Walter Lewin

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Walter H. G. Lewin is currently a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He earned his Ph.D. degree in nuclear physics in 1965 at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Walter Lewin came to MIT in January 1966 as a post-doctoral associate, and became an assistant professor later that year[1]. He joined an x-ray astronomy group at MIT and conducted all-sky balloon surveys with George W. Clark. Through the late seventies, there were about twenty successful balloon flights. These balloon surveys led to the discovery of five new x-ray sources, which doubled the number known at the time. Furthermore, some of these x-ray sources were found to be varying, and some were x-ray flares. The rockets used by other researchers could not have discovered that the x-ray sources varied because they were only in the air for a few minutes, whereas the balloons could be in the air for many hours. The surveys also resulted in the discovery of GX 1+4, which was the first slowly rotating X-ray pulsar found. Walter Lewin received the "2003 Everett Moore Baker Memorial Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching" award. Some of his lectures are available online in video format. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

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