Alfred O. C. Nier

Alfred O. C. Nier
Nier in 1940 holding a glass mass spectrometer chamber.
Born
Alfred Otto Carl Nier

(1911-05-28)May 28, 1911
St. Paul, Minnesota
DiedMay 16, 1994(1994-05-16) (aged 82)
Minneapolis, Minnesota
NationalityAmerican
AwardsWilliam Bowie Medal (1992)
Scientific career
FieldsPhysicist
InstitutionsUniversity of Minnesota

Alfred Otto Carl Nier (May 28, 1911 – May 16, 1994) was an American physicist who pioneered the development of mass spectrometry.[1] He was the first to use mass spectrometry to isolate uranium-235 which was used to demonstrate that 235U could undergo fission and developed the sector mass spectrometer configuration now known as Nier-Johnson geometry.[2]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference obit was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Johnson, W.; Nier, A. (1957). "Atomic Masses in the Region Xenon to Europium". Physical Review. 105 (3): 1014–1023. Bibcode:1957PhRv..105.1014J. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.105.1014. ISSN 0031-899X.