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John Norris Bahcall (December 30, 1934 – August 17, 2005) was an American astrophysicist, best known for his contributions to the solar neutrino problem, the development of the Hubble Space Telescope and for his leadership and development of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

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John N. Bahcall
Born	(1934-12-30)December 30, 1934 Shreveport, Louisiana
Died	August 17, 2005(2005-08-17) (aged 70) New York City, New York
Resting place	Princeton Cemetery, Princeton, NJ
Nationality	American
Known for	Solar neutrino problem Hubble Space Telescope
Awards	Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics (1994) Dan David Prize (2003) Enrico Fermi Award (2003)
Scientific career
Fields	Astrophysics
Institutions	Institute for Advanced Study California Institute of Technology Indiana University Harvard University of Chicago

Early and family life

Bahcall was born into a Jewish family in Shreveport, Louisiana, and would later describe an early aspiration to become a Reform rabbi.[1] He did not take science classes at high school. He was high school state tennis champion and a national debate champion. Bahcall began his university studies at Louisiana State University as a philosophy student on a tennis scholarship, where he considered pursuing the rabbinate. He transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, still studying philosophy. He took his first physics class as a graduation requirement.

He was married to Princeton University astrophysics professor Neta Bahcall, whom he met as a graduate student at the Weizmann Institute in the 1960s. They had a daughter and two sons. He died in New York from a rare blood disorder.

Academic career

He graduated with an AB in Physics from Berkeley in 1956, obtained his MS in physics in 1957 from the University of Chicago and his PhD in physics from Harvard in 1961. He became a research fellow in physics at Indiana University in 1960 and worked at the California Institute of Technology from 1962 to 1970, where he worked alongside Richard Feynman, Murray Gell-Mann, and William Fowler.

He was appointed professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1971. He became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1976.[2] He was president of the American Astronomical Society from 1990–92, and was president-elect of the American Physical Society at the date of his death.

Research

Bahcall is most notable for his work in establishing the standard solar model. He spent much of his life pursuing the solar neutrino problem with physical chemist Raymond Davis, Jr. Together, Davis and Bahcall collaborated on the Homestake Experiment, creating an underground detector for neutrinos in a South Dakota gold mine, essentially a large tank filled with cleaning fluid. The flux of neutrinos found by the detector was one-third the amount theoretically predicted by Bahcall, a discrepancy that took over thirty years to resolve. The 2002 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Davis and Masatoshi Koshiba for their pioneering work in observing the neutrinos predicted from Bahcall's solar model, thereby vindicating Bahcall's prediction.[3]

In addition to his work on solar neutrinos, Bahcall collaborated with Eli Waxman on the Waxman-Bahcall bound for high energy neutrinos. This bound sets a limit on high energy neutrino flux based on the observed flux of high energy cosmic rays.[4]

Bahcall's other contribution to astrophysics was the development and implementation of the Hubble Space Telescope, in collaboration with Lyman Spitzer, Jr., from the 1970s through to the period after the telescope was launched in 1990. In 1992, he received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal for this work.^{[citation needed]}

The standard model of a galaxy, with a massive black hole surrounded by stars, is known as the Bahcall-Wolf model. The Bahcall-Soneira model was for many years the standard model for the structure of the Milky Way. He contributed to accurate astrophysical models of stellar interiors. Bahcall published over six hundred scientific papers and five books in the field of astrophysics.^{[citation needed]}

Honors

• Helen B. Warner Prize (1970)[5]
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1976)[6]
• NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal (1992)
• Heineman Prize (1994)[7]
• Hans Bethe Prize (1998)
• National Medal of Science (1998)
• Henry Norris Russell Lectureship (1999)
• Member of the American Philosophical Society (2001)[8]
• Dan David Prize (2003)
• Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (2003)
• Fermi Award (with Raymond Davis, Jr) (2003)
• Benjamin Franklin Medal (2003)
• Academy of Achievement, Golden Plate Award (2004)[9]
• Comstock Prize in Physics from the National Academy of Sciences (2004) [10]

References

Further reading

• Haxton, W. (2009). "The Scientific Life of John Bahcall". Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science. 59 (1): 1–20. arXiv:0904.2865. Bibcode:2009ARNPS..59....1H. doi:10.1146/annurev.nucl.010909.083722. S2CID 15314700.
• Pinsonneault, M. (2008). "The Legacy of John Bahcall". ASP Conference Series. 384: 3. Bibcode:2008ASPC..384....3P.

External links

• Institute for Advanced Study:
  • Homepage
  • Biography
  • Press release following his death
• PBS Nova: The Ghost Particle
• Letter from his family after his death
• Dan David Prize laureate 2003
• Scott D. Tremaine, "John Norris Bahcall", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2011)
• Obituaries
  • Obituary (Nature, 1 September 2005) (PDF)
  • Obituary (Washington Post, August 20, 2005)
  • Obituary (New York Times, August 19, 2005) (Microsoft Word)
  • Obituary (The Times, 1 September 2005)

На других языках

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[de] John N. Bahcall

John Norris Bahcall (* 30. Dezember 1934 in Shreveport, Louisiana; † 17. August 2005 in New York City, N.Y.) war ein führender US-amerikanischer Astrophysiker. Er fand neue Wege zur Erforschung der Sonne und war der Initiator des Hubble-Weltraumteleskops.

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- [en] John N. Bahcall

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[es] John Bahcall

John Norris Bahcall (Shreveport, Luisiana, Estados Unidos, 30 de diciembre de 1934-Nueva York, 17 de agosto de 2005)[1] fue un astrofísico estadounidense conocido principalmente por sus aportes acerca del problema de los neutrinos solares, su desarrollo del telescopio espacial Hubble y su liderazgo y evolución del Instituto de Estudios Avanzados de Princeton.

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[ru] Бакал, Джон

Джон Норрис Бакал (англ. John Norris Bahcall, 30 декабря 1934 (1934-12-30), Шривпорт — 17 августа 2005, Нью-Йорк) — американский астрофизик, более всего известный своим вкладом в проблему изучения солнечных нейтрино, развитие телескопа им. Хаббла, а также как руководитель Института перспективных исследований в Принстоне.

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