Jeno Barnothy

* Košice, October 28, 1904 - † Evanston, Illinois, USA, October 11, 1996 / engineer-astrophysicist, university professor ; ; After obtaining his engineering degree, he worked as a domestic scholarship holder at the Pázmány Péter University, at the Physics Institute led by Károly Tangl. In 1928, he joined the Forró Magdolna cosmic radiation research. He was excellent at radio technology, and the cosmic radiation measuring equipment – of which he had a significant part in the design and construction – operated reliably for many tens of thousands of hours. First, they further developed the technique of Geiger-Müller counter tubes and coincidence circuits (at that time, a coincidence circuit with a very good resolution – 10-5 s – was used), building one of the world's first telescopes to help measure cosmic radiation. First, they studied the isotropy of cosmic rays, the periodicity of sidereal time, and the energy spectrum of cosmic ray particles up to very high energies. In 1933, he wrote his doctoral thesis on the solar components of cosmic rays. On Christmas 1938, he married his research partner, Magdolna Forró, with whom he lived a happy marriage for 55 years. At home, they won the Academy Medal and the Society's Eötvös Medal, and they taught at the university with great pleasure. The research couple also investigated the absorption of cosmic rays in the atmosphere and deep underground in the Dorog coal mine. As a theoretical physicist, he was a thinker who was attracted to large, comprehensive theories. His theory, presented in 1945, sought to explain the nature of elementary particles, several fundamental questions about the structure of the universe, and the origin of the magnetic fields of celestial bodies. Although his arguments remained without response, and the problems he outlined were not explained in the way he indicated, his theory can still be said to be clear and free from internal contradictions. Ervin Fenyves (1924–) began his doctoral work with Barnóthy. They emigrated to the United States in 1948. From 1948 to 1953, he lectured on physics at Barat College in Lake Forest, Illinois, and then worked for two years in Chicago, at the Nuclear Instruments and Chemical Co., as a senior physicist. From 1955 he was the technical director of Forro Scientific Co., which he founded with his wife, and from 1961 he served as president of the Biomagnetic Research Foundation, where Jenő Barnóthy's interest turned even more towards astrophysics. His greatest achievement was the assumption and demonstration of the gravitational lensing effect of quasars discovered in the 1960s. He was primarily concerned with the effect of the magnetic field on living beings, but he also did electronic research, the results of which are indicated by several patents. ; ; His main works: ; Coincidence registration method with 10-5 sec resolution capacity (Die Naturwissenschaften 47., p. 835.), 1933, ; Die durchdringende Strahlung hinter mehr als 300 m Wasseräquivalent (Zeitschr. f. Phys. 115.), 1941, ; Growth-rate of mice in static magnetite fields (Nature 200. 86.), ; The problem of elementary particles and the origin of the earth's magnetic field (Earth Magnetic Bulletins, 2.), 1947.