Wigner, Eugen(e) Paul b. November 17, 1902; Budapest, Austria-Hungary d. January 1, 1995; Princeton, New Jersey
Physicist and chemist who studied and taught at several German research institutes and universities before he had to leave Germany for the United States as a result of the Nazi seizure of power.
In August 1939 Wigner accompanied Leo Szilard when he visited Albert Einstein to tell him of the possibility of a German nuclear fission project. Wigner produced pathbreaking papers on the application of symmetry principles to quantum theory and chemistry, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. More than 500 publications mark his activity in nearly all fields of modern physics. He was an influential teacher who supervised more than forty doctoral students.Wigner began his studies of physical chemistry and chemical engineering at the Technische Hochschule (Technical University) of Budapest in 1920. The following year, he moved to Berlin. In 1924 Wigner received his diploma for a thesis on the lattice structure of sulfur supervised by Hermann Mark. One year later, in 1925, he was awarded his PhD for a dissertation on calculations of chemical reaction rates supervised by Michael Polanyi. Afterward he went back to Budapest to work in the leather factory of his father. One year later, he returned to Berlin. He accepted a research position at the Kaiser- Wilhelm-Institut and started teaching at the Technische Hochschule. His research was focused on the symmetries in crystal lattices using the group theory. Wigner proved the usefulness of symmetry principles for the new quantum theory. Together with John von Neumann, he published three important papers on this topic. In
1927 Wigner was appointed assistant to David Hilbert at the University of Gottingen for one year. Wigner finished his second doctoral degree (Habilitation) in
1928 at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin. At that time his main topic of research was the theory of chemical reactions.
His book on group theory and its application to quantum theory of atomic spectra, published in 1931, was a review of important results of previous years. Beginning in 1930, Wigner shared a part-time lecturer position at Princeton University with John von Neumann. Due to the antisemitic laws of 1933, Wigner lost his position at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin. He continued teaching in Princeton. After a two-year appointment at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (1936—1938), he finally received a permanent position at Princeton.In the United States, Wigner worked on nuclear physics and what was later called solid-state physics. He investigated theoretically the nuclear forces and reactions. Together with Gregory Breit he developed a formula for the calculation of cross sections that was named after both researchers. In collaboration with his doctoral student Frederick Seitz he succeeded in calculating properties of the sodium crystal by using the later so-called Wigner- Seitz cell. In 1939 he published a pathbreaking investigation on the inhomogeneous Lorentz group. In this context he was able to show the connection of irreducible unitary representations with the known elementary particles.
Wigner and Leo Szilard discussed with Albert Einstein the danger of a German nuclear fission project in August 1939. As a result, Einstein wrote the first of two letters to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on this matter. Wigner participated in the corresponding U.S. project when he joined the “Metallurgical Laboratory” in Chicago in spring 1942. He led a group of theoretical physicists who had been responsible for the design of nuclear reactors that were to produce plutonium. However, in the end not his group but the Dupont Company was chosen for the construction of a nuclear reactor.
After the war, Wigner remained interested in the technology of nuclear reactors. Until 1947 he was research director of the Clinton Laboratories, a predecessor of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
He returned to his teaching position at Princeton in 1947. Wigner continued to focus on the foundations of quantum theory. He is considered a pioneer of quantum chaos because of his contributions to R-Matrix theory, which originated from his treatment of nuclear reactions. Wigner retired in 1971 but did not give up his research and teaching. Wigner, together with Maria Goeppert- Mayer and H. D. Jensen, received the Nobel Prize for his contributions to nuclear physics and the application of fundamental symmetry principles in 1963.Stefan L. Wolff
See also Einstein, Albert; Intellectual Exile;
Jewish Refugee Scientists
References and Further Reading
Wightman, Arthur S., and Jagdish Mehra, eds.
The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner: Part A. The Scientific Papers: Part B. Historical, Philosophical and Socio-political Papers. Berlin: Springer, 1993—1998.
Wigner, Eugene Paul. The Recollections of Eugene P Wigner as Told to Andrew Szanton. New York: Plenum, 1992.
Seitz, Fredrick, Erich Vogt, and Alvin M. Weinberg. “Eugene Paul Wigner.” Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 74 (1998): 364—388.