EDMUND CLIFTON STONER ( 1899 - 1968 ), the british physicist, one of the founders of the physics of magnetism, in particular,

the magnetism of metallic substances. His works lead to the formulation the first workable model of the magnetism of band or

itinerant electrons, the so-called STONER MODEL. Stoner was born in East Molesey, Surrey and educated at Bolton Grammar

School, 1910-1918, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, 1918-1921 where he read for the Natural Sciences Tripos specialising in

physics. In 1919 he developed diabetes which entailed a restricted diet and varying periods of hospitalisation before a regular

Insuline regime became possible in 1927. He worked with Rutherford as a graduate student at the Cavendish

Laboratory, Cambridge from 1921 to 1924 when he was appointed Lecturer in Physics at Leeds University. He

remained at Leeds for the rest of his life, as Reader in Physics, 1927-1939, Professor of Theoretical Physics, 1939-1951,

and Cavendish Professor of Physics, 1951-1963, in succession to R. Whiddington (q.v.). For most of his life (he married

in 1951) Stoner was solely responsible for his ageing mother and this, taken together with his diabetes, restricted

much of his activity to Leeds, and he undertook few outside activities. His research interests were in magnetism and

low temperatures.

The main achievements of E. Stoner are the formulation of a criterion of the ferromagnetism of the free Fermi gas

(Stoner criterion 1936) and method which relate the Weiss molecular field with the band structure of a substance.

Stoner theory was first developed in Leeds in the 1930's. The theory of ferromagnetism prevalent in this period was

that developed by Heisenberg. This involved localized electron in direct exchange interaction. This Heisenberg model

was of course designed to give a physical interpretation of the molecular field proposed at 1907 by Weiss. For non-

metals such as ferrites the model is suitable very well. For metals, however, the works of Slater and many others had

demonstrated that the d-electrons of nickel and iron have energy levels distributed quasicontinuously in energy bands

leading to a situation which can not be described by the Heisenberg model.

The STONER MODEL gave an alternative to the Heisenberg model; it continued to use the Weiss molecular field

hypothesis, even without clear justification how to interpret this field under conditions of delocalization. Stoner

insisted that the density of states of the non-localized electrons must enter the formalism centrally. This is the basis

of the STONER MODEL.

BIBLIOGRAPHY of E. C. STONER (Leeds University Page).

Papers and correspondence of Edmund Clifton Stoner

BOOKS:
Stoner, Edmund C. MAGNETISM AND ATOMIC STRUCTURE. 1926
Stoner, Edmund C. MAGNETISM AND MATTER. 1934

AL Kuzemsky, JINR Dubna 2006     (original site)