Rabi, Isidor << RAHB ee, IHZ uh dawr, >> Isaac (1898-1988), an Austrian-born American physicist, was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize for physics for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei.
In his early work, Rabi investigated the magnetic qualities of crystals. In 1930, he began studying the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei using beams of molecules. Rabi succeeded in detecting and measuring single states of rotation of atoms and molecules. He also determined the mechanical and magnetic moments of the nuclei, the forces causing the electrons to spin around the nucleus of an atom (see Atom ; Subatomic particle ).
Rabi was born in Rymanow, Poland (then part of Austria-Hungary). In 1899, he moved with his family to the United States. He studied chemistry in New York, first at Cornell University in Ithaca and then at Columbia University in New York City. He became professor at Columbia in 1937. In 1940, he was granted leave from the university to work as associate director of the Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on the development of radar and the atomic bomb. In 1945, he returned to Columbia University. Rabi was one of the founders of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York in 1947. Among other offices, he also served as a member of the Science Advisory Committee of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
