Gustaf Ising

Gustaf Adolf Ising (1883 to 1960) was a Swedish metrologist, geophysicist and accelerator physicist. After a first degree at Uppsala University in 1903 he studied at Stockholm University, where he received his doctorate in 1919, and he was given an honorary professor title in 1934. He is best known for proposing in 1924 the linear accelerator concept, in which particles are pushed by oscillating electromagnetic fields, an idea that Rolf Wideroe then put into practice and that also opened the development of cyclic machines such as the cyclotron. Ising was elected to the Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1935 and sat on the Nobel Committee for Physics from 1947 to 1953 alongside Manne Siegbahn and other leading Swedish scientists.