Rolf Widerøe (11 July 1902 – 11 October 1996) was a Norwegian accelerator physicist who was the originator of many particle acceleration concepts, including the resonance accelerator and the betatron accelerator.
Early life
Widerøe was born in Kristiania (now Oslo) in 1902 as a son of the mercantile agent Theodor Widerøe (1868–1947) and Carla Johanne Launer (1875–1971). He was a brother of the aviator and entrepreneur Viggo Widerøe who became the founder of the Norwegian airline Widerøe.
Betatron accelerator concept
There he conceived the concept of electromagnetic induction to accelerate electrons, which became the basis of what would be known as betatron. and became the progenitor of all high-energy particle accelerators. Widerøe's article was studied by Ernest Lawrence in the United States, and used as the basis for his creation of the cyclotron in 1929.
War time
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. 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. 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.
- Röntgen prize (1972)
- JRC gold medal (1973)
- Robert R. Wilson Prize (1992)
Memberships
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