Isidor Isaac Rabi Isidor Isaac Rabi ( ; 29 July 1898 – 11 January 1988 ) was a Galician - born American physicist and Nobel laureate , recognized in 1944 for his discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance , which is used in magnetic resonance imaging . He was also involved in the development of the cavity magnetron , which is used in microwave radar and microwave oven s . Born into a traditional Jewish family in Rymanów , Galicia , in what was then part of Austria - Hungary , Rabi came to the United States as a baby and was raised in New York ' s Lower East Side . He entered Cornell University as an electrical engineering student in 1916 , but soon switched to chemistry . Later , he became interested in physics . He continued his studies at Columbia University , where he was awarded his doctorate for a thesis on the magnetic susceptibility of certain crystals . In 1927 , he headed for Europe , where he met and worked with many of the finest physicists of the time . In 1929 Rabi returned to the United States , where Columbia offered him a faculty position . In collaboration with Gregory Breit , he developed the Breit - Rabi equation and predicted that the Stern - Gerlach experiment could be modified to confirm the properties of the atomic nucleus . He developed techniques for using nuclear magnetic resonance to discern the magnetic moment and nuclear spin of atoms . This work led to his being awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1944 . Nuclear magnetic resonance became an important tool for nuclear physics and chemistry . The subsequent development of magnetic resonance imaging from it has made it important to medicine as well . During World War II he worked on radar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory and on the Manhattan Project . After the war , he served on the General Advisory Committee ( GAC ) of the Atomic Energy Commission , and was chairman from 1952 to 1956 . He also served on the Science Advisory Committee ( SAC ) of the Office of Defense Mobilization , and was Science Advisor to President Dwight D . Eisenhower . He was involved with the establishment of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1946 , and later , as United States delegate to UNESCO , with the creation of CERN in 1952 . When Columbia created the rank of University Professor in 1964 , Rabi was the first to receive such a chair . A special chair was named after him in 1985 . He retired from teaching in 1967 but remained active in the department and held the title of University Professor Emeritus and Special Lecturer until his death . Early years . Israel Isaac Rabi was born on 29 July 1898 into an Orthodox Jewish family in Rymanów , Galicia , in what was then part of Austria - Hungary and now part of Poland . Soon after he was born , his father , David Rabi , emigrated to the United States . The younger Rabi and his mother , Sheindel , joined David there a few months later , and the family moved into a two - room apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan . At home the family spoke Yiddish . When Rabi was enrolled in school , Sheindel said his name was Izzy , and a school official , thinking it was short for Isidor , put that down as his name . Henceforth , that became his official name . Later , in response to anti - Semitism , he started writing his name as Isidor Isaac Rabi , and was known professionally as I . I . Rabi . To most of his friends and family , including his sister Gertrude , who was born in 1903 , he was known simply as " Rabi " , which was pronounced " Robby " . In 1907 , the family moved to Brownsville , Brooklyn , where they ran a grocery store . As a boy , Rabi was interested in science . He read science books borrowed from the public library and built his own radio set . His first scientific paper , on the design of a radio condenser , was published in " Modern Electrics " when he was in elementary school . After reading about Copernican heliocentrism , he became an atheist . " It ' s all very simple , " he told his parents , " who needs God ? " As a compromise with his parents , for his Bar Mitzvah , which was held at home , he gave a speech in Yiddish about how an electric light works . He attended the Manual Training High School in Brooklyn , from which he graduated in 1916 . Later that year , he entered Cornell University as an electrical engineering student , but soon switched to chemistry . After the American entry into World War I in 1917 , he joined the Students Army Training Corps at Cornell . For his senior thesis , he investigated the oxidation state s of manganese . He was awarded his Bachelor of Science degree in June 1919 , but since at the time Jews were largely excluded from employment in the chemical industry and academia , he did not receive any job offers . He worked briefly at the Lederle Laboratories , and then as a bookkeeper . Education . In 1922 Rabi returned to Cornell as a graduate chemistry student , and also began studying physics . In 1923 he met Helen Newmark , a summer - semester