Prof. Wojciech Rubinowicz (1889-1974)

Wojciech Rubinowicz, professor of theoretical physics at Warsaw University and at the Institute of Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, ordinary member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, was born in 1889 in Bukovina, where his father had emigrated after taking part in the 1863 January Uprising. Rubinowicz studied physics at the University of Chernyovtsy, where he obtained his PhD in 1914. In 1916 he moved to Munich, where he met Arnold Sommerfeld and, in 1917, became his assistant. After two years in Munich, Rubinowicz at first returned to Chernyovtsy, moving next to Vienna in 1919. After visiting Copenhagen in 1920, where he was invited by Niels Bohr, he went to Yugoslavia to become professor of theoretical physics at the University of Ljubljana. He settled down in Lvov in 1922 as professor of theoretical physics at Lvov Technical University, and from 1937 also at the Jan Kazimierz University. He stayed in Lvov until 1946, when he moved to Warsaw to become professor of theoretical physics at Warsaw University, and in 1953 also at the Institute of Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He retired in 1960, but remained actively engaged in research until the last days of his life.

In his scientific work, Rubinowicz concentrated mainly on diffraction theory, the quantum theory of radiation, and mathematical physics.

In his favorite field, diffraction theory, he is credited with reestablishing the Young view at a mathematically rigorous level. In 1917, he transformed the Kirchhoff diffraction integral into what is now known as the Rubinowicz representation. He continued to work on diffraction theory throughout his whole life, presenting his results and views in the book "Die Beugungswelle in der Kirchhoffschen Theorie der Beugung" (1957, 1966).

What is generally considered to be his most important contribution to modern physics is his work on electric dipole and quadrupole radiation. In 1918, Rubinowicz formulated the selection and polarization rules for electric dipole radiation. From 1928 to 1930, he worked out the theory of electric quadrupole radiation. His selection and intensity rules for this radiation explained the mystery of "forbidden" spectral lines (that had been observed in 1928 in the spectra of planetary nebulae), which he rightly interpreted as quadrupole transitions. Other predictions of his theory were also soon fully confirmed by experiments.

As one would expect from an associate of Sommerfeld, Rubinowicz was a master of mathematical physics. Best known perhaps is his uniqueness theorem for the initial value problem for the wave equation (1917), and also his work on the polynomial method of solving the eigenvalue problems in quantum mechanics, described in his book "Sommerfeldsche Polynommethode" (1972).

He was an excellent lectures of a definite type. Rather than make general remarks and verbal comments, he always preferred to present complete calculations, and this he did to perfection.

In his long academic career, he educated whole generations of physicists, and his teaching and research work won him many devoted pupils. In Poland, devastated by two world wars, his continuous activity had an impact on the development of physics which is hard to overestimate.