- Gaja Alaga
Gaja Alaga (
Lemeš , 1924 -Zagreb , 1988) was aCroatia n theoreticalphysicist who specialised innuclear physics .He was born in noble family of
Bunjevac Croats in the village ofLemeš (today called "Svetozar Miletić") in northwesternBačka inKingdom of SHS (today in autonomous provinceVojvodina ,Serbia ).He was an
academician of theCroatian Academy of Sciences and Arts since 1968 and a professor at theUniversity of Zagreb , on Prirodoslovno-matematički fakultet. He worked in the Institute "Ruđer Bošković" inZagreb (thecapital city ofCroatia ), theNiels Bohr Institute inCopenhagen , theUniversity of California, Berkeley , andLudwig-Maximilians University inMunich .In 1955, cooperating with
Kurt Alder andBen Roy Mottelson , Alaga discovered theK-selection rules andintensity rules for beta and gamma transitions in deformed atom nuclei. This discovery was key to the development of new nuclei models which confirmed thatsubatomic particles can distort the shape of the nucleus. These models challengedAage Niels Bohr ,Ben Roy Mottelson andLeo James Rainwater 's earlier (1975Nobel Prize -winning) theory that the nucleus has a perfect spherical shape.Also in 1955, the journal "Physical Review" published Alaga's rules for beta and gamma transitions for heavily damaged atomic
orbit s. Both discoveries are known asAlaga rules , and are now in everyday use among nuclear scientists and in scientific literature.He was the editor of the scientific magazine "Fizika" from 1978 until his death in 1998.
He died in Zagreb in 1988. Today, a street in the
Trnje city district of Zagreb bears his name.Awards
*Republička nagrada "Ruđer Bošković" (1968)
External links
*hr icon [http://www.irb.hr/en/ Institute Ruđer Bošković]
*hr icon [http://www.knjiznica.phy.hr/fizicari/In_memoriam/alaga/alaga.aspx Središnja knjižnica za fiziku] Biografije
* [http://www.croatianhistory.net/etf/et22.html#alag History of Croatian science]
* [http://public.carnet.hr/zuh/English/nat_e.htm Exhibition: Centuries of Natural Science in Croatia] The development of Croatian physics since 1874
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