Wigner, Eugene Paul

Wigner, Eugene Paul (1902-1995), American physicist and Nobel laureate, noted for his work on quantum physics and the development of nuclear reactors. Wigner was born in Budapest, Hungary. He joined the faculty of Princeton University in 1930 and became a U.S. citizen in 1937. He was one of five scientists who informed President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939 of the possible military use of atomic energy, and during World War II he helped design plutonium reactors. He shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in physics for his work in elucidating the structure of the atomic nucleus and his development of quantum mechanics theory concerning the nature of the proton and neutron.

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Wigner, Eugene Paul

born Nov. 17, 1902, Budapest, Hung., Austria-Hungary

died Jan. 1, 1995, Princeton, N.J., U.S.

Hungarian Jenó Pál Wigner Hungarian-born American physicist, joint winner, with J. Hans D. Jensen of West Germany and Maria Goeppert Mayer of the United States, of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1963. He received the prize for his many contributions to nuclear physics, which include his formulation of the law of conservation of parity.

Wigner studied chemical engineering and received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Technology in Berlin in 1925. After serving as a lecturer thereand at the University of Göttingen, he went to the United States. Apart from two years (1936–38) as professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin, he spent his academic life at Princeton University, serving as a professor of mathematical physics from 1938 until his retirement in 1971. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1937.

At Göttingen, Wigner formulated his law of the conservation of parity, which implies that it is impossible to distinguish left from right in fundamental physical interactions. This theory became an integral part of quantum mechanics, but in 1956 the physicists Tsung-Dao Lee andChen Ning Yang showed that parity is not always conserved in weak interactions of subatomic particles. At Princeton, Wigner determined that the nuclear force that binds neutrons and protons together is necessarily short-range and independent of any electric charge. He also developed the principles involved in applying mathematical group theory to investigate the energy levels of atomic nuclei. In 1936 he worked out the theory of neutron absorption, which later proved useful in building nuclear reactors.

In 1939, Wigner helped Leo Szilard persuade Albert Einstein to write the historic letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that set in motion the U.S. atomic-bomb project. During World War II he worked at the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago, where he helped Enrico Fermi construct the first atomic pile. Wigner also conducted research on quantum mechanics, the theory of the rates of chemical reactions, and nuclear structure. His publications include Gruppentheorie und IhreAnwendung auf die Quantenmechanik der Atomspektren (1931; Group Theory and Its Application to the Quantum Mechanics of Atomic Spectra), a classic text, and Symmetries and Reflections (1967).