student at Hunter College . They began courting , and in order to be near her when she returned home , Rabi continued his studies at Columbia University , where his supervisor was Albert Willis . In June 1924 Rabi landed a job as a part - time tutor at the City College of New York . Willis , whose specialty was magnetism , suggested that Rabi write his doctoral thesis on the magnetic susceptibility of sodium vapor . The topic did not appeal to Rabi , but after William Lawrence Bragg gave a seminar at Columbia about the electric susceptibility of certain crystals called Tutton ' s salt s , Rabi decided to research their magnetic susceptibility , and Willis agreed to be his supervisor . Measuring the magnetic resonance of crystals first involved growing the crystals , a simple procedure often done by elementary school students . The crystals then had to be carefully prepared by skillfully cutting them into sections with facets that had a different orientation to that of the internal structure of the crystal , and the response to a magnetic field had to be painstakingly measured . While his crystals were growing , Rabi read James Clerk Maxwell ' s 1873 " A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism " , which inspired an easier method . He lowered a crystal on a glass fiber attached to a torsion balance into a solution whose magnetic susceptibility could be varied that was between two magnetic poles . When it matched that of the crystal , the magnet could be turned on and off without disturbing the crystal . The new method was not only much less work , it also produced a more accurate result . Rabi sent his thesis , entitled " On the Principal Magnetic Susceptibilities of Crystals " , to " Physical Review " on 16 July 1926 . He married Helen the next day . The paper attracted little fanfare in academic circles , although it was read by Kariamanickam Srinivasa Krishnan , who used the method in his own investigations of crystals . Rabi concluded that he needed to promote his work as well as publish it . Like many other young physicists , Rabi was closely following momentous events in Europe . He was astounded by the Stern – Gerlach experiment , which convinced him of the validity of quantum mechanics . With Ralph Kronig , Francis Bitter , Mark Zemansky and others , he set out to extend the Schrödinger equation to the symmetric top and find the energy states of such a mechanical system . The problem was that none of them could solve the resulting equation , a second - order partial differential equation . Rabi found the answer in a book by the 19th century mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi . The equation had the form of a hypergeometric equation to which Jacobi had found a solution . Kronig and Rabi wrote up their result and sent it to " Physical Review " , which published it in 1927 . Europe . In May 1927 , Rabi was appointed a Barnard Fellow . This came with a $ 1 , 500 ( $ in 2018 dollars ) stipend for the period from September 1927 to June 1928 . He immediately applied for a year ' s leave of absence from the City College of New York so he could study in Europe . When this was refused , he resigned . On reaching Zurich , where he hoped to work for Erwin Schrödinger , he met two fellow Americans , Julius Adams Stratton and Linus Pauling . They found that Schrödinger was leaving , as he had been appointed head of the Theoretical Institute at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin . Rabi therefore decided to seek a position with Arnold Sommerfeld at the University of Munich instead . In Munich , he found two more Americans , Howard Percy Robertson and Edward Condon . Sommerfeld accepted Rabi as postdoctoral student . Rudolf Peierls and Hans Bethe were also working with Sommerfeld at the time , but the three Americans became especially close . On Willis ' advice , Rabi traveled to Leeds for the 97th annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science , where he heard Werner Heisenberg present a paper on quantum mechanics . Afterwards , Rabi moved to Copenhagen , where he volunteered to work for Niels Bohr . Bohr was on vacation , but Rabi went straight to work on calculating the magnetic susceptibility of molecular hydrogen . After Bohr returned in October , he arranged for Rabi and Yoshio Nishina to continue their work with Wolfgang Pauli at the University of Hamburg . Although he came to Hamburg to work with Pauli , Rabi found Otto Stern working there with two English - speaking postdoctoral fellows , Ronald Fraser and John Bradshaw Taylor . Rabi soon made friends with them , and became interested in their molecular beam experiments , for which Stern would receive the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1943 . Their research involved non - uniform magnetic fields , which were difficult to manipulate and hard to measure accurately . Rabi came up with the idea of using a uniform field instead , with the molecular beam at a glancing angle , so the atoms would be deflected like light through a prism . This would