ESTERMANN, IMMANUEL

ESTERMANN, IMMANUEL (1900–1973), U.S. physicist. Estermann, born in Berlin, was educated and worked at Hamburg University until 1933 when he immigrated to the U.S.A. For the next 20 years he was professor at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, and a consultant on the Manhattan (atomic bomb) Project. From 1951 he was with the Office of Naval Research, and in 1959 became its scientific director in London. From 1964 onward he had a visiting professorship at the Technion in Haifa. Estermann's main fields of work were on molecular beams, low temperatures, solid state physics, and semiconductors. Among his books was Recent Research in Molecular Beams (1959). He edited Methods of Experimental Physics (vol. 1, 1959) and coedited Advances in Atomic and Molecular Physics (3 vols., 1965–68). (Samuel Aaron Miller)