The Nobel Prize in physics was announced today, so this is a good time for Nobel Prize trivia.
What Nobel laureate was sentenced to prison for war crimes? Hint: he has an "effect" named after him.
The answer is Johannes Stark, who was a notorious Nazi. I don't think he served any actual time in prison. The Stark effect is the change in the energy levels of an atom in an external electric field -- it's a staple of undergraduate quantum mechanics. I first learned of Stark's unsavory history when I was researching my quantum mechanics textbook.
For a more upbeat Nobel Prize trivia question, see my earlier post.
No comments:
Post a Comment