Christian Møller

Christian Møller (22 December 1904 in Hundslev, Als – 14 January 1980 in Ordrup) was a Danish chemist and physicist who made fundamental contributions to the theory of relativity, theory of gravitation and quantum chemistry.[1] He is known for Møller–Plesset perturbation theory[2] and Møller scattering.

Christian Møller, 1963 at Copenhagen

His suggestion in 1938 to Otto Frisch that the newly discovered process of nuclear fission might create surplus energy, led Frisch to conceive of the concept of the nuclear chain reaction, leading to the Frisch–Peierls memorandum, which kick-started the development of nuclear energy through the MAUD Committee and the Manhattan Project. [3]

Møller was the director of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)'s Theoretical Study Group between 1954 and 1957 and later a member of the same organization's Scientific Policy Committee (1959-1972).[4]

Møller Tetrad Theory of Gravitation

In 1961, Møller[5][6] showed that a tetrad description of gravitational fields allows a more rational treatment of the energy-momentum complex than in a theory based on the metric tensor alone. The advantage of using tetrads as gravitational variables was connected with the fact that this allowed to construct expressions for the energy-momentum complex which had more satisfactory transformation properties than in a purely metric formulation.

Books

References
  1. Turkevich, John; Turkevich, Ludmilla (1980). Prominent scientists of continental Europe. Elsevier. ISBN 0-444-00046-1.
  2. Kragh, Helge (1992). "Relativistic Collisions: The Work of Christian Møller in the Early 1930s". Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. 43 (4): 299–328. doi:10.1007/BF00374762. S2CID 121494792.
  3. Frisch 1979, p. 118.
  4. Pors, Felicity. "Møller, Christian (1904-1980)". Niels Bohr Archive. Retrieved 2019-07-12.
  5. Møller, Christian (1961). "Conservation laws and absolute parallelism in general relativity". Mat. Fys. Dan. Vid. Selsk. 1 (10): 1–50.
  6. Møller, Christian (1961). "Further remarks on the localization of the energy in the general theory of relativity". Ann. Phys. 12 (1): 118–133. Bibcode:1961AnPhy..12..118M. doi:10.1016/0003-4916(61)90148-8.
  7. The National Library of Australia's Catalogue


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