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 |