July 20, 2007 - Death of Kai Siegbahn, Nobel Prize for his contributions to the development of high-resolution laser spectroscopy

Kai Manne Börje Siegbahn, son of another Nobel laureate in physics (1924), studied physics, chemistry, and mathematics.

He began his professional career with the study of atomic and molecular physics, developing studies on plasma and electron optics. He later became interested in spectroscopy, like his father, and developed chemical analysis techniques on the high-resolution spectroscopic laser he created.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Siegbahn and others developed an important method based on the well-known ‘photoelectric effect’. The decisive contribution was the invention of an electron spectrometer with a hitherto unattainable level of precision that made it possible to assign electrons from a material released by X-rays to their place of origin (atom type and layer). The result of the measurement of chemical analysis of the composition of the tested material, from which the name ESCA (Electron Spectroscopy for Chemical Analysis) is derived.

In 1981, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with two other physicists, Nicolaas Bloembergen and Arthur Leonard Schawlow for their work on spectroscopy and, in particular for Siegbahn, for his ‘contributions to the development of high-resolution laser spectroscopy’.

If you want to know more about this scientist, click on the following link: Kai Siegbahn