biography
pronunciation:
[shtern]
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1888–1969)
|
| biography:
| Physicist, born in Zary, W Poland (formerly Sorau, Germany). After completing his graduate work in physical chemistry at the University of Breslau (now Wrocław) in 1912, he worked with Albert Einstein at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. In 1919 he went to work with Max Born at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Frankfurt, Germany, and in 1920 carried out an experiment with Walter Gerlach (1889–1979), demonstrating that certain atoms have a quantized magnetic moment, which provided major evidence in favour of quantum theory. This work gained him the 1943 Nobel Prize for Physics. Forced by the Nazis to leave Germany (1933), he emigrated to the USA and there, thanks to a grant from the Buhl Foundation, took up his work at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh (now Carnegie-Mellon University). He became a US citizen (1939) and, with time out for government research during World War 2, he remained affiliated with that institution until he retired in 1946. |
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