Simon, Francis Eugene (1893-1956), a German-born British physicist, specialized in low-temperature research. During World War II (1939-1945), he helped develop a technique known as gaseous diffusion for separating different isotopes (forms) of uranium. See Uranium (Separating uranium isotopes). That development led to the creation of the atomic bomb.
Simon was born in Berlin, Germany, on July 2, 1893, and was named Franz Eugen Simon. Simon, who was Jewish, left Germany in 1933, after the Nazis came to power and began to persecute Jews. In 1933, Simon became the head of a school of low-temperature physics at Oxford University in England. He was knighted in 1954. He died on Oct. 31, 1956.
