
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 4, 1995                   TAG: 9501040103
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J.                                LENGTH: Short

NOBEL-WINNING PHYSICIST, NUCLEAR DEVELOPER DIES

Eugene P. Wigner, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who played a prominent role in the development of the atomic bomb and nuclear energy, has died of pneumonia. He was 92.

Wigner died Sunday at the Medical Center of Princeton.

A professor emeritus in mathematical physics at Princeton University, Wigner won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1963 for his insight into quantum mechanics. Wigner used group theory to organize the quantum energy levels of electrons in atoms.

Together with fellow Hungarian expatriate Leo Szilard, Wigner persuaded Albert Einstein in 1939 to write to President Roosevelt about the potential to produce vast amounts of energy from uranium.

Wigner took a leave of absence from Princeton in 1942 to join a team at the University of Chicago working on the secret project to design reactors to produce the first plutonium for nuclear weapons.

He retired from active status on the Princeton faculty in 1971.

by CNB