Louis Goldstein

Abstract

Louis Goldstein, a former group leader at the once-named Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, died in Los Alamos, New Mexico, on 26 August 1999. He had broken his hip on 4 July, and died from the complications that followed.Louis was born in Dombrad, Hungary, on 25 March 1904. Barred as a Jew from attending a Hungarian university, he moved to Paris in the early 1920s. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Paris in 1926 and a doctor of science degree in theoretical physics from the same university in 1932. His thesis was entitled “The Quantum Theory of Inelastic Collisions.” He remained in Paris until the spring of 1939, when he emigrated to the US. Five years later, he became a US citizen.Shortly after arriving in the US, he began teaching theoretical physics at City College in New York City. From 1944 to 1946, he worked with the wave propagation group at Columbia University. In 1946, he moved to Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, where he served as a group leader in the lab’s theoretical division. His position was unique: He was the sole member of his group, and his assignment was to work on whatever subject he chose!Among Louis’s first, and most appreciated, contributions to postwar research at Los Alamos were to the work of the low-temperature physics group. Shortly after World War II ended, preliminary investigations of thermonuclear reactions began at the lab. Experimentally, this effort required tritium, which made available, for the first time, pure helium-3. Louis was aware of Fritz London’s 1938 suggestion that helium-4 behaves anomalously at 2.17 K because it was a Bose–Einstein fluid. Knowing that 3He obeys Fermi–Dirac statistics, Louis recognized that it would show no such behavior. Other theorists had suggested that 3He would be hard to liquefy because of its high zero-point energy, but Louis was undeterred. Even before any 3He arrived at Los Alamos, he organized a crash course of experiments on liquid helium. It was therefore a rewarding experience for Louis when two of us (Grilly and Keller) and Stephen Sydoriak liquefied this isotope on 13 October 1948. Eleven months later, the team reported that liquid 3He exhibited no anomalous behavior down to a temperature of 0.84 K.In his later years, Louis continued to write many journal articles that explored the statistical thermodynamics of condensed phases of the stable helium isotopes, including the magnetic properties of solid 3He. He retired in 1971, but continued to be involved with the lab for many more years. He made a deep impression on his younger colleagues through his commitment to physics and to the integrity the subject requires and fosters. Physics for Louis was not merely important, but personally encompassing. His memory is cherished by everyone he mentored and influenced. Louis Goldstein PPT|High resolution© 2001 American Institute of Physics.