Nicolaas Bloembergen

Nicolaas Bloembergen (March 11, 1920 – September 5, 2017) was a Dutch–American physicist recognized for his work in developing driving principles behind nonlinear optics for laser spectroscopy. During his career, he was a professor at Harvard University and later at the University of Arizona and at Leiden University in 1973 (as Lorentz Professor).

Bloembergen shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Arthur Schawlow and Kai Siegbahn because their work "has had a profound effect on our present knowledge of the constitution of matter" through the use of laser spectroscopy. In particular, Bloembergen was singled out because he "founded a new field of science we now call non-linear optics" by mixing "two or more beams of laser light... in order to produce laser light of a different wave length" and thus significantly broaden the laser spectroscopy frequency band. He had five siblings, with his brother Auke later becoming a legal scholar. Bloembergen entered Utrecht University in 1938 to study physics, receiving his C.Phil. in 1941 and his doctorandus in 1943. In 1943, during the German occupation of the Netherlands, the German authorities closed the University and Bloembergen spent two years in hiding. Through Purcell, Bloembergen was part of the prolific academic lineage tree of J. J. Thomson, which includes many other Nobel Laureates, beginning with Thomson himself (Physics Nobel, 1906) and Lord Rayleigh (Physics Nobel, 1904), Ernest Rutherford (Chemistry Nobel 1908), Owen Richardson (Physics Nobel, 1928), and finally Purcell (Physics, Nobel 1952). Bloembergen's other influences include John Van Vleck (Physics Nobel, 1977) and Percy Bridgman (Physics Nobel, 1946).

Six weeks before his arrival, Purcell and his graduate students Torrey and Pound discovered nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR).

Bloembergen returned to the Netherlands in 1947, and submitted his doctoral thesis, Nuclear Magnetic Relaxation, at Leiden University. This was because he had completed all the preliminary examinations in the Netherlands, and Cornelis Jacobus Gorter of Leiden offered him a postdoctoral appointment there. He retired from Harvard in 1990.

Research By 1960 while at Harvard, Bloembergen experimented with microwave spectroscopy. and in 1956, he developed a crystal maser, which was more powerful than the standard gaseous version.

From this theoretical work, Bloembergen found ways to combine two or more laser sources consisting of photons in the visible light frequency range to generate a single laser source with photons of different frequencies in the infrared and ultraviolet ranges, which extends the amount of atomic detail that can be gathered from laser spectroscopy.

Bloembergen died on September 5, 2017, at an assisted living facility in his hometown Tucson, Arizona, of cardiorespiratory failure at the age of 97. His wife died on June 19, 2019.

Biography In 2016 a Dutch biography was published, and in 2019 an English one.

Recognition Memberships Year Organization Type 1955 American Physical Society Fellow 1956 American Academy of Arts and Sciences Member 1956 Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Corresponding Member 1960 National Academy of Sciences Member 1978 Indian Academy of Sciences Honorary Fellow 1981 French Academy of Sciences Foreign Associate 1982 American Philosophical Society Member 1983 German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina Member 1984 Optical Society of America Honorary Member 1984 National Academy of Engineering Emeritus

Awards Year Organization Award Citation 1958 American Physical Society Oliver E. Buckley Prize "For his studies of magnetic resonance, both nuclear and electronic and of its uses in the investigation of solids, liquids and gases." 1959 Institute of Radio Engineers IRE Morris Liebmann Memorial Prize "For fundamental and original contributions to the maser." 1961 Franklin Institute Stuart Ballantine Medal — 1978 Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Lorentz Medal — 1979 Optical Society of America Frederic Ives Medal "In recognition of his achievement in establishing the theoretical framework of nonlinear optics, his sustained innovative contributions to the exploration of all aspects in the field of nonlinear optical phenomena, and his successes in the role of teacher and interpreter of science." 1981 Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Nobel Prize in Physics "For their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy." 1983 IEEE IEEE Medal of Honor "For pioneering contributions to Quantum Electronics including the invention of the three-level maser."

National awards Year Head of state Award Citation 1974 Gerald Ford National Medal of Science "For pioneering applications of magnetic resonance to the study of condnesed matter and for subsequent scientific investigations and inventions concerning the interaction of amtter with coherent radiation."

Honorary degrees Year University Degree 1996 University of Central Florida — 1998 North Carolina State University Doctor of Science 2000 Harvard University Doctor of Science

Legacy On March 11, 2020, the day of Bloembergen's 100th birthday, a team of researchers at the University of New South Wales published an article in Nature, demonstrating for the first time the successful coherent control of the nucleus of a single atom using only electric fields, an idea first proposed by Bloembergen back in 1961.