Abstract
THE Holweck Prize and Medal were founded in 1945 as a memorial to Fernand Holweck, director of the Curie Laboratory of the Radium Institute in Paris, and to other French physicists who met their death during the occupation of France in 1940–44. The award, made jointly by the Physical Society and the Sociètè Francaise de Physique, is conferred alternately upon a French and an English physicist. This year the Prize and Medal are awarded to Prof. Yves Rocard, professor at the Sorbonne, and director of the Physics Laboratory of the Ècole Normale Supèrieure, University of Paris. During 1925–39 M. Rocard published many papers on the equation of state of gases, hydrodynamics, diffusion of light by liquids, the optics of the atmosphere, mechanics, acoustics, and the propagation of electromagnetic waves. He introduced molecular hypotheses into the equations of hydrodynamics ; he rediscovered the classical equations, determined the state of the liquid in the capillary layer which separates it from the vapour, and developed the theory of surface tension. These detailed studies of the structure of liquids enabled Rocard to determine the mechanism of the diffusion of light by an exact calculation of the inter-molecular field, and to give the classical theory of the Raman effect. In connexion with these investigations, he carried out a series of theoretical and experimental studies of the transparency of the atmosphere,. the range of projectiles and the visibility of signals.
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Holweck Prize : Prof. Y. Rocard. Nature 161, 552 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/161552a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/161552a0