London, Fritz (Wolfgang) (1900–1954)

German-born physicist. While a student in Zürich, he published his pioneering quantum theory of chemical bonding in 1927. In 1930 his quantum mechanical interpretation of the Van der Waals intramolecular forces made them known as ‘London forces’. Fleeing the Nazis in 1933, London and his physicist brother Heinz London, moved to Oxford, England, where the two developed the London equations on superconductivity in 1935. Fritz London moved on to the USA to join the faulty at Duke University in 1939, where he continued to contribute to the study of superfluidity and cryogenics (1939–54). London was born in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland).