Kusch, Polykarp, 1911–93, American physicist, b. Blankenburg, Germany, Ph.D. Univ. of Illinois, 1936. Kusch was a researcher, professor, and administrator at Columbia from 1937 to 1972 and a professor at the Univ. of Texas, Dallas, from 1972 until his retirement in 1982. He and Willis Lamb were jointly awarded the 1955 Nobel Prize in Physics, with Kusch cited for determining in 1947 the magnetic moment of the electron. He demonstrated through precise atomic beam studies that the actual value of the magnetic moment is greater than the theoretical value, which led to new findings and developments in quantum electrodynamics.
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