Karl Manne Georg Siegbahn was a Swedish physicist born on December 3, 1886, and he died on September 26, 1978. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1924 for his work in X-ray spectroscopy.

Education and career

Karl Manne Georg Siegbahn was born on December 3, 1886, in Örebro, Sweden. His parents were Nils Reinhold Georg Siegbahn, a station master, and Emma Sofia Mathilda Zetterberg.

Siegbahn graduated from school in Stockholm in 1906 and began his studies at Lund University the same year. During his education, he worked as an assistant to Johannes Rydberg. In 1908, he studied at the University of Göttingen. He earned his Ph.D. from Lund University in 1911 with a thesis titled Magnetic Field Measurements. He became an acting professor for Rydberg when Rydberg’s health worsened and took over as a full professor in 1920 after Rydberg’s death. In 1923, Siegbahn moved to Uppsala University to become a professor of physics.

In 1937, Siegbahn was named Research Professor of Experimental Physics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1988, this position was renamed the Manne Siegbahn Institute (MSI). Since then, the institute’s research groups have been reorganized, but the name remains in use for the Manne Siegbahn Laboratory at Stockholm University.

X-ray spectroscopy

In 1914, Siegbahn started studying X-ray spectroscopy. At first, he used the same kind of spectrometer that Henry Moseley had used to find the connection between the frequency of characteristic X-rays from elements and their position in the periodic table. Soon after, Siegbahn created better equipment that let him measure X-ray wavelengths from different elements very precisely. He also discovered that some of the spectral lines Moseley had found were made up of more parts. By studying these parts and improving the spectrometer, Siegbahn gained nearly complete knowledge of the electron shell. He created a system for naming the unique spectral lines in X-ray spectroscopy, called the Siegbahn notation. Siegbahn's precise measurements helped advance many areas of quantum theory and atomic physics.

Family

Siegbahn married Karin Högbom in 1914. They had two children: Bo Siegbahn (1915–2008), a diplomat and politician, and Kai Siegbahn (1918–2007), a physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1981 for his contribution to the development of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.

Works

• The Study of X-Rays (1925)

• Title page from The Study of X-Rays (1925)
• Table of contents from The Study of X-Rays (1925)
• First page from The Study of X-Rays (1925)
• Figure from The Study of X-Rays (1925)