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| Mário Schenberg | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Mayer Schönberg (1914-07-02)July 2, 1914 Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil |
| Died | November 10, 1990(1990-11-10) (aged 76) São Paulo, Brazil |
| Alma mater | University of São Paulo |
| Known for | Schönberg-Chandrasekhar limit Urca process |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Theoretical physics |
| Doctoral students | José Leite Lopes |
| Notes | |
| Brazilian physicist of the 'heroic era' (1900–1945), together with José Leite Lopes, Cesar Lattes, Jayme Tiomno, and Joaquim da Costa Ribeiro. | |
Mário Schenberg (born Mayer Schönberg ; 2 July 1914 – 10 November 1990) was a Brazilian electrical engineer, physicist, art critic and writer.
Early life
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Schenberg was born in Recife, Brazil as Mayer Schönberg. His parents were Russian Jews of German origin. From early on he showed remarkable ability for mathematics, enchanting himself with geometry, which had a strong influence on his works. He took the primary and secondary courses in Recife. Because of his family's financial limitations, he was not able to study in Europe. He then entered the Faculty of Engineering of Recife in 1931.
Scientific work
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Quantum physics and geometric algebra
In the University of São Paulo had Schönberg interacted closely with David Bohm during the final years of Bohm's exile in Brazil, and, in 1954, Schönberg demonstrated a link among the quantized motion of the Madelung fluid and the trajectories of the de Broglie–Bohm theory.
He wrote a series of publications of 1957/1958 on geometric algebras that stand in relation to quantum physics and quantum field theory. He pointed out that those algebras can be described in terms of extensions of the commutative and the anti-commutative Grassmann algebras which have the same structure as the boson algebra and the fermion algebra of creation and annihilation operators. These algebras, in turn, are related to the symplectic algebra and Clifford algebra, respectively. In a paper published in 1958, Schönberg suggested to add a new idempotent to the Heisenberg algebra, and this suggestion was taken up and expanded upon in the 1980s by Basil Hiley and his co-workers in their work on algebraic formulations of quantum mechanics; this work was performed at Birkbeck College where Bohm had become professor of physics in the meantime. Schönberg's ideas have also been cited in connection with algebraic approaches to describe relativistic phase space.
His work has been cited, together with that of Marcel Riesz, for its importance to Clifford algebras and mathematical physics in the proceedings of a workshop held in France in 1989 which had been dedicated to these two mathematicians.
Politics and life
Schenberg was a member of the Brazilian Communist Party and professor of the University of São Paulo.
Articles
His articles include:
- M. Schönberg: Quantum kinematics and geometry, Il Nuovo Cimento (1955–1965), vol. 6, Supplement 1, pp. 356–380, 1957, doi:10.1007/BF02724793 (preview)
- M. Schönberg, S. Chandrasekhar: On the Evolution of the Main-Sequence Stars, Astrophysical Journal, vol. 96, no. p. 161 ff., 1942, fulltext
Legacy
- Mario Schenberg Graviton, a spherical, resonant-mass, gravitational wave detector.
References
- ^ Interview with Basil Hiley Archived October 15, 2012, at the Wayback Machine conducted by Olival Freire on January 11, 2008, Oral History Transcript, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics
- Schönberg, M. (1954). "On the hydrodynamical model of the quantum mechanics". Il Nuovo Cimento. 12 (1): 103–133. Bibcode:1954NCim...12..103S. doi:10.1007/BF02820368. S2CID 123655548. (abstract)
- ^ F. A. M. Frescura, B. J. Hiley: Algebras, quantum theory and pre-space, p. 3–4 (published in Revista Brasileira de Fisica, Volume Especial, Julho 1984, Os 70 anos de Mario Schonberg, pp. 49–86)
- M. Schönberg, Quantum mechanics and geometry, An. Acad. Brasil. Cien., 30, pp. 1–20, 1958. Cited after: F. A. M. Frescura, B. J. Hiley: Algebras, quantum theory and pre-space, p. 3–4 (published in Revista Brasileira de Fisica, Volume Especial, Julho 1984, Os 70 anos de Mario Schonberg, pp. 49–86)
- B. J. Hiley: A note on the role of idempotents in the extended Heisenberg algebra, "Implications", Scientific Aspects of ANPA 22, pp. 107–121, Cambridge, UK, 2001.
- M.C.B. Fernandes, J.D.M. Vianna: On the generalized phase space approach to Duffin–Kemmer–Petiau particles, Foundations of Physics, vol 29, no. 2, pp. 201–219 (1999), doi:10.1023/A:1018869505031 (abstract), therein p. 201
- Artibani Micali, Roger Boudet, Jacques Helmstetter (edds.): Clifford Algebras and their Applications in Mathematical Physics. Workshop Proceedings: 2nd (Fundamental Theories of Physics), Kluwer, 1989, ISBN 0-7923-1623-1, Foreword (in French language)
- Beauchesne, Kim; Santos, Alessandra (2011). The Utopian Impulse in Latin America. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 177. ISBN 9780230339613.
- Barros, Alberto Luiz da Rocha (1991). "Schenberg: nada que é humano lhe era estranho" (PDF). Estudos Avançados (in Portuguese). 5 (11). University of São Paulo: 197–198. doi:10.1590/S0103-40141991000100011. ISSN 0103-4014. Retrieved 7 December 2015.
| Preceded byJosé Goldemberg | President of the Brazilian Society of Physics 1979–1981 |
Succeeded byHerch Moysés Nussenzveig |
- 1914 births
- 1990 deaths
- People from Recife
- Brazilian people of Russian-Jewish descent
- Brazilian people of German-Jewish descent
- Brazilian physicists
- Jewish Brazilian writers
- Jewish socialists
- Jewish scientists
- Brazilian communists
- University of São Paulo alumni
- Academic staff of the University of São Paulo
- 20th-century Brazilian scientists
- 20th-century Brazilian people
- Presidents of the Brazilian Physical Society