science · 17 January 1889 · 135 years ago
birth
Born 17 Jan 1889; died 28 Jul 1944 at age 55.
Ralph Howard Fowler was an English physicist and astronomer whose university education in mathematics led him to working on thermodynamics and statistical mechanics with important applications in physical chemistry. Turning to astronomy, he collaborated with Arthur Milne on the spectra of stars, and their temperatures, and pressures. He also worked on the statistical mechanics of white dwarf stars (1926) with P.A.M. Dirac, whom he had introduced to quantum theory. Fowler proposed that white dwarf stars consist of a degenerate gas of extremely high density.
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