HOFSTADTER, ROBERT

HOFSTADTER, ROBERT (1915–1990), U.S. physicist and Nobel Prize winner. Born in New York, Hofstadter earned his master's and doctorate degrees at Princeton; he also taught there and at City College, New York, where he had taken his B.S. degree. During World War II he worked as a physicist for the National Bureau of Standards, where he helped develop the proximity fuse device, an anti-aircraft weapon that detonated a shell when it detected objects approaching on the radar. In 1950 Hofstadter moved to Stanford University, California, where he was to remain until his retirement in 1985, at which time he held the position of Max H. Stein Professor Emeritus of Physics. He headed the High Energy Physics Laboratory at Stanford from 1967 to 1974. Hofstadter was awarded a Nobel Prize in physics in 1961, together with Rudolph Moessbauer, for his investigation of the structure of atomic nuclei and nucleons and for his work on introducing order into the multiplicity of subatomic particles. He used the atom smasher at Stanford University to study how high-energy electrons were scattered by atomic nuclei. From this he obtained an insight into the structure of the nucleus. He deduced the possible existence of two powerful sub-particles – the rho-meson and the omega-meson, which were subsequently detected. Hofstadter received the Townsend Harris medal from City College in 1961, while Brandeis University created the Robert Hofstadter Physics Library in his honor in 1968. He also enjoyed many honorary degrees and fellowships and was governor of the Israel Institute of Technology and the Weizmann Institute of Science. He wrote or edited many scientific papers and books. After his retirement, he remained active in scientific research, helping construct a gamma ray observatory and conducting research into techniques for exploring heart functions using radioactive substances as an alternative to intrusive devices such as catheters. (Maurice Goldsmith / Rohan Saxena (2nd ed.) -BIBLIOGRAPHY: J.E. Greene et al. (eds.), Mc-Graw-Hill Modern Men of Science (1966), 239–40; Current Biography, 23 (Oct. 1962), 35–37.