Nobel Prize winning
American physicist who was awarded
the prize in 1944 for his invention of the
atomic and molecular beam magnetic resonance method of observing
atomic spectra.
During
WWII, Rabi was a leader of the group of scientists at
MIT which aided the development of
radar. He was instrumental in the creation of both
CERN and the
Brookhaven National Laboratory. He also built up the
physics department at
Columbia University, one which was to produce several Nobel Prize winning physicists.
Upon the discovery of the
muon, he is reported to have remarked "
Who ordered that?", because the new particle didn't seem to have any
purpose in the scheme of things. It was seen later on how the muon
fit into a
second generation of particles, across from the
electron.