William Martin Fairbank dies (1919-1989)

1989/12/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Biografiak

American physicist William Fairbank died last September 30 as a result of the heart attack he suffered during jogging. Fairbank has been the brightest American experimental physicist of its generation.

Left W.M. Fairbank in 1988.

He has worked in low-temperature physics, mainly with liquid helium and superconductivity. He was very competent in applying low-temperature techniques to different branches of physics, such as elementary particles, gravitational waves and general relativity.

In the early years he pioneered low-temperature studies on the nature ^of the ^{4He and} 3He isotopes. In 1954 it was the first time he and his companions managed to measure ^{the Fermi-Dirac character} of 3He at temperatures below 0.25 K of EMN. Two years later the phase division of ^{4He and 3He was} discovered at temperatures below 0.8 ^K.

However, Fairbank's biggest contribution has been to find the quantization of the magnetic flow of a superconducting ring. Through this experiment he checked the quantum character of superconductivity and the existence of electron pairings in superconductive state.