Étienne Biéler
Étienne Samuel Biéler | |
|---|---|
| Born | 3 February 1895 Lausanne, Switzerland |
| Died | 25 July 1929 (aged 34) Geraldton, Western Australia |
| Citizenship | Canadian |
| Alma mater | McGill University (BSc 1915, MSc 1920) Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (PhD 1923) |
| Known for | strong interaction |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | Cavendish laboratory; McGill University |
| Thesis | The Law of Force in the Immediate Neighbourhood of the Atomic Nucleus (1923) |
| Doctoral advisor | James Chadwick |
Étienne Samuel Biéler (3 February 1895 – 25 July 1929) was a Swiss-born Canadian physicist who made important advances in the study of the strong interaction that holds the atomic nucleus together.
A graduate of McGill University, he worked at the Cavendish Laboratory, where he studied the atomic nucleus under Sir Ernest Rutherford and James Chadwick. A 1921 paper with Chadwick has been hailed as "marking the birth of the strong interactions". In his doctoral thesis, Biéler explored the strong interaction, and showed that it varied with the fourth power of the distance.
Biéler returned to Canada, where he was appointed assistant professor of physics at McGill. He became interested in geophysics, and he attempted to develop electrical methods for detecting hidden bodies of ore. He was given two years' leave from McGill to participate in an Imperial Geophysical Experimental Survey to try out various methods of ore detection. While in Australia he became ill and died of pneumonia on 28 July 1929.