Nicholas Kurti, () (14 May 1908 – 24 November 1998) was a Hungarian-born British physicist who lived in Oxford, UK, for most of his life.

Career

Born in Budapest, Kurti went to high school at the Minta Gymnasium, but due to anti-Jewish laws he had to leave the country, gaining his master's degree at the Sorbonne in Paris. He obtained his doctorate in low-temperature physics in Berlin, working with Professor Franz Simon. He later became the society's Vice-President from 1965 to 1967.

Kurti became a Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1947 and became Professor of Physics at Oxford in 1967, a post he held until his retirement in 1975.

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Kurti's hobby was cooking, and he was an enthusiastic advocate of applying scientific knowledge to culinary problems, a field known today as gastrophysics. In 1969 he gave a talk at the Royal Institution titled "The physicist in the kitchen", in which he amazed the audience by using the recently invented microwave oven to make a "reverse Baked Alaska" — a Frozen Florida — hot liquor enclosed by a shell of frozen meringue. Over the years he organized several international workshops in Erice, Italy on "Molecular and Physical Gastronomy."

References

Bibliography

  • But the Crackling is Superb: An Anthology on Food and Drink by Fellows and Foreign Members of The Royal Society of London
  • The Nicholas Kurti European Prize
  • The papers of Nicholas Kurti were catalogued by Anna-K Mayer and Timothy Powell, NCUACS, Bath (England), prior to being deposited in the Bodleian Library, Oxford
  • Oral History interview transcript with Nicholas Kurti, 11 September 1968, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
  • Physics and joys of life by Professor Nicholas Kurti, 10 March 1989, on YouTube