Robert Hofstadter's Birth Card: The 7 of Spades

In the record

Robert Hofstadter (February 5, 1915 – November 17, 1990) was an American physicist. The birth-card coordinate for February 5 is the 7 of Spades — a calendar position, not a forecast of the 1961 Physics prize.

Nobel Prize record

• 1961 The Nobel Prize in Physics — for his pioneering studies of electron scattering in atomic nuclei and for his thereby achieved discoveries concerning the structure of the nucleons

The 7 of Spades coordinate

Robert Hofstadter's birthday maps to the 7 of Spades (The Questioning Mind). Card Blueprints treats that as a 365-day coordinate: solar value = 55 − (2 × month + day), and the year is unused. It is not a prediction about a Nobel Prize and not a verdict on Robert Hofstadter. The card's own language, quoted as system copy rather than biography: You study the hard pattern until you can name it, then you do the next honest thing.

Live 7 of Spades meaning page

Robert Hofstadter in the public record

He was the joint winner of the 1961 Nobel Prize in Physics (together with Rudolf Mössbauer) "for his pioneering studies of electron scattering in atomic nuclei and for his consequent discoveries concerning the structure of nucleons". Hofstadter was born in New York City on February 5, 1915, to Polish Jewish immigrants Louis Hofstadter, a salesman, and Henrietta, née Koenigsberg. He attended elementary and high schools in New York City and entered City College of New York, graduating with a B.S. degree magna cum laude in 1935 at the age of 20, and was awarded the Kenyon Prize in Mathematics and Physics. He also received a Charles A. Coffin Foundation Fellowship from the General Electric Company, which enabled him to attend graduate school at Princeton University, where he earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at the age of 23. His doctoral dissertation was titled "Infra-red absorption by light and heavy formic and acetic acids." He did his post-doctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania and was an assistant professor at Princeton before joining Stanford University. Hofstadter taught at Stanford from 1950 to 1985. In 1942 he married Nancy Givan (1920–2007), a native of Baltimore.

Summarised from the lead section of the Wikipedia article Robert Hofstadter (CC BY-SA 4.0). No biographical facts were written for this page beyond that article.

Where the record meets the 6 of Spades

A card is a calendar coordinate, not a cause. What follows sets one line of the card's own published language beside one sentence of the sourced record, paired by a documented rule. It is a resemblance offered for the reader to weigh — not a claim about Robert Hofstadter, and not a forecast of a Nobel Prize.

You use what you have already walked through without requiring anyone else to be in pain for it to count. You feel responsibility for helping others think clearly. You're the teacher, the counselor, the one people ask for perspective. Your mind is oriented toward truth and guidance.

1961 Nobel Prize in Physics, joint winner with Rudolf Mössbauer, "for his [Hofstadter's] pioneering studies of electron scattering in atomic nuclei and for his consequent discoveries concerning the structure of nucleons." Stanford University has an annual lecture series named after Hofstadter, the Robert Hofstadter Memorial Lectures, which consists of two lectures each year, one oriented toward the general public and the other oriented toward scientists.

Paired on shared wording: oriented, toward.

Also on the record

1. They had three children: Laura, Molly, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Douglas Hofstadter.
2. In 1948 Hofstadter filed a patent on this for the detection of ionizing radiation by this crystal.
3. These thallium-activated sodium iodide detectors are widely used for gamma ray detection to this day.
4. Robert Hofstadter coined the term fermi, symbol fm, in honor of the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi (1901–1954), one of the founders of nuclear physics, in Hofstadter's 1956 paper published in the Reviews of Modern Physics journal, "Electron Scattering and Nuclear Structure".

Other laureates with this card

• Alan Hodgkin — 1963 Physiology or Medicine
• Arthur Kornberg — 1959 Physiology or Medicine
• Claude Cohen-Tannoudji — 1997 Physics
• John E. Walker — 1997 Chemistry
• Joseph E. Murray — 1990 Physiology or Medicine
• Ragnar Frisch — 1969 Economic Sciences
• Richard Zsigmondy — 1925 Chemistry
• Wangari Maathai — 2004 Peace

FAQ

What is Robert Hofstadter's birth card?

The 7 of Spades. February 5 maps to that card through the public Card Blueprints formula. The year of birth is not used.

Does a birth card predict a Nobel Prize?

No. These pages are coordinates, not fortune-telling. A birth card names a calendar day in a 52-card year. It does not forecast prizes, character, or fate.

Where do Robert Hofstadter's dates come from?

Birth date 1915-02-05 is the Nobel Prize API v2.1 day-precision date, verified against Wikidata P569 (CC0, day precision, Gregorian preferred). The two sources match. Year-only Nobel dates and Nobel↔Wikidata conflicts are dropped, not guessed. Page hooks and evidence come from the Wikipedia REST summary (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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