Robert Hofstadter Biography

Robert Hofstadter was an American physicist famous for his discoveries concerning the structure of nucleons. His in-depth investigation of electron scattering in atomic nuclei led to the determination of the size and shape of the proton and the neutron, and earned him a share of the 1961 Nobel Prize in Physics which he was jointly awarded with Rudolf Mössbauer. Born into a Jewish family in New York, he grew up to be a brilliant student who excelled in the sciences and mathematics. He graduated magna cum laude from the City College of New York and was awarded a Charles A. Coffin Foundation Fellowship to attend graduate school at Princeton University. Armed with a doctorate degree by the time he was 23, he served as a physicist at the National Bureau of Standards during World War II before embarking on an academic career. He worked for a while at the Princeton University where he carried out research on crystal conduction counters, on the Compton effect. After leaving Princeton, he moved to Stanford University where he focused his efforts on electron-scattering measurements. In the later stages of his career he grew interested in astrophysics and played a major role in the development of the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.