David Shoenberg. 4 January 1911 — 10 March 2004

Abstract

David Shoenberg was the last surviving pioneer of British low-temperature physics, having outlived Nicholas Kurti FRS, who died at the age of 90 in 1988, and J. S. (Jack) Allen, who was nearly 93 when he died in 2001. At the time they began work, before World War II, liquid helium was a rare commodity. In England it was made first in Oxford (1933), with Cambridge following a year later; L. C. Jackson in Bristol could liquefy hydrogen, which was used occasionally to prime a small helium liquefier. Before the outbreak of war halted academic research, all three centres had made significant discoveries in magnetism, superconductivity and superfluidity. P. L. Kapitza's expansion engine regularly supplied liquid helium for Cambridge and, on a few occasions, the other two; it was the forerunner of S. C. Collins's design of commercial liquefier, which, with generous postwar government support for research, made the USA the most prolific performer in low-temperature physics. But the English laboratories built on their prewar distinction and were soon active once more after 1945, with Shoenberg a leading figure. The work he initiated, particularly on the de Haas-van Alphen effect, has continued to spread across the world and into realms of thought he never contemplated in his active years. BIOGRAPHICAL OUTLINE David's father, Isaac Shoenberg, was from Pinsk, a predominantly Jewish city within the Russian Pale. As a highly talented engineer he was permitted to move to St Petersburg, where he designed and set up the first radio stations in Russia. It was there that David was born in December 1910, but his birthday became 4 January 1911 when, after the revolution, the Gregorian calendar was adopted. He was the fourth of five children, survived by his younger sister, the psychiatrist Dr Elizabeth Shoenberg. Happening to visit England for a conference one winter, in about 1912, Isaac was delighted to find it still green, and the people criticizing

Meissner Effect: History of Development and Novel Aspects

“…As known, diamagnetism of non-superconducting materials, being essentially a quantum phenomenon [39,42], is successfully described by the classical Langevin theory; the volume magnetic susceptibility χ in this theory is identical to that in the quantum theory [43]. A similar (but semi-classical) approach, as we will see below, may work for superconductors 28 . An important advantage of the classical approach is transparency of the physi- 27 Referring to Pippard, Shoenberg writes that to meet the law we must suppose that there is an opposite contact potential difference varying with the field in such a way to compensate this e.m.f.…”

“…13 In the first edition of Shoenberg's book [7] (1938) the London theory was hardly mentioned. Pippard recollects, that when he asked why, Shoenberg said that Landau thought it ill-founded [28]. For reference: Shoenberg wrote this book being in Kapitza's institute in Moscow, where Landau transferred from Kharkov Physical-Technical Institute after arrest of Shubnikov in 1937.…”

“…An evident strangeness of such a supposition (the contact potential can be easily excluded by using the resistive circuit of the same metal as the sample, as is always done in studies of the Hall effect (see, e.g., [41])) and other remarks throughout Shoenberg's book show that he and Pippard (see also a footnote on p. 20 in [8]) well saw not only the merits of the London theory. 28 In both cases this can be explained by the compensation of electron spins (either in molecules of conventional diamagnetics or in Cooper pairs of superconductors), which makes electrons responsible for the magnetic properties effectively spinless. The latter, in turn, excludes the appearance of Planck's constant in the formula for the magnetic susceptibility of these materials.…”

Meissner Effect: History of Development and Novel Aspects

“…13 In the first edition of Shoenberg's book [9] (1938) the London theory was hardly mentioned. Pippard recollects, that when he asked why, Shoenberg said that Landau thought it ill-founded [30]. For reference: Shoenberg wrote this book being in Kapitza's institute in Moscow, where Landau transferred from Kharkov Physical-Technical Institute after arrest of Shubnikov in 1937.…”

“…On the other hand, Eq. ( 26) implies that in zero field the center of mass of the paired electrons is at rest (with respect to the sample) and electrons in each pair, separated by the coherent length 30 , orbit their center of mass, like, e.g., proton and electron in a hydrogen atom 31 . Therefore, each Cooper pair possesses the kinetic angular momentum 0 and the magnetic moment 0 = 0 , where is the gyromagnetic ratio.…”