Klein, Oskar (1894-1977) | Niels Bohr Archive

Name: Klein, Oskar (1894-1977)

Historical Note: Born Mörby, Sweden, 1894, as the youngest son of Sweden's first rabbi, Gottlieb Klein. From the age of 15 he worked, on Svante Arrhenius's invitation, at the Nobel Institute on the solubility of salts with radioactive indicators. From 1918 Klein frequently visited Copenhagen and he stayed there after completing his doctoral dissertation at Stockholms Högskola in 1921. His interest turned to quantum theory, and with Svein Rosseland he introduced "collisions of the second kind". Stayed at Ann Arbor, Michigan 1923-25. Docent, Lund University, 1926. Introduced relativistic wave equation (Klein-Gordon equation). Lecturer NBI 1927. Deeply involved in Bohr's work on correspondence and complementarity. The Klein-Nishina formula (1929) convinced many physicists of the soundness of Dirac's relativistic equation, in spite of difficulties -- one of them known as Klein's paradox. Professor of mathematical physics, Stockholm Högskola, 1930-62. Worked on statistical mechanics, superconductivity (with Jens Lindhard, 1945), distributions of chemical elements and cosmology (cosmological model with Alfvén, 1963). Died in Stockholm 1977.

Note Author: Pors, Felicity

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