Abraham Pais was a Dutch-American physicist and science historian.
43 Facts About Abraham Pais
2.
Abraham Pais then served as an assistant to Niels Bohr in Denmark and was later a colleague of Albert Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
3.
Abraham Pais was a physics professor at Rockefeller University until his retirement.
4.
Abraham Pais was born in Amsterdam, the first child of middle-class Dutch-Jewish parents.
5.
Abraham Pais's parents met while studying to become elementary-school teachers.
6.
Abraham Pais's only sibling, Annie, was born on November 1,1920.
7.
Abraham Pais was a bright student and a voracious reader during his early education and said he had a happy childhood and felt integrated in Dutch society.
8.
Abraham Pais passed his final examinations as number one in his class.
9.
Abraham Pais graduated with a working knowledge of English, French, and German.
10.
Abraham Pais was fascinated by Uhlenbeck's discussion of Enrico Fermi's incorporation of the neutrino into the theory of beta radiation.
11.
On February 16,1938, Abraham Pais was awarded two Bachelor of Science degrees in physics and mathematics, with minors in chemistry and astronomy.
12.
Abraham Pais began attending graduate courses in Amsterdam, including those in physics.
13.
Abraham Pais soon became disappointed by the only professor there in theoretical physics, Johannes Diderik van der Waals Jr.
14.
Abraham Pais soon wrote to Uhlenbeck at Utrecht and was granted an interview.
15.
Abraham Pais left Pais with the use of his laboratory and a list of topics to study and work on.
16.
Abraham Pais was exposed to other prominent Dutch physicists and areas of research in experimental physics.
17.
Abraham Pais became well-acquainted with Hendrik Anthony Kramers, a physics professor at Leiden University who lectured at Utrecht twice a week on quantum physics.
18.
Abraham Pais successfully passed the examination for his master's degree on April 22,1940.
19.
Rosenfeld approved of his appointment and arrived at Utrecht in September 1940 and Abraham Pais began working on his doctoral dissertation.
20.
Abraham Pais set to work studying projective relativity, meson theories, and nuclear physics related to the deuteron.
21.
Abraham Pais therefore lost his assistant professorship, though Rosenfeld secretly arranged for his successor to unofficially share the responsibilities and salary of the position with Abraham Pais.
22.
Abraham Pais worked feverishly to complete his dissertation and meet other requirements for his doctorate.
23.
At first Abraham Pais felt safe because his former university status exempted him from being sent to a labor camp.
24.
Abraham Pais did not trust that and instead went into hiding.
25.
Abraham Pais arranged hiding places for Pais and other Jews in Amsterdam.
26.
Abraham Pais acted as a courier between Pais and his parents during the war, though neither knew of the other's specific location.
27.
Abraham Pais's last hiding place was in an apartment with his university friend Lion Nordheim, his wife Jeanne, and her sister Trusha van Amerongen.
28.
Jeanne and Trusha had blond hair and blue eyes and ventured out in public as non-Jews, while Lion and Abraham Pais hid in the apartment.
29.
Abraham Pais was forced into hiding before he could leave the Netherlands.
30.
In 1946, following the war, Abraham Pais was able to accept that invitation and served as a personal assistant to Bohr at his country home in Tisvilde for a year.
31.
Abraham Pais is primarily associated with two concepts that directly contributed to major breakthroughs in his field.
32.
In 1956, Abraham Pais became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
33.
Abraham Pais was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1962.
34.
In 1963 Abraham Pais accepted a position at Rockefeller University to head the theoretical physics group while Rockefeller was in transition from being a medical institute to a university.
35.
Abraham Pais finished his career there as the Detlev W Bronk professor emeritus.
36.
In 1972, Abraham Pais was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
37.
In 1979, Pais was awarded the J Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize.
38.
In 1984, Abraham Pais was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
39.
Abraham Pais felt he was in a unique position to do so, having known many of the key people and with his knowledge of the language, culture, and science.
40.
Abraham Pais was perhaps best known for his biography of Albert Einstein, 'Subtle is the Lord.
41.
Abraham Pais's Inward Bound: Of matter and forces in the physical world describes the events in physics during the preceding 100 years, and tries to explain why they happened as they did.
42.
Abraham Pais's book The Genius of Science: A portrait gallery contains biographies of seventeen distinguished physicists he had known personally: Niels Bohr, Max Born, Paul Dirac, Albert Einstein, Mitchell Feigenbaum, Res Jost, Oskar Klein, Hans Kramers, Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang, John von Neumann, Wolfgang Pauli, Isidor Isaac Rabi, Robert Serber, George Uhlenbeck, Victor Frederick Weisskopf, and Eugene Wigner.
43.
Abraham Pais was working on a biography of Robert Oppenheimer at the time of his death.