American Philosophical Society
Member History

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Residency
Resident (1)
Subdivision
106. Physics (1)
1Name:  Dr. Nicolaas Bloembergen
 Institution:  Harvard University
 Year Elected:  1982
 Class:  1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
 Subdivision:  106. Physics
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Deceased
 Birth Date:  1920
 Death Date:  September 5, 2017
   
 
Nicolaas Bloembergen was born in Dordrecht, the Netherlands, in 1920. He obtained his Phil. Cand. and Phil. Drs. Degrees in physics at the University of Utrecht. In 1946 he came to the United States and worked with Professor E.M. Purcell at Harvard on Nuclear Magnetic Relaxation. This was the title of his Ph.D. thesis, submitted at the University of Leiden in 1948, where he was a research fellow in the Kamerkingh Onnes Laboratory. He returned to Harvard University in 1949 as a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows, became Associate Professor of Applied Physics in 1951, Gordon McKay Professor in 1957, Rumford Professor of Physics in 1974, and Gerhard Gade University Professor in 1981. Since 1990 he has been professor emeritus. He then held an honorary professorship in the Optical Sciences Center at the University of Arizona. His research was concerned with nuclear and electron paramagnetic resonance, microwave masers and nonlinear optics. He had supervised fifty-seven Ph.D. theses, and a similar number of post-doctoral fellows have worked in his laboratory. He was the author or co-author of over three hundred scientific papers published in professional journals and had written two monographs: Nuclear Magnetic Relaxation (republished 1961) and Nonlinear Optics (1965). He was a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1981, the Lorentz Medal of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences in 1978, and the National Medal of Science in 1974. He also received the Medal of Honor of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the Frederick Ives Medal of the Optical Society of America and the Stuart Ballantine Medal of the Franklin Institute. He was a member of various academies in the United States and abroad. In addition to his service on the faculty of the Arts and Sciences at Harvard University for four decades, he was a visiting professor in Paris, Leiden, Bangalore, Munich, Berkeley, and Pasadena. Furthermore, he had served on numerous advisory committees of U.S. government agencies and of industrial and academic institutions and on several editorial boards of scientific publications. In 1991 he was president of the American Physical Society. Nicolaas Bloembergen died September 5, 2017, in Tucson, Arizona, at the age of 97.
 
Election Year
1982 (1)