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PHYSICIST

Willis Lamb

1913 - 2008

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Willis Eugene Lamb Jr. (; July 12, 1913 – May 15, 2008) was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1955 "for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum." The Nobel Committee that year awarded half the prize to Lamb and the other half to Polykarp Kusch, who won "for his precision determination of the magnetic moment of the electron." Lamb was able to precisely determine a surprising shift in electron energies in a hydrogen atom (see Lamb shift). Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Willis Lamb has received more than 185,087 page views. His biography is available in 62 different languages on Wikipedia. Willis Lamb is the 196th most popular physicist (down from 194th in 2019), the 906th most popular biography from United States (down from 896th in 2019) and the 38th most popular American Physicist.

Willis Lamb is most famous for his discovery of the Lamb shift in the hydrogen spectrum. This discovery was the first experimental evidence that the electron can behave as a wave as well as a particle.

Memorability Metrics

  • 190k

    Page Views (PV)

  • 62.79

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 62

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 13.82

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 3.45

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Page views of Willis Lambs by language


Among PHYSICISTS

Among physicists, Willis Lamb ranks 196 out of 717. Before him are John Archibald Wheeler, John L. Hall, Wolfgang Paul, Frederick Reines, Ilya Frank, and Isamu Akasaki. After him are K. Alex Müller, Nikolay Basov, Arthur Leonard Schawlow, David Lee, Joseph Rotblat, and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1913, Willis Lamb ranks 41. Before him are Carmen Amaya, Stanford Moore, Artur Axmann, Wolfgang Paul, Roger Wolcott Sperry, and René Clément. After him are Gert Fröbe, Luz Long, Mehmet Shehu, Jacobo Árbenz, Masanobu Fukuoka, and Charles Trenet. Among people deceased in 2008, Willis Lamb ranks 30. Before him are Jules Dassin, Roy Scheider, Jacques Piccard, Mahmoud Darwish, John Archibald Wheeler, and Edward Norton Lorenz. After him are Lansana Conté, Mel Ferrer, Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow, Thomas Huckle Weller, Jörg Haider, and Leonid Hurwicz.

Others Born in 1913

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Others Deceased in 2008

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In United States

Among people born in United States, Willis Lamb ranks 906 out of 18,182. Before him are Sherwood Anderson (1876), Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913), Billy Bob Thornton (1955), Robert Burns Woodward (1917), Barbara Stanwyck (1907), and Tom Waits (1949). After him are James Tobin (1918), John Jacob Astor IV (1864), Barry Nelson (1917), Steve Reeves (1926), Robert Vaughn (1932), and Gina Haspel (1956).

Others born in United States

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Among PHYSICISTS In United States

Among physicists born in United States, Willis Lamb ranks 38. Before him are Charles H. Townes (1915), Robert Hofstadter (1915), Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. (1915), John Archibald Wheeler (1911), John L. Hall (1934), and Frederick Reines (1918). After him are Arthur Leonard Schawlow (1921), David Lee (1931), Roy J. Glauber (1925), Jerome Isaac Friedman (1930), George E. Smith (1930), and Clifford Shull (1915).

American born Physicists

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