be easier to use , and produce more accurate results . Encouraged by Stern , and greatly assisted by Taylor , Rabi managed to get his idea to work . On Stern ' s advice , Rabi wrote a letter about his results to " Nature " , which published it in February 1929 , followed by a paper entitled " Zur Methode der Ablenkung von Molekularstrahlen " ( " On the method of deflection of molecular beams " ) to " Zeitschrift für Physik " , where it was published in April . By this time the Barnard Fellowship had expired and Rabi and Helen were living off a $ 182 per month stipend from the Rockefeller Foundation . They left Hamburg for Leipzig , where he hoped to work with Heisenberg . In Leipzig , he found Robert Oppenheimer , a fellow New Yorker . It would be the start of a long friendship . However , Heisenberg departed for a tour of the United States in March 1929 , so Rabi and Oppenheimer decided to go to the ETH Zurich , where Pauli was now the professor of Physics . Rabi ' s education in physics was enriched by the leaders in the field he met there , which included Paul Dirac , Walter Heitler , Fritz London , Francis Wheeler Loomis , John von Neumann , John Slater , Leó Szilárd and Eugene Wigner . Molecular Beam Laboratory . On 26 March 1929 , Rabi received an offer of a lectureship from Columbia , with a good annual salary of $ 3 , 000 . The Dean of Columbia ' s Physics Department , George Pegram , was looking for a theoretical physicist to teach statistical mechanics and an advanced course in the new subject of quantum mechanics , and Heisenberg had recommended Rabi . Helen was now pregnant , so Rabi needed a regular job , and this job was in New York . He accepted , and returned to the United States in August on the SS " President Roosevelt " . Rabi became the only Jewish faculty member at Columbia at the time . As a teacher , Rabi was underwhelming . Leon Lederman recalled that after a lecture , students would head to the library to try and figure out what Rabi had been talking about . Irving Kaplan rated Rabi and Harold Urey as " the worst teachers I ever had " . Norman Ramsey considered Rabi ' s lectures " pretty dreadful " , while William Nierenberg felt that he was " simply an awful lecturer " . Despite his shortcomings as a lecturer , his influence was great . He inspired many of his students to pursue careers in physics , and some became famous physicists . Rabi ' s first daughter , Helen Elizabeth , was born in September . A second girl , Margaret Joella , followed in 1934 . Between his teaching duties and his family , he had little time for research , and published no papers in his first year at Columbia , but was nonetheless promoted to assistant professor at its conclusion . He subsequently became a professor in 1937 . In 1931 Rabi returned to particle beam experiments . In collaboration with Gregory Breit , he developed the Breit - Rabi equation , and predicted that the Stern - Gerlach experiment could be modified to confirm the properties of the atomic nucleus . The next step was to do so . With the help of Victor W . Cohen , Rabi built a molecular beam apparatus at Columbia . Their idea was to employ a weak magnetic field instead of a strong one , with which they hoped to detect the nuclear spin of sodium . It was predicted that if the nuclear spin were I , then the magnetic field would split the beam into ( 2I + 1 ) beamlets . When the experiment was conducted , four beamlets were found , indicating that the nuclear spin of sodium was . Rabi ' s Molecular Beam Laboratory began to attract others , including Sidney Millman , a graduate student who studied lithium for his doctorate . Another was Jerrold Zacharias , who , believing that the sodium nucleus would be too difficult to understand , proposed studying the simplest of the elements , hydrogen . Hydrogen ' s Deuterium isotope had only recently been discovered at Columbia in 1931 by Urey , who received the 1934 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work . Urey was able to supply them with both heavy water and gaseous deuterium for their experiments . Despite its simplicity , Stern ' s group in Hamburg had observed that hydrogen did not behave as predicted . Urey also helped in another way ; he gave Rabi half his prize money to fund the Molecular Beam Laboratory . Other scientists whose careers began at the Molecular Beam Laboratory included Norman Ramsey , Julian Schwinger , Jerome Kellogg and Polykarp Kusch . All were men ; Rabi did not believe that women could be physicists . He never had a woman as a doctoral or postdoctoral student , and generally opposed women as candidates for faculty positions . At the suggestion of C . J . Gorter , the team attempted to use an oscillating field . This became the basis for the nuclear magnetic resonance method . In 1937 , Rabi , Kusch , Millman and Zacharias used it to measure the magnetic moment of several lithium isotopes with molecular beams , including LiCl , LiF and dilithium . Applying the method to hydrogen , they found that the moment of a proton was 2 . 785±0 . 