Herman Feshbach ( born 2.02.1917) is an American theoretical physicist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1969). He was born in New York. He graduated from New York University (1937) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1942). He has worked at the latter since 1945 (as professor from 1954, in 1967 —73 as director of the Center for Theoretical Physics, and from 1973 as head of the Department of Physics).
His work was in the field of spectroscopy, nuclear physics, meson physics, the theory of nuclear forces, quantum theory, mathematical physics and elementary particle physics. Together with V. Weisskopf he developed the schematic theory of nuclear reactions, and he substantiated and developed (1954) the optical model of the nucleus.
In 1980 — 81 he was president of the American Physical Society. The T. Bonner Prize (1973) and others.