Wigner, Jenő (Eugene)

(Budapest, November 17th, 1902 – Princeton, N.J. January 4th, 1995)

One of the greatest Hungarian scientist, Nobel prize winner in physics.

His formal education was acquired in Hungary and Germany. He attended the famous Fasori Lutheran Grammar School (Budapest) where János Neumann was his school-mate. They were taught by such superb teachers as László Rátz. From 1920 he studied chemistry and obtained the Dr. Ing. degree at the Technische Hochschule Berlin. His doctoral thesis, written in consultation with Mihály Polányi, became one of the pioneer studies of quantum chemistry.

His interest was still turned to physics and spent almost of his spare time at the university seminars and colloquia, discussions in the presence of the great figures of the modern physics. It should be noted, Neumann's parents had also wanted that his son focus on chemical engineering, although his major interest continued to be mathematics.

There was a small but prominent Hungarian academic community in Berlin. Wigner soon formed relationships with its members, which remained close throughout their lifetimes. Besides Professor Michael Polányi, a generation older, he also met Leó Szilárd, Dénes Gábor. He also renewed his friendship with Ede Teller, whom he had known as a younger student in Budapest, and who was then working with Heisenberg in Leipzig.

Having returned home he started to work in his father's leather factory. It was then that he learned of Heisenberg's highly new results of the matrix version of quantum mechanics.

He soon travelled again to Germany where he received an offer of a research assistantship at the University of Berlin. Between 1928 and 1930, while studying the symmetry properties of crystals, he realised that space-time symmetries, or rather the group-theoretical method describing them, had a central role in quantum mechanics. In 1963, when he obtained the Nobel prize for these results, the following was stated in the justification: for his contribution to the theory of the atomic nucleus and elementary particles, first of all for the discovery and application of the fundamental symmetry principles.

His activity in theoretical physics has also been preserved by designations such as the Breit-Wigner dispersion formula, the Jordán-Wigner operator or the Wigner super multiplet.

Between 1930 and 1933 he spent some of the year at the Princeton University, (http://www.princeton.edu/main/) and when the political situation became intolerable in Germany, he accepted an American invitation and worked, with short breaks, in Princeton for nearly six decades, from 1938 he was professor of theoretical physics. It was obvious to him and von Neumann, as a result of the so-called Munich Peace Pact in the autumn of 1938, that the Second World War was now near at hand.

After the discovery of nuclear fission (1939) by Hahn and Strassmann in Berlin, along with evidence for the large amount of energy released in the process, he and Szilárd soon elaborated its theoretical bases. Soon had both Enrico Fermi, who had performed much of the pioneering research on neutron-induced reactions, and accept an appointment at Columbia University, and Wigner deeply immersed in the problem of determining whether a fission-induced chain reaction was possible. In the next two decades he researched the practical application of the uranium fission.

Having realised the political significance of the discovery Leó Szilárd, Jenő Wigner and Ede Teller visited Einstein who, as a result of their conversation, wrote a letter to the President Roosevelt in July 1939 describing the potentialities of a nuclear bomb and warning the danger, that the Germans would be the first to develop it.

In the meantime, the Italian Fermi and his team, along with the cooperation of Szilárd and Wigner, sucessfully measured the number of neutrons produced per fission and other significant parameters, that would determine whether a chain reaction was possible.

The first atomic reactor was commenced to be built in 1941 at the University Chicago and it was put into operation in December 1942. The idea come from Szilárd and the work was led by Fermi. After piling up each layer of the uranium-graphite pile it was Wigner's task, the first reactor engineer of the world, to calculate it from the measured neutron radiation data by when chain-reaction could be expected to become self-maintaining. In order to produce a fission nuclear bomb, uranium enrichment needed to be solved or rather plutonium producing reactors had to be built.

In 1946-47 he was the scientific director of the laboratory of Clinton Laboratories, which became ORNL (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) and he played a major role in the design of the graphite reactor. The second reactor was built in Oak Ridge under his control. The next plutonium reactors, which were already water-cooled, were also built on the basis of his plans in Hanmford.

