Immanuel Estermann

Immanuel Estermann (; March 31, 1900 – March 30, 1973) was a Jewish German-born nuclear physicist and was professor at Carnegie Mellon University, University of Hamburg and Technion. Estermann is known for his lifelong collaboration with Otto Stern which pioneered the research on molecular beams in the 1920s. With Stern and Otto Robert Frisch, he also first measured the magnetic moment of the proton.

Biography

Early life Immanuel Estermann was born in Berlin, Germany in 1900, son of Leo and Rachel Estermann. Estermann grew up in Jerusalem, where his father had moved with the family as an active Zionist. However, with the outbreak of the World War I, his family returned to Germany. under the supervision of Max Volmer. He received his doctorate degree in Hamburg in 1921 Stern was glad to accept, provided they also offered a job to Estermann. Estermann arrived in United States with Stern via England, saving Estermann family as well.

During World War II, Estermann worked on radar and later was transferred to the Manhattan Project, US secret program that produced the first atomic bomb.

After Stern retired and moved to University of California, Berkeley in 1950, Estermann went to work to the Office of Naval Research, initially as a consultant and head of the materials science department, and from 1959 as its scientific director in London.

Later life Estermann became Emeritus Professor of the University of Hamburg in 1957. Later he went to Israel, where he became Lidow professor of solid state physics at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Estermann died in Haifa in 1973.

Books and reviews

Methods of Experimental Physics. Volume 1: Classical methods. Academic Press 1959. Recent researches in molecular beams – a collection of papers dedicated to Otto Stern on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Academic Press 1959. with D. R. Bates: Advances in Atomic and Molecular Physics. Band 1 bis 8. 1965 bis 1973. History of molecular beam research: personal reminiscences of the important evolutionary period 1919–1933. In: American Journal of Physics. Band 43, 1975, S. 661.