Frederik Jozef Belinfante (6 January 1913 – 5 June 1991)[1][2] was a Dutch physicist and a professor at Purdue University.[3] He was a proponent of the hidden variable interpretation of quantum mechanics.[4] Belinfante was born in the Hague and was a student of H. A. Kramers at Leiden University.[2] His Ph.D. thesis, published in 1939, is called 'Theory of Heavy Quanta'.[5] Belinfante emigrated to Vancouver in 1946 and became an associate professor at the University of British Columbia. Two years later, in 1948, he moved to the United States and became a professor at Purdue. There, he studied quantum theory and cosmology.[2]

Frederik Jozef Belinfante
Born(1913-01-06)6 January 1913
The Hague
Died5 June 1991(1991-06-05) (aged 78)
Gresham, Oregon
NationalityDutch
Alma materLeiden University
Known forBelinfante–Rosenfeld stress–energy tensor
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
InstitutionsUniversity of British Columbia
Purdue University
Doctoral studentsDeng Jiaxian

While writing his Ph.D. thesis, Belinfante co-authored a paper with Wolfgang Pauli called 'On the statistical behaviour of known and unknown elementary particles'[6][2] Along with Léon Rosenfeld, Belinfante derived the Belinfante–Rosenfeld stress–energy tensor.

Belinfante's works include Measurement and Time Reversal in Objective Quantum Theory (1975) and Survey of Hidden Variable Theories (1973), both part of the Monographs in Natural Philosophy series.[7][8]

Personal life

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Belinfante was an avid philatelist with a large collection of Netherlands stamps. He was a contributor of articles on Netherlands philately to the journal of the American Society for Netherlands Philately.

References

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  1. ^ Belinfante, Johan. "Brief Vita for Johan G. F. Belinfante". Retrieved 2015-11-28.
  2. ^ a b c d Enz, Charles Paul (2002-01-01). No Time to be Brief: A Scientific Biography of Wolfgang Pauli. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198564799.
  3. ^ "Leon Rosenfeld letter to F.J. Belinfante 22-June-1972". UCI Libraries. University of California, Irvine. Retrieved 22 November 2015.
  4. ^ Jammer, Max (2011). Einstein and religion: physics and theology (Fifth ed.). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 231. ISBN 978-0-691-10297-9. Retrieved 22 November 2015.
  5. ^ Belinfante, F. J. (1939-01-01). Theory of Heavy Quanta: Proefschrift. Springer Netherlands. ISBN 9789401700108.
  6. ^ Pauli, W.; Belinfante, F. J. (1940-03-01). "On the statistical behaviour of known and unknown elementary particles". Physica. 7 (3): 177–192. Bibcode:1940Phy.....7..177P. doi:10.1016/S0031-8914(40)90104-5.
  7. ^ "Books by F. J. Belinfante". Amazon. Amazon. Retrieved 22 November 2015.
  8. ^ "Mathematics Genealogy Project".