Victor Weisskopf

Victor Weisskopf was an Austrian-born American physicist who lived from 1908 to 2002, known for major advances in quantum electrodynamics during the 1930s and 1940s and for collaborating with Esther Conwell on semiconductor theory later important to integrated circuits. He earned his doctorate at the University of Gottingen under Max Born, served as deputy division leader of the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos during the Second World War, joined the MIT physics faculty afterward and eventually chaired the department, and directed CERN from 1961 to 1965. He received the National Medal of Science in 1980 and the Enrico Fermi Award in 1988, served as president of the American Physical Society from 1960 to 1961, and co-founded the Union of Concerned Scientists. He received the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1981.