Awards & Winners

Gregory Breit

Date of Birth 14-July-1899
Place of Birth Mykolaiv
(Ukraine, Mykolaiv Oblast)
Nationality United States of America
Profession Physicist, Scientist
Gregory Breit was an American physicist and professor at NYU, U. of Wisconsin–Madison, Yale, and Buffalo. In 1921, he was Paul Ehrenfest's assistant in Leiden. In 1925, while at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Breit joined with Merle Tuve in using a pulsed radio transmitter to determine the height of the ionosphere, a technique important later in radar development. Together with Eugene Wigner, Breit gave a description of particle resonant states with the relativistic Breit–Wigner distribution in 1929, and with Edward Condon, he first described proton-proton dispersion. He is also credited with deriving the Breit equation In 1939 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In April 1940, he proposed to the National Research Council that American scientists observe a policy of self-censorship due to the possibility of their work being used for military purposes by enemy powers in World War II. During the early stages of the war, Breit was chosen by Arthur Compton to supervise the early design of the first atomic bomb during an early phase in what would later become the Manhattan Project. Breit resigned his position in 1942, feeling that the work was going too slowly and that there had been security breaches on the project; his job went to Robert Oppenheimer, who was later appointed to scientific director of the entire project.

Awards by Gregory Breit

Check all the awards nominated and won by Gregory Breit.

1967


National Medal of Science for Physical Science
(For pioneering contributions to the theoretical understanding of nuclear structure and particle dynamics, for highly significant work in atomic and ionospheric physics, and for the inspiration he has given to several generations of American physicists.)