Education and appointments
Born in Lund, Siegbahn was the son of physicist Manne Siegbahn. He studied physics, mathematics and chemistry in Uppsala and graduated in Stockholm in 1944. After work at the Nobel Institute he became a professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in 1951 and at Uppsala in 1954.
References: [1]
Measuring emitted electrons
A sufficiently energetic photon can eject an electron from an atom. In the 1950s Siegbahn developed precise measurements of the emitted electrons’ energies to investigate atomic and molecular energy levels. High resolution distinguished nearby spectral features rather than simply detecting electron emission.
References: [2]
ESCA and chemical analysis
Siegbahn and his team developed electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis, ESCA, for atoms, molecules and solids. Books published in 1967 and 1969 documented this programme. It analysed electron energies, distinguishing it from his father’s principal work on X-ray wavelengths.