stint doing research on thermal conductivity of type-II superconductors and metals withBernie Serin atRutgers University inNew Jersey .In 1963, he joined the
IBM Research Laboratory inRüschlikon under the direction ofAmbros Speiser . The first couple of years at IBM, he studiedKondo system s with magnetoresistance in pulsed magnetic fields. He then began studyingmagnetic phase diagram s, which eventually brought him into the field of critical phenomena.In 1974, he spent a
sabbatical year at theUniversity of California inSanta Barbara, California studyingnuclear magnetic resonance withVince Jaccarino andAlan King .He shared the
Nobel Prize in Physics for1986 withGerd Binnig for their design of thescanning tunneling microscope (STM).
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