Sir Francis SimonBorn 2 Jul 1893; died 31 Oct 1956 at age 63.Sir Franz Eugen Francis Simon was a German-British physicist whose work in low-temperature physics reached a low of 20 millionths of a degree above absolute zero. He avoided life in Hitler's Germany by going to Oxford. Simon worked on lowering temperatures below the point previously possible by the Joule-Thomson effect. His method was to withdraw heat by lining up paramagnetic molecules at very low temperatures and then allow their orientation to randomize, abstracting further heat from the surroundings and lowering the temperature still further. He came closer to absolute zero, though with more difficulty, by doing the same with nuclear spins.Name before emigrating from Germany (due to anti-semiticsm): Franz Eugen Simon* |
