Samuel Goudsmit

Samuel Goudsmit
Goudsmit in c. 1940
Born
Samuel Abraham Goudsmit

(1902-07-11)July 11, 1902
The Hague, Netherlands
DiedDecember 4, 1978(1978-12-04) (aged 76)
Alma materUniversity of Leiden (Ph.D) (1927)
Known for
Spouses
Jaantje Logher
(m. 1927; div. 1960)
Irene Bejach
(m. 1960)
Children
  • Esther Marianne Goudsmit
AwardsNational Medal of Science (1976)
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
InstitutionsUniversity of Michigan
Doctoral studentsRobert Bacher

Samuel Abraham Goudsmit (July 11, 1902 – December 4, 1978) was a Dutch-American physicist famous for jointly proposing the concept of electron spin with George Eugene Uhlenbeck in 1925.

Goudsmit, along with Uhlenbeck, was nominated numerous times for the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of electron spin but never won, despite strong support from nominators. I. I. Rabi remarked that the omission of Goudsmit and Uhlenbeck from the Nobel Prize list "will always be a mystery to me."