Kurt Gottfried, American physicist, dies at 93

Kurt Gottfried was an Austrian-born American physicist who was professor emeritus of physics at Cornell University. He was recognized for his work in the areas of quantum mechanics and particle physics and was also a co-founder with Henry Way Kendall of the Union of Concerned Scientists. He wrote extensively in the areas of physics and arms control.

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American physicist Kurt Gottfried dies at 93

Kurt Gottfried, a theoretical physicist who barely escaped the horrific reality of one world war and devoted his career to averting another as a co-founder of the prominent Union of Concerned Scientists, died on Aug. 25 in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 93.

His death, in a nursing home where he and his wife had been living for the last 10 years, was confirmed by his son, David. Dr. Gottfried taught at Cornell University, in Ithaca, for 35 years. Gottfried was predeceased by his wife Sorel, and is survived by his children, David and Laura, his sister Ilse Matalon and four grandkids. Donations in Gottfried’s name can be given to The Union of Concerned Scientists.

Kurt Gottfried Age, Family, Early Life

Kurt Gottfried was born on May 17, 1929, in Vienna, Austria. He holds an Austrians Nationality and he belongs to white ethnicity. His Zodiac sign is Taurus.

kurt gottfried obituary

On Kurt Gottfried’s parents, there is currently no information known.

Gottfried has prohibited the media from knowing specifics about his family, therefore there are no details available.

Kurt Gottfried Wife, What about his Children?

Kurt Gottfried married Sorel Dickstein in 1955. She became his unofficial editor and adviser. She died in 2021. In addition to his son, he is survived by a daughter, Laura Gottfried; a sister, Ilse Matalon; and four grandchildren.

Kurt Gottfried’s career, what is his profession?

Kurt Gottfried Gottfried married Sorel Dickstein in 1955, who he acknowledges as being essential in the creation of the Union of Concerned Scientists and an invaluable partner over the course of his life. He then took short-term academic jobs at Harvard University (1955–1958), CERN, the Niels Bohr Institute, and again at Harvard (1961–1964) before assuming a seat in the physics department at Cornell University in 1964.

Gottfried became an associate professor at Cornell in 1964, a professor in 1968, and professor emeritus in 1998. He was a visiting professor at MIT from 1968–1969 and took a leave of absence to work at CERN from 1970–1973.

He served as Department Chair of the Physics department at Cornell University from 1991–1994. Gottfried worked with J. David Jackson in the 1960s on creation and decay of unstable resonances in high-energy hadronic collisions.

They developed the use of the density matrix to connect production mechanisms to the decay patterns and explained the influence of competing processes (“absorption”) on the reactions.

Gottfried explored meson-nucleon processes, high-energy electron-proton scattering, and the spectroscopy of heavy-quark bound states, and presented the Gottfried sum rule for deep inelastic scattering to test the elementary quark model.

Gottfried’s Quantum Mechanics:

Fundamentals, initially published in 1966, is considered “one of the most used and respected treatments of quantum theory”.

In 2004, Gottfried produced the UCS statement Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policy Making, which condemned the Bush administration and advocated for the “restoration of scientific integrity in the United States”.

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It was released on February 18, 2004, and supported by two UCS reports Scientific Integrity in Policy Making: An Study into the Bush Administration’s Misuse of Science and Scientific Integrity in Policy Making: Further investigation into the Bush administration’s abuse of science.

Gottfried was a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He got the 1992 Leo Szilard Award. He was also a member of the Council of Foreign Relations.

How much is Kurt Gottfried Net worth?

The financial situation of Kurt Gottfried is unknown. However, we think He must have a respectable income from her work. He has not made his financial information public. Therefore, determining his net worth is difficult.

Which school and college did he go to?

Kurt Gottfried attended McGill University, studying both theoretical and engineering physics. Gottfried studied with Victor Weisskopf at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1952 to 1955, finishing his Ph.D. thesis, Investigations Based on the Bohr-Mottelson Nuclear Model.

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There he examined deformed nuclei, building models to characterize wave functions and energy levels associated with nucleonic motion in a nonspherical force field, and comparing the results of those models to real evidence. His roommate at MIT was Henry Kendall.

Is he available on any kind of social media platforms?

Kurt Gottfried is not active on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

Physical Appearance of Kurt Gottfried’s Height, Weight

HeightNot Available
Hair colorWhite
Eye colorGrey
WeightNot Available
Body typeFit
Sexual orientationStraight

Interesting facts about Kurt Gottfried’s should be knows

NationalityAmerican
EthnicityWhite
Zodiac signTaurus
Relationship StatusMarried

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