Rolf Widerøe
Rolf Widerøe (11 July 1902 – 11 October 1996) was a Norwegian accelerator physicist who was the originator of many particle acceleration concepts,[1] including the resonance accelerator and the betatron accelerator.[2]
Rolf Widerøe
War time[edit]
In 1941 his younger brother Viggo Widerøe was arrested for resistance work. In 1943 the Germans "invited" Rolf Widerøe to Germany to continue to work on the Betatron. Inspired by the opportunity to continue his research and promises that his brother would have a better situation in his imprisonment, he agreed to go to Hamburg and start building a German Betatron.[4][10] During this period, already in 1943, he introduced the theoretical concept of colliding particles head-on to increase interaction energy and a storage ring device.[1][4] Several sources claims that his Norwegian citizenship was ultimately revoked for working with the Nazi government,[11] but this is not correct. His Norwegian passport was confiscated for some time and he accepted a penalty notice of NOK 5000, loss of civil liberties and to forfeit NOK 120000 of the amount he was paid in licence fees for use of his patent rights during the betatron development.[10] In the end, early in 1946, he received an intermediate passport and emigrated to Switzerland.[4]
Later years[edit]
In 1946 he filed a patent in Norway for an accelerator based on synchronous acceleration.[1] He would go on to publish over 180 papers in scientific and engineering journals, and filed over 200 patent applications over his lifetime. In his later life he devoted much time to medicinal technology, focusing on cancer treatment, including developing megavolt radiation therapy technologies.[4] He would collaborate with CERN beginning in 1952 doing the preliminary studies for the Proton Synchrotron,[4] lectured at ETH Zurich in 1953, and collaborated at DESY in 1959 in Hamburg.[4]
Rolf Widerøe died on 11 October 1996 in Obersiggenthal, Switzerland.[4]
Since 2011 the European Physical Society has awarded a prize in Widerøe's memory every three years to individuals in recognition of outstanding work in the field of accelerator physics.