LONDON, FRITZ WOLFGANG

born March 7, 1900, Breslau, Ger. [now Wroclaw, Pol.] died March 30, 1954, Durham, N.C., U.S. German-American physicist who, with Walter Heitler, devised (1927) the first quantum mechanical treatment of the hydrogen molecule. London was educated at the universities of Bonn, Frankfurt, Gttingen, Munich (Ph.D., 1921), and Paris. He was a Rockefeller research fellow at Zrich and Rome and a lecturer at the University of Berlin. From 1933 to 1936 he was a research fellow at the University of Oxford and then went to the University of Paris as master and director of research. In 1939 he immigrated to the United States to become professor of theoretical chemistry at Duke University, Durham, N.C., and from 1953 he was James B. Duke professor of chemical physics there. He became a U.S. citizen in 1945. His publications include two volumes on Superfluids (1950, 1954). London's theory of the chemical binding of homopolar molecules marked the beginning of modern quantum mechanical treatment of the hydrogen molecule and is considered one of the most important advances in modern chemistry. With his brother, Heinz London, he developed (1935) the phenomenological theory of superconductivity, providing a new foundation for the understanding of molecular forces and clarifying the connection between pure quantum phenomena and many of the most striking facts of chemistry. Interactive map of Greater London.