James Rainwater AKA Leo James Rainwater Born: 9-Dec-1917 Birthplace: Council, ID Died: 31-May-1986 Location of death: Yonkers, NY Cause of death: Heart Failure
Gender: Male Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Straight Occupation: Physicist Nationality: United States Executive summary: Determined shapes of nuclei Military service: Office of Scientific Research and Development American physicist James Rainwater reconciled two opposing theories of the atom — the "shell" model with its independent particles, and the "liquid drop" model that proposed collective motion. Rainwater's explanation, published in 1950, showed that atomic nuclei are not always spherical, as had been generally believed, and explained both the individual motions of nuclear particles and how these factors affect the collective behavior and sometimes asymmetrical shape of the nucleus. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1975. Father: Leo Jaspar Rainwater (civil engineer, b. 1884, d. 1918 influenza pandemic) Mother: Edna Eliza Teague Rainwater Fowler (b. 1889) Father: George Fowler (stepfather) Brother: George Fowler, Jr. (half-brother, Naval officer) Wife: Emma Louise Smith (m. 1942, d. 2005, three sons, one daughter) Son: James Son: Robert Son: William Daughter: Elizabeth Ann (d. childhood, leukemia)
University: BS, California Institute of Technology (1939) University: PhD, Columbia University (1946) Scholar: Physics Assistant, Columbia University (1939-42) Lecturer: Physics, Columbia University (1946-47) Teacher: Physics, Columbia University (1947-52) Professor: Physics, Columbia University (1952-82) Administrator: Nevis Cyclotron Laboratory, Columbia University (1951-53, 1956-61) Professor: Pupin Professor of Physics, Columbia University (1982-86)
E. O. Lawrence Award 1963 Nobel Prize for Physics 1975 (with Aage N. Bohr and Ben R. Mottelson) Manhattan Project American Association for the Advancement of Science American Association of Physics Teachers American Institute of Physics American Physical Society IEEE National Academy of Sciences 1968 New York Academy of Sciences Optical Society of America Heart Attack 1985 Heart Attack 31-May-1986 (fatal) English Ancestry (paternal)
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