Otto Laporte (23.07.1902-28.03.1971) was an American physicist. He was born in Mainz (now in the FRG). He graduated from the University of Munich (1924). In 1924 — 26 he worked at the National Bureau of Standards (USA), and from 1926 at the University of Michigan (professor from 1940).
His research concerned atomic spectroscopy, the mechanics of fluids and the physics of high temperatures. He studied the spectrum of iron.
He found (1924) that in complex atoms the energy levels may be even or odd, and that the emission and absorption of a photon always lead to transitions in which an odd level goes over into an even one (the Laporte rule). The regularity Laporte noticed was a forerunner of the law of conservation of parity, discovered by E. Wigner. He used shock waves to produce high temperatures.