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Romanian physicist
Few scientists have managed to enroll their names in physics, along with certain equations. We acknowledge the set of Newton’s equations on mechanics, the electromagnetic field equations established by Maxwell - and yet only a few. It is therefore a very special honor, as in theoretical physics, at the proposal of the great French scientist Louis de Broglie, meson field equations to be named "Proca equations." But who was Alexander Proca?
Born in Bucharest in 1897, he attended high school in his hometown, and also there he enrolled in 1915 at the Mathematics Department of the Faculty of Sciences. After one year, Romania entered the First World War and Proca attended Engineer Officers School, which he graduated in 1917 as head of the class. Afterwards, he took part in the fighting on the front. At the end of the war, he became a student in Bucharest Polytechnic, which he concluded as head of the class, in 1922. He practiced for a short period teaching at the Polytechnic, as assistant at the Department of Electricity and Electronics, working as well as a production engineer, where he promoted the introduction of electricity in the oil industry. He also published a booklet on this purpose (1924). In 1925, he was sent to specialize in Paris, where, attending the Faculty of Science, he got a degree in physics (1928). Afterwards, he worked in research, at both "Institute of Radium", under the leadership of Marie Curie and Institute of Mathematics "Henri Poincare".
At the latter institute he prepared his doctoral thesis, which combined research in two areas of top modern physics: relativity and the electron theory developed by Dirac. In 1933 he obtained his Ph.D. title, with the conviction even then that he was called to have an important word to say in theoretical physics worldwide. He demonstrated theoretically independent of the Japanese H. Yukava, the possibility of mesons existence and after their effective discovery, he became an authority on the study of these particles. During the Second World War, Proca worked for a while as a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Porto (1940-1944) and thereafter, until the end of his life, he was the leader of the Theoretical Physics Seminar of Sorbonne (1945-1955) and he also was research director of the Center for Scientific Research of France. Post mortem, on Louis de Broglie's proposal, he was awarded with a top prize of the Academy of Sciences in Paris.
Proca's theoretical contributions are many. In addition to "Proca equations", he developed significant theses on nuclear forces, he revealed that some particles can turn into others, he developed a theory by which all elementary particles could be distinct states of a single truly fundamental particle, thus being a forerunner of modern ideas such as the quark’s one. He obtained new results in the structure of electromagnetic field domain, in the study of light, quantum mechanics, etc. Alexander Proca was at the same time a remarkable experimenter. Here's how the great physicist Marie Curie characterized him: "Any time I have a difficult scientific problem in the institute, which requires great patience, skill, dexterity of the experimenter and meticulosity, I call Mr. Proca ... you, Romanians, can pride yourself with a researcher in science, the size of Mr. Proca".
He died in 1955, on full power of creation, killed by a merciless disease, after a few days earlier he insisted on taking part in the opening of the Sorbonne Theoretical Physics Seminar. He led this Seminar for a decade, but his address was delivered by a colleague. Among the large audience was our great mathematician S. Stoilow, the Romanian Ambassador in France.
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variant spelling:
Proca, Alexandru
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Curriculum vitae
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* 1897
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Bucureşti, Romania
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born
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1915
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Bucureşti, Romania
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1922
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Bucureşti, Romania
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Engineer
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1925
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Paris
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Physicist
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1933
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Paris
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Ph.D.
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† 1955
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Paris
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died
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