Francis Bitter (1902-1967) left behind him a current of influence that surges on today, strong and lively. There is the Francis Bitter National Magnet Laboratory at M.I.T. There is a generation of students and researchers whom Bitter trained as a devoted teacher and as the author of widely used undergraduate texts. And, most pertinent of all, there is the monumental collection of scientific papers in which his results and his way of doing physics are preserved. This volume commemorates Bitter by reprinting a selection of the most significant of these papers.
Francis Bitter was intellectually restless and was possessed of – or by – an irrepressible curiosity. For him, once the broad range of a field had been gauged, it was time to move on to a new research area. That is why this volume contains papers on almost all aspects of magnetic physics, along with contributions to other areas of physics as well, as will be seen in the section titles below. It is also why much of his work represents the foundation if not the completion of some of the most important advances in recent years. Fore example, A. Kastler, in receiving the Nobel Prize for his work in double resonances, credited Bitter with establishing the basic principles on which a fully developed theory could be built.
The papers included here are grouped in eight broad sections, each section introduced by one or more of Bitter's colleagues. A biography and bibliography are also included.
Sections
The Magnetic Susceptibility of Gases (three papers, with commentary by J. H. Van Vleck) • Ferromagnetic Studies (eight papers, with commentaries by William Fuller Brown, Jr. and L. Néel) • The First M.I.T. Magnet Laboratory: The Design of Powerful Electromagnets (seven papers, with commentary by George R. Harrison) • The War Years (two papers) • Optical Pumping and Double Resonance (seven papers, with commentaries by J. Brossel, A. Kastler, and H. H. Stroke) • Illumination Studies (two papers, with commentary by J. F. Waymouth) • The Francis Bitter National Magnetic Laboratory (two papers, with commentaries by B. Lax and H. Kolm) • Megagauss Physics (three papers, with commentary by C. M. Fowler)