02 nuclear magneton s , and not 1 as predicted by the then - current theory , while that of a deuteron was 0 . 855±0 . 006 nuclear magnetons . Rabi suggested that the results implied that the deuteron was a magnetic quadrupole . For the creation of the molecular - beam magnetic - resonance detection method , Rabi was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1944 . World War II . In September 1940 the British Tizard Mission brought a number of new technologies to the United States , including a cavity magnetron , a high - powered device that generates microwaves using the interaction of a stream of electrons with a magnetic field . This device , which promised to revolutionize radar , demolished any thoughts the Americans had entertained about their technological leadership . Alfred Lee Loomis of the National Defense Research Committee decided to establish a new laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop this radar technology . The name Radiation Laboratory was chosen as both unremarkable and a tribute to the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory . Loomis recruited Lee DuBridge to run it . Loomis and DuBridge recruited physicists for the new laboratory at an Applied Nuclear Physics conference at MIT in October 1940 . Among those who volunteered was Rabi . His assignment was to study the magnetron , which was so secret that it had to be kept in a safe . The Radiation Laboratory scientists set their sights on producing a microwave radar set by January 6 , 1941 , and having a prototype installed in a Douglas A - 20 Havoc by March . This was done ; the technological obstacles were gradually overcome , and a working microwave radar set was produced . The magnetron was developed to permit a reduction in wavelength from 150 cm to 10 cm , and then to 3 cm . The laboratory went on to develop air - to - surface radar to detect submarines ; the SCR - 584 radar , a fire control system ; and LORAN , a long - range radio navigation system . At Rabi ' s instigation , a branch of the Radiation Laboratory was located at Columbia , with Rabi in charge . In 1942 Oppenheimer attempted to recruit Rabi and Robert Bacher to work at Los Alamos on a new secret project . They convinced Oppenheimer that his plan for a military laboratory would not work , since a scientific effort would need to be a civilian affair . The plan was modified , and the new laboratory would be a civilian one , run by the University of California under contract from the War Department . In the end , Rabi still did not go west , but did agree to serve as a consultant to the Manhattan Project . Rabi attended the Trinity test in July 1945 . The scientists working on Trinity set up a betting pool on the yield of the test , with predictions ranging from total dud to 45 kilotons of TNT equivalent ( KT ) . Rabi arrived late and found the only entry left was for 18 kilotons , which he purchased . Wearing welding goggles , he waited for the result with Ramsey and Enrico Fermi . The blast was rated at 18 . 6 kilotons , and Rabi won the pool . Later life . In 1945 Rabi delivered the Richtmyer Memorial Lecture , held by the American Association of Physics Teachers in honor of Floyd K . Richtmyer , wherein he proposed that the magnetic resonance of atoms might be used as the basis of a clock . William L . Laurence wrote it up for the New York Times , under the headline " ' Cosmic pendulum ' for clock planned " . Before long Zacharias and Ramsey had built such atomic clock s . Rabi actively pursued his research into magnetic resonance until about 1960 , but he continued to make appearances at conferences and seminars until his death . Rabi chaired Columbia ' s physics department from 1945 to 1949 , during which time it was home to two Nobel Laureates ( Rabi and Enrico Fermi ) and eleven future laureates , including seven faculty ( Polykarp Kusch , Willis Lamb , Maria Goeppert - Mayer , James Rainwater , Norman Ramsey , Charles Townes and Hideki Yukawa ) , a research scientist ( Aage Bohr ) , a visiting professor ( Hans Bethe ) , a doctoral student ( Leon Lederman ) and an undergrad ( Leon Cooper ) . When Columbia created the rank of University Professor in 1964 , Rabi was the first to receive such a chair . This meant that he was free to research or teach whatever he chose . He retired from teaching in 1967 but remained active in the department and held the title of University Professor Emeritus and Special Lecturer until his death . A special chair was named after him in 1985 . A legacy of the Manhattan Project was the network of national laboratories , but none was located on the East Coast . Rabi and Ramsey assembled a group of universities in the New York area to lobby for their own national laboratory . When Zacharias , who was now at MIT , heard about it , he set up a rival group at MIT and Harvard . Rabi had discussions with Groves , who was willing to go along with a new national laboratory , but only one . Moreover , while the Manhattan Project still had funds , the wartime organization was