Isidor Isaac Rabi

Isidor Isaac Rabi (1898-1988), American physicist and Nobel laureate, known for his development of the magnetic resonance method for the study of the hyperfine structure of atomic spectra. Rabi was born in Rymanów, Austria (now in Poland), and received his Ph.D. degree from Columbia University in 1927 for a dissertation on the magnetic properties of crystals. In 1930 Rabi began research on the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei in an effort to ascertain the nature of the force binding the protons in the nuclei. He was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in physics for his invention of a method to measure the hyperfine transition levels of atoms by using known radio frequencies to cause transitions between these energy levels. Rabi worked on radar development during World War II and was one of the leading scientists on the project that developed the atomic bomb.