Even before the war ended, he envisioned an enlarged laboratory for developing a new energy source. Wigner returned to ORNL in 1953 to design a radiochemical plant that would economically reprocess spent fuel elements and later in 1965 again as director of the laboratory's Civil Defense project.

With Alvin Weinberg, his student, they wrote the world's first book on reactor physics used for decades as a basic work all over the world.

He also had fundamental role in the construction of numerous other reactors, like the so-called pressurised water reactor of nuclear-powered submarines.

In these years he filed 27 patents.

Memberships: He is a past vice- president and president of the American Physical Society; a past member of the board of directors of the American Nuclear Society; he holds memberships in the American Philosophical Society, the American Mathematical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, the National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and Letters, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, he is corresponding member of the Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, Gottingen, and foreign member of the Royal Society of Great Brittain (1970); honorary member of Roland Eötvös Physical society (1977), honorary doctor of the Loránd Eötvös University of Sciences (1987), honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1988). He was a member of the General Advisory Committee to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission from 1952-1957, was reappointed to this committee in 1959 and served on it until 1964.

Honours: U. S. Medal for Merit, presented in 1946; the Enrico Fermi Prize (U.S.A.E.C.) awarded in 1958; and the Atoms for Peace Award, in 1960; Nobel prize (1963)
Dr. Wigner holds the Medal of the Franklin Society, the Max Planck Medal of the German Physical Society, the George Washington Award of the American-Hungarian Studies Foundation (1964), the Semmelweiss Medal of the American-Hungarian Medical Association (1965), and the National Medal of Science (1969).
He has received honorary degrees from the University of Wisconsin, Washington University, Case Institute, University of Alberta ( Canada ), University of Chicago, Colby College, University of Pennsylvania, Yeshiva University, Thiel College, Notre Dame University, Technische Universität Berlin, Swarthmore College, Université de Louvain, Université de Ličge, University of Illinois, Seton Hall, Catholic University and The Rockefeller University.

Selected bibliography:

• Gruppentheorie und ihre Anwendung auf die Quantenmechanik der Atomspektren. - Braunschweig : Vieweg , 1931. - VIII, 332 p. ; (Die Wissenschaft ; 85.)
• Eisenbud, L. - Wigner, E. P.: Nuclear structure. - Princeton, N.J. : Princeton Univ. Pr. , 1958. - VIII, 128 p.; (Investigations in physics ; 8.)
• Weinberg, A. M. - Wigner, E. P.: The physical theory of neutron chain reactors. - Chicago : University of Chicago Press , 1958. - XII, 801 p. ; (University of Chicago Committee on publications in the physical sciences)


• Group theory and its application to the quantum mechanics of atomic spectra. Expanded and impr. ed. - New York [etc.] : Acad. Pr. , 1959. - XI, 372 p. (Pure and applied physics ; 5.)


• Scuola internacionale de fisica : Dispersion relations and their connection with causality. Ed. By E. P. Wigner. New York : Academic Press, 1964. XVI, 256 p.


• Symmetries and reflections. - Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1967 (1970, 1978), VIII. 280 p.


• Nuclear war and civil defense = Who speaks for civil defense? New York : Scribner, 1968. 125 p.


• Talman, J. D. : Special functions : A group theoretical approach.- Based on 1955 lectures by E. P. Wigner. - New York : W-. A. Benjamin, Inc., 1968.


• Survival and the the bombs ? Methods of civil defense.- Ed. By E. P. Wigner. - Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1969. IX. 307 p.


• Aspects of quantum theory / ed. by Abdus Salam and E. P. Wigner. - London : Cambridge Univ. Pr. , 1972. - XVI, 268 p.


• The recollections of Eugene P. Wigner as told to Andrew Szanton. - New York [etc.] : Plenum Press, cop. 1992. - XXIV, 335 p.


• The collected works of Eugene Paul Wigner / ed. by Arthur S. Wightman. - Berlin [etc.] : Springer, cop. 1997.


• The scientific papers. Physical chemistry. Solid state physics / annotated by Nandor Balazs, Walter Kohn. - cop. 1997. - XI, 456 p.

Wigner and Weinberg

Einstein and Szilárd with the letter to Roosevelt and Einstein's signature on the letter