expected to be phased out when a new authority came into existence . After some bargaining and lobbying by Rabi and others , the two groups came together in January 1946 . Eventually nine universities ( Columbia , Cornell , Harvard , Johns Hopkins , MIT , Princeton , Pennsylvania , Rochester and Yale came together , and on 31 January 1947 , a contract was signed with the Atomic Energy Commission ( AEC ) , which had replaced the Manhattan Project , that established the Brookhaven National Laboratory . Rabi suggested to Edoardo Amaldi that Brookhaven might be a model that Europeans could emulate . Rabi saw science as a way of inspiring and uniting a Europe that was still recovering from the war . An opportunity came in 1950 when he was named the United States Delegate to the United Nations Educational , Scientific and Cultural Organization ( UNESCO ) . At a UNESCO meeting at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence in June 1950 , he called for the establishment of regional laboratories . These efforts bore fruit ; in 1952 , representatives of eleven countries came together to create the " Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire " ( CERN ) . Rabi received a letter from Bohr , Heisenberg , Amaldi and others congratulating him on the success of his efforts . He had the letter framed and hung it on the wall of his home office . The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 that created the Atomic Energy Commission provided for a nine - man General Advisory Committee ( GAC ) to advise the Commission on scientific and technical matters . Rabi was one of those appointed in December 1946 . The GAC was enormously influential throughout the late 1940s , but in 1950 , the GAC unanimously opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb . Rabi went further than most of the other members , and joined Fermi in opposing the hydrogen bomb on moral as well as technical grounds . However , President Harry S . Truman overrode the GAC ' s advice , and ordered development to proceed . Rabi later said : Oppenheimer was not reappointed to the GAC when his term expired in 1952 , and Rabi succeeded him as chairman , serving until 1956 . Rabi later testified on Oppenheimer ' s behalf at the Atomic Energy Commission ' s controversial security hearing in 1954 that led to Oppenheimer being stripped of his security clearance . Many witnesses supported Oppenheimer , but none more forcefully than Rabi : Rabi was appointed a member of the Science Advisory Committee ( SAC ) of the Office of Defense Mobilization in 1952 , serving as its chairman from 1956 to 1957 . This coincided with the Sputnik crisis . President Dwight Eisenhower met with the SAC on 15 October 1957 , to seek advice on possible US responses to the Russians ' satellite success . Rabi , who knew Eisenhower from the latter ' s time as president of Columbia University , was the first to speak , and put forward a series of proposals , one of which was to strengthen the committee so it could provide the President with timely advice . This was done , and the SAC became the President ' s Science Advisory Committee a few weeks later . He also became Eisenhower ' s Science Advisor . Rabi served as the US Representative to the NATO Science Committee at the time that the term " software engineering " was coined . While serving in that capacity , he bemoaned the fact that many large software projects were delayed . This prompted discussions that led to the formation of a study group that organized the first conference on software engineering . In the course of his life , Rabi received many honors in addition to the Nobel Prize . These included : the King ' s Medal for Service in the Cause of Freedom from Great Britain , officer in the French Legion of Honor , the Medal for Merit , the Niels Bohr International Gold Medal , the Atoms for Peace Award , the Oersted Medal from the American Association of Physics Teachers , the Four Freedoms Award from the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute , the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences , and the Vannevar Bush Award from the National Science Foundation . He was a Fellow of the American Physical Society , serving as its President in 1950 , and a member of the National Academy of Sciences , the American Philosophical Society , and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . He was internationally recognized with membership of the Japan Academy and the Brazilian Academy of Sciences , and in 1959 was appointed a member of the Board of Governors of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel . Rabi died at his home in Riverside Drive , Manhattan , from cancer on 11 January 1988 . In his last days , he was reminded of his greatest achievement in a poignant fashion when his physicians examined him using magnetic resonance imaging , a technology that had been developed from his ground - breaking research on magnetic resonance . " I saw myself in that machine " , he remarked , " I never thought my work would come to this . "