Willis Lamb

Willis Lamb was born on July 12, 1913 in Los Angeles, California, U.S., United States, is Physicist. Willis Eugene Lamb Jr. was an American physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering a minute difference in the energy levels of a hydrogen atom. His findings led to a reassessment of the basic concept related to the application of the quantum theory to electromagnetism. This deviation in the energy level of an electron orbiting round the nucleus of a hydrogen atom came to be known as ‘the Lamb shift’. The discovery greatly affected the concept of quantum theory related to matter. He shared the Nobel Prize with German-American physicist, Ploykarp Kusch who had also come to the same conclusions while doing the experiment independently. In 1939, at the age of 26, he predicted an effect which was proven 20 years later as the ‘Mossbauer Effect’ also known as the ‘Lamb-Dicke-Mossbauer Effect’. His research covered subjects like theory of the interactions between matter and neutrons, range of fission fragments, theories of nuclear structure, fluctuations in cosmic ray showers, theories of beta decay, pair production, order-disorder problems, quadrupole interactions in molecules and diamagnetic corrections for nuclear resonance. He also studied the design of magnetron oscillators, theory of electrodynamic energy level displacements, theory of the microwave spectroscope and the fine structure of hydrogen, helium and deuterium atoms.
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