Record

Authorised form of name	Shoenberg; David (1911 - 2004)
Other forms of surname	Schoenberg
Dates	1911 - 2004
Nationality	British
Place of birth	St Petersburg, Russia
Date of birth	04/01/1911
Place of death	Cambridge
Date of death	10/03/2004
Occupation	Physicist
Activity	Education: Emigrated to Britain in 1914 with his family; Latymer Upper School, London; Trinity College Cambridge - BSc (1929-1932) and PhD (1932-1934) Career: Began research career studying the riddle of superconductivity - the abrupt loss of all electrical resistance in certain metals when cooled to a critically low temperature near absolute zero, a laboratory observation made in 1911 by Dutch physicist Heike Kammerlingh Onnes - which became the abiding interest of his working life, coupled with a related phenomena involving magnetism, the de Haas-van Alphen effect, and thereby helped found a new branch of physics. His careeer started just as the Royal Society Mond Laboratory was established in Cambridge, having been built specially for the Russian scientist Peter Kapitza to work on very low-temerature pysics. He became University Lecturer in Physics (1944-1952), Reader in Physics (1952-1973), Professor of Physics (1973-1978), Head of the Low Temperature Physics Group, Cavendish Laboratory (1973-1978), Cambridge University; Head of the Royal Society Mond Laboratory (1947-1973); Corporate Official Fellow (1947-1973), Life Fellow, Gonville and Caius College Cambridge; Fritz London Award for Low Temperature Physics (1964); Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1982); Guthrie Lecture (1961); Krishnan Memorial Lecture (1988). A fluent Russian speaker, he was able to maintain contact with Russian academics during difficult times for exchanges by the international scientific community. Honours: MBE 1944
Membership category	Fellow
Date of election	19/03/1953
Age at election	42
RSActivity	Medals and prizes: Hughes Medal 1995 Lectures: Rutherford Memorial 1980
Relationships	Son of Sir Isaac Shoenberg, distinguished inventor and electrical engineer who installed the first radio-braodcasting network in his native Russia. Moved to Britain in 1914, worked at EMI and directed the team which developed the first high-definition television system, used by the BBC for a pioneering public high-definition telecast from London in 1938; married (1940) Catherine Felicitee Fischmann (d 2003); one son and two daughters survive him
PublishedWorks	Magnetic Oscillations in Metals (1938);
Source	Sources: Obituaries in The Independent (16 March 2004), The Times (16 March 2004 and 23 March 2004), The Guardian (26 March 2004) Obituaries: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 2005 vol 51 pp 379-395, plate, by Sir Brian Pippard FRS References: 'Address of the President, Sir Michael Atiyah, OM, Given at the Anniversary Meeting on 30 November 1995' in NR 1996 vol 50 pp 101-113
Code	NA5281

Archives associated with this Fellow

RefNo	Title	Date
EC/1953/22	Shoenberg, David: certificate of election to the Royal Society
PB/9/1/103	Correspondence with D Shoenberg	1964
HWT/25/5	Correspondence and papers regarding Chinese research workers in Britain and British visitors to China	June - July 1966
HWT/25/7	Correspondence and papers regarding premature return to China (due to Cultural Revolution) of Chinese research workers in Britain	January - September 1967
IM/Meitner Graf/004157	Shoenberg, David	October 1954
RR/65/237	Referee's report by John Douglas Cockcroft, on a paper 'The magnetic properties of bismuth, III. Further measurements on the de Haas-van Alphen effect' by David Shoenberg	November 1938
RR/65/236	Referee's report by Edmund Clifton Stoner, on a paper 'The magnetic properties of bismuth, III. Further measurements on the de Haas-van Alphen effect' by David Shoenberg	1938
RR/70/92	Referee's report by Rudolph Ernst Peierls, on a paper 'The intermediate state of superconductors. I. Magnetization of superconducting cylinders in transverse magnetic fields' by M Désirant and David Shoenberg	16 January 1948
IM/004158	Shoenberg, David	1995
PB/1/33/1/8	Nobel Prize	1948
RR/70/91	Letter from Rudolph Ernst Peierls, on a paper 'The intermediate state of superconductors. I. Magnetization of superconducting cylinders in transverse magnetic fields' by M Désirant and David Shoenberg	16 January 1948
AP/83/1	Supporting data, regarding 'The de Haas–van Alphen effect in alkali metals' by David Shoenberg and P J Stiles	9 October 1964
RR/66/273	Referee's report by Edmund Clifton Stoner, on a paper 'Properties of superconducting colloids and emulsions' by David Shoenberg	11 December 1939

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