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Immanuel Estermann

Immanuel Estermann was a German-born Jewish nuclear physicist known for molecular beam research with Otto Stern and for measuring the magnetic moment of the proton.

1900 to 1973Molecular beam research with Otto SternMeasuring the proton's magnetic momentWork on the Manhattan Project

Born: 31 March 1900, Berlin
Died: 30 March 1973, Haifa
Occupation: physicist, university teacher, nuclear physicist
Education: University of Hamburg

Immanuel Estermann was born in 1900 in Berlin

Estermann was born in Berlin in 1900 to Leo and Rachel Estermann. His father, an active Zionist, moved the family to Jerusalem, where Estermann grew up. The family went back to Germany when World War I broke out. His younger brother was the mathematician Theodor Estermann.

He studied physical chemistry at the University of Hamburg. His doctoral thesis, supervised by Max Volmer, dealt with how crystals grow. He earned his doctorate in 1921.

From 1922 he lectured in Hamburg and worked with Otto Stern on molecular beams. They showed that molecules such as hydrogen and helium have wave properties. In 1933, with Stern and Otto Robert Frisch, he measured the magnetic moment of the proton.

As a Jew he lost his Hamburg post under the Nazis and moved with Stern to the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. During World War II he worked on radar and later on the Manhattan Project. From 1959 he was scientific director of the Office of Naval Research in London.

In 1957 he became emeritus professor at the University of Hamburg. He later moved to Israel and taught solid state physics at the Technion. He died in Haifa in 1973.