Walter Maurice Elsasser was a German-born American physicist, a developer of the presently accepted dynamo theory as an explanation of the Earth's magnetism.
11 Facts About Walter Elsasser
2.
Walter Elsasser proposed that this magnetic field resulted from electric currents induced in the fluid outer core of the Earth.
3.
Walter Elsasser revealed the history of the Earth's magnetic field by the study of the magnetic orientation of minerals in rocks.
4.
Walter Elsasser was the first to suggest that the wave-like nature of matter might be investigated by electron scattering experiments using crystalline solids.
5.
In 1935, while working in Paris, Walter Elsasser calculated the binding energies of protons and neutrons in heavy radioactive nuclei.
6.
Walter Elsasser therefore came quite close to a Nobel prize on two occasions.
7.
Walter Elsasser conjectured that it could be a self-sustaining dynamo, powered by convection in the liquid outer core, and described a possible feedback mechanism between flows having two different geometries, toroidal and poloidal.
8.
Basic to Walter Elsasser's biological thought is the notion of the great complexity of the cell.
9.
Walter Elsasser deduced from this that any investigation of a causative chain of events in a biological system will reach a "terminal point", where the number of possible inputs into the chain will overwhelm the capacity of the scientist to make predictions, even with the most powerful computers.
10.
Walter Elsasser was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1957.
11.
Walter Elsasser received the Penrose Medal from the Geological Society of America in 1979 and the Gauss Medal from Germany in 1977.