Samuel Goudsmit
Physicist, co-discoverer of electron spin; Robertson Panel member
- Born
- July 11, 1902, The Hague, Netherlands
- Died
- December 4, 1978, Reno, Nevada
- Known for
- Electron spin (1925, with George Uhlenbeck)
- WWII
- Scientific head of the Alsos mission
- Institution
- Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1948–1970
Dutch-American physicist who co-discovered electron spin, led the wartime Alsos mission, and sat on the CIA's 1953 UFO panel.
What is Samuel Goudsmit known for?
Samuel Goudsmit was a Dutch-born physicist who, with George Uhlenbeck at Leiden in 1925, proposed the idea of electron spin, a cornerstone of quantum mechanics. He taught at the University of Michigan and later worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory from 1948 to 1970.
In World War II he was scientific head of Alsos, the Allied mission that followed the front lines in Europe to find out how far Germany had come toward an atomic bomb. He wrote about it in his 1947 book 'Alsos'.
In January 1953 he was one of the scientists on the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel, listed by the CIA as a Brookhaven nuclear physicist. The panel concluded that UFO reports showed no evidence of a threat to national security or of extraterrestrial craft.
Member of the CIA's 1953 Robertson Panel on UFOs.
Mentioned on these pages
- Rabbit holeThe Robertson Panel
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'Samuel Abraham Goudsmit'Reference
- Gerald K. Haines, 'CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90', Studies in Intelligence (CIA)Primary text
Pictures on profile pages are drawn placeholders, not likenesses. Public-domain portraits and photographs will replace them.