Walter M. Elsasser

Walter Maurice Elsasser (March 20, 1904 – October 14, 1991) was a German-born American physicist considered a "father" of the presently accepted dynamo theory as an explanation of the Earth's magnetism. He proposed that this magnetic field resulted from electric currents induced in the fluid outer core of the Earth. He revealed the history of the Earth's magnetic field through pioneering the study of the magnetic orientation of minerals in rocks.

The Olin Hall at the Johns Hopkins University has a Walter Elsasser Memorial in the lobby.

Biography

Elsasser was born in 1904 in Mannheim, Germany. Before he became known for his geodynamo theory, while in Göttingen in the 1920s, he has suggested the experiment to test the wave aspect of electrons. This suggestion of Elsasser was later communicated by his senior colleague from Göttingen (Nobel Prize recipient Max Born) to physicists in England. This explained the results of the Davisson-Germer and Thomson experiments later awarded with the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1935, while working in Paris, Elsasser calculated the binding energies of protons and neutrons in heavy radioactive nuclei. Wigner, Jensen and Goeppert-Mayer received the Nobel in 1963 for work developing out of Elsasser's initial formulation. Elsasser therefore came quite close to a Nobel prize on two occasions.