Rabi; Scientist and Citizen

New York: Basic Books, Inc, 1987. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 25 cm, xiii, [1], 302, [2] pages. Occasional footnotes. Illustrations. Appendices. Notes. Index. The story of Isidor Rabi, a major American physicist. John S. Rigden is an internationally renowned American physicist. His areas of expertise are molecular physics and the history of science. Rigden was editor of the American Journal of Physics from 1975 to 1985. In 1987, he joined the American Institute of Physics, where he served as Director of Physics Programs. In 1992, he was appointed Director of Development of the National Science Standards Project at the National Academy of Sciences. In 1995, he was elected chairman of the History of Physics Forum of the American Physical Society. He has also served on committees for the American Association of Physics Teachers, the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences. He served as a National Science Foundation (NSF) consultant to the country of India in 1968 and again in 1969. He was the United States Representative to the International Science Exhibition in Rangoon Burma in 1970. Rigden is the author of Physics and the Sound of Music, Rabi: Scientist and Citizen, Einstein 1905: The Standard of Greatness, and Hydrogen: The Essential Element. He has edited Most of the Good Stuff: Memories of Richard Feynman and several collections, including the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Physics and was Editor-in-Chief of the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Elementary Particle Physics. Isidor Isaac Rabi (born Israel Isaac Rabi, 29 July 1898 - 11 January 1988) was an American physicist and Nobel laureate, recognized in 1944 for his discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance, which is used in magnetic resonance imaging. He was also one of the first scientists in the US to work on the cavity magnetron, which is used in microwave radar and microwave ovens. Born into a traditional Jewish family in Rymanów, Galicia, in what was then part of Austria-Hungary, Rabi came to the United States as a baby and was raised in New York's Lower East Side. He entered Cornell University as an electrical engineering student in 1916, but soon switched to chemistry. Later, he became interested in physics. He continued his studies at Columbia University, where he was awarded his doctorate for a thesis on the magnetic susceptibility of certain crystals. In 1927, he headed for Europe, where he met and worked with many of the finest physicists of the time. In 1929 Rabi returned to the United States, where Columbia offered him a faculty position. In collaboration with Gregory Breit, he developed the Breit-Rabi equation and predicted that the Stern-Gerlach experiment could be modified to confirm the properties of the atomic nucleus. His techniques for using nuclear magnetic resonance to discern the magnetic moment and nuclear spin of atoms earned him a Nobel Prize for Physics in 1944. Nuclear magnetic resonance became an important tool for nuclear physics and chemistry. The subsequent development of magnetic resonance imaging from it has made it important to medicine as well. During World War II he worked on radar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory (RadLab) and on the Manhattan Project. After the war, he served on the General Advisory Committee (GAC) of the Atomic Energy Commission, and was chairman from 1952 to 1956. He also served on the Science Advisory Committees (SACs) of the Office of Defense Mobilization and the Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory, and was Science Advisor to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was involved with the establishment of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1946, and later, as United States delegate to UNESCO, with the creation of CERN in 1952. When Columbia created the rank of University Professor in 1964, Rabi was the first to receive such a chair. A special chair was named after him in 1985. He retired from teaching in 1967 but remained active in the department and held the title of University Professor Emeritus and Special Lecturer until his death.