Joseph Oakland Hirschfelder (May 27, 1911 – March 30, 1990) was an American theoretical chemist who studied atomic and molecular quantum mechanics, the rates of chemical reactions, and the structure and properties of gases and liquids.
Hirschfelder also participated in the Manhattan Project, which created the atomic bomb.New York Times: Obituaries: J. O. Hirschfelder, 78, Atom Bomb Developer, March 31, 1990 .
Biography Hirschfelder was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of a Jewish couple, Arthur Douglas and May Rosalie (Straus). He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Minnesota from 1927 to 1929 and at Yale University from 1929 to 1931. Hirschfelder received doctorates in physics and chemistry from Princeton University under the direction of Eugene Wigner, Henry Eyring and Hugh Stott Taylor. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow with John von Neumann for a year after his PhD at the Institute for Advanced Study. In 1937, he moved to University of Wisconsin and stayed there until retirement in 1981, except during World War II.
Robert Oppenheimer assembled a team at the Los Alamos Laboratory to work on plutonium gun design Thin Man, that included senior engineer Edwin McMillan and senior physicists Charles Critchfield and Joseph Hirschfelder. Hirschfelder had been working on internal ballistics. Oppenheimer led the design effort himself until June 1943, when Navy Captain William Sterling Parsons arrived took over the Ordnance and Engineering Division and direct management of the "Thin Man" project.
Hirschfelder was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a group leader in theoretical physics and ordnance at the Los Alamos Atomic Bomb Laboratory, chief phenomenologist at the nuclear bomb tests at Bikini, the founder of the Theoretical Chemistry Institute and the Homer Adkins professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin.
Hirschfelder was also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded the National Medal of Science from President Gerald Ford “for his fundamental contributions to atomic and molecular quantum mechanics, the theory of the rates of chemical reactions, and the structure and properties of gases and liquids”.
The National Academies Press called him "one of the leading figures in theoretical chemistry during the period 1935–90". In 1991 an award was established in his name by the University of Wisconsin's Theoretical Chemistry Institute – the annual Joseph O. Hirschfelder Prize in Theoretical Chemistry.University of Wisconsin, Joseph O. Hirschfelder Prize . He was an elected member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science.Members of IAQMS .
His book coauthored with Charles F. Curtiss and Robert Byron Bird, Molecular theory of gases and liquids, is a comprehensive text on the kinetic theories of gases and liquids.
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Awards and distinctions 1953 - elected to the National Academy of Sciences 1959 - elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1963 - elected Honorary Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 1965 - elected to the Norwegian Royal Society 1966 - the Peter Debye Award from the American Chemical Society 1966 - the Alfred C. Egerton Gold Medal of the Combustion Institute 1976 - the National Medal of Science 1978 - honorary degree from Marquette University 1980 - honorary degree the University of Southern California 1981 - elected to the Royal Society of Chemistry of Great Britain
Joseph O. Hirschfelder Prize is awarded annually by the department of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin in honor of Hirschfelder.
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