The Nobel Prize in Physics 1955 Willis E. Lamb, Polykarp Kusch
Willis Eugene Lamb Born: 12 July 1913, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Died: 15 May 2008, Tucson, AZ, USA Affiliation at the time of
the award: Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA Prize
motivation: "for his discoveries concerning the fine structure
of the hydrogen spectrum" Field: Atomic physics Eugene Lamb, Jr.
was born on July 12, 1913 in Los Angeles, California. His father
Willis Eugene Lamb, born in Minnesota, was by profession a
telephone engineer and his mother Marie Helen Metcalf came from
Except for three years schooling in Oakland, Calif., he was
educated in the public schools of Los Angeles, Calif. In 1930 he
entered the University of California at Berkeley and received a
B.S. (Chemistry) in 1934. His graduate work in theoretical
physics at the same university led to the Ph.D. degree in 1938.
His thesis research on the electromagnetic properties of nuclear
systems was directed by Professor J.R. Oppenheimer. He went to
Columbia University as Inst