Nicolaas Bloembergen is a Dutch-American physicist and Nobel laureate. He received his Ph.D. degree from University of Leiden under Cor Gorter in 1948; while pursuing his PhD at Harvard, Bloembergen also worked part-time as a graduate research assistant for Edward Mills Purcell at the MIT Radiation Laboratory. He became a professor at Harvard University in Applied Physics. He was brought up in the Protestant household. Bloembergen enrolled in 1938 at the University of Utrecht to study physics. Bloembergen left the war ravaged Netherlands in 1945 to pursue graduate studies at Harvard University. Six weeks before his arrival, Harvard Professor Edward M. Purcell discovered nuclear magnetic resonance. Bloembergen was hired to develop a first NMR machine. While at Harvard he enjoyed classes from J. Schwinger, J. H. van Vleck, and E. C. Kemble. His thesis Nuclear Magnetic Relaxation was submitted in Leiden, where he passed qualifying criteria. After a brief postdoctoral appointment with C. J. Gorter in the Netherlands, he joined Harvard where he was named a junior fellow of Society of Fellows in 1949 and associate professor in 1951. 

March 11th, 1920 in Dordrecht  /  Died:   Sep 5th, 2017