I.I. RABI, 89
NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING PHYSICIST
Author: Associated Press
Date: Wednesday, January 13, 1988
Page: 57
Section: OBITUARY
NEW YORK -- I.I. Rabi, a physicist who won the 1944 Nobel prize for physics
and helped develop radar and the atomic bomb during World War II, died Monday
after a long illness. He was 89.
Mr. Rabi, who died in his Manhattan apartment, was the former chairman of
the physics department at Columbia University, where he taught for 39 years
until his retirement in 1967.
He was known primarily for his work on magnetism, molecular beams and
quantum mechanics, and was credited, along with his friend, J. Robert
Oppenheimer, with bringing quantum physics to the United States. He won the
Nobel prize for discovering and measuring the radio-frequency spectra of
atomic nuclei whose magnetic spin has been disturbed.
He also spent much of his time after World War II trying to convince the
world to use atomic power peacefully.
Mr. Rabi was born in Austria in 1898 and brought to the United States by
his parents a year later. He grew up in New York City and studied at Cornell,
Columbia and in Europe.
In the 1940s, Rabi joined the Radiation Laboratory of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, where he worked on the development of radar.
Mr. Rabi leaves his wife, Helen, two daughters and four grandchildren. His
funeral will be private, but a memorial service at Columbia would be
scheduled, the school said.
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