Jump to content

Gustav Ludwig Hertz: Difference between revisions

Coordinates: 57°18′22″N 4°27′32″W / 57.30611°N 4.45889°W / 57.30611; -4.45889
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous edit
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
SuperGirl (talk | contribs)
982 edits
No edit summary
No edit summary
 
(360 intermediate revisions by more than 100 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
{{Short description|German laureates in Physics (1887–1975)}}
{{Infobox_Scientist
{{Infobox scientist
| name = Gustav Ludwig Hertz
| name =Gustav Ludwig Hertz
| image = GustavLudwigHertz.jpg|300px
| image =Gustav Hertz.jpg
| image_width = 300px
| image_size =
| caption = Gustav Ludwig Hertz
| alt =
| birth_date = [[July 22]] [[1887]]
| caption = Gustav Ludwig Hertz (1887–1975) ca. [[1925 in Germany|in 1925]].
| birth_place = [[Hamburg]], [[Germany]]
| birth_date ={{birth date|df=y|1887|7|22}}
| death_date = [[Berlin]], [[Germany]]
| death_place = [[October 30]] [[1975]]
| birth_place = [[Hamburg]], [[German Empire]]
| death_date ={{death date and age|df=y|1975|10|30|1887|7|22}}
| residence = [[Image:Flag_of_Germany.svg|20px|]] [[Germany]]
| death_place =[[Berlin]], Germany
| nationality = [[Image:Flag_of_Germany.svg|20px|]] [[Germany|German]]
| field = [[Physicist]]
| resting_place = [[Ohlsdorf Cemetery]]
| resting_place_coordinates = {{Coord|57|18|22|N|4|27|32|W|display=title}}<!--{{coord|53|37|29|10|N|10|27|32|E|type:landmark|display=inline,title}}-->
| work_institution = [[Halle University]]
| residence =
| alma_mater = [[Humboldt University of Berlin]]
| citizenship ={{GER}}
| doctoral_advisor = [[Heinrich Rubens]] and [[Max Planck]]
| nationality =[[People of Germany|German]]
| doctoral_students = <!--please insert-->
| fields =[[Physics]]
| known_for = [[Franck-Hertz experiment]]
| workplaces ={{ubl|[[Halle University]]|[[Technische Universität Berlin|Technical University Berlin]]|[[University of Leipzig]]|Institute G in Russia|[[Siemens|Siemens AG]]|[[Philips|Philips NV]]}}
| prizes = [[Nobel Prize in Physics|Nobel Prize]] (1925)
| alma_mater =[[Humboldt University of Berlin|University of Berlin]]
| religion =
| thesis_title =Über das ultrarote Adsorptionsspektrum der Kohlensäure in seiner Abhängigkeit von Druck und Partialdruck
| handedness =
| thesis_url =
| website =
| thesis_year = 1911
| footnotes = He is father of notable children [[Carl Hellmuth Hertz]] and [[Johannes Hertz]].
| doctoral_advisor = [[Heinrich Rubens]]
| academic_advisors = [[Max Planck]]
| doctoral_students = [[Heinz Pose]]<br>[[Werner Hartmann (physicist)|Werner Hartmann]]
| notable_students =
| known_for = [[Franck–Hertz experiment]]<br>[[Soviet atomic bomb project|Soviet program of nuclear weapons]]
| author_abbrev_bot =
| author_abbrev_zoo =
| influences =
| influenced =
| awards = [[File:Nobel Prize.png|10px]] [[Nobel Prize in Physics|Nobel Prize]] (1925)<br>[[File:Medal State Prize Soviet Union.png|10px]] [[USSR State Prize|Stalin Prize]] (1951)<br>[[File:MaxPlanck 2DM grau.jpg|10px]][[Max Planck Medal]] (1951)
| signature = <!--(filename only)-->
| signature_alt =
| footnotes =
| spouse = {{marriage|Ellen Dihlmann|1919|1941|end=d}}
| children = {{hlist|[[Carl Hellmuth Hertz|Carl]]|Johannes}}
| relatives = [[Heinrich Hertz]] (uncle)<br>[[Hans Hertz]] (grandson)
}}
}}
'''Gustav Ludwig Hertz''' ([[July 22]] [[1887]], [[Hamburg]] &ndash; [[October 30]] [[1975]], [[Berlin]]) was a [[Germany|German]] [[physicist]], and a nephew of [[Heinrich Rudolf Hertz]].


'''Gustav Ludwig Hertz''' ({{IPAc-en|h|ɜr|t|s}}; {{IPA|de|ˈɡʊs.taf ˈluːt.vɪç hɛʁt͡s|lang|De-Gustav Ludwig Hertz.ogg}}; 22 July 1887 – 30 October 1975)<ref name="Hertz" /> was a German physicist and a [[Nobel Prize in Physics|Nobel laureate in Physics]] for his work on inelastic electron collisions in gases.
Hertz won a [[Nobel Prize in Physics|Nobel Prize]] in [[1925]] for studies in cooperation with [[James Franck]] of [[electron]]s passing through [[gas]]. The [[Franck-Hertz experiment]] was an early [[physics]] experiment that provided support for the [[Bohr model]] of the [[atom]], a precursor to quantum mechanics. In [[1914]], an experiment probe of the energy levels of the atom was conducted. The now-famous Franck-Hertz experiment elegantly supported [[Niels Bohr]]'s model of the atom, with [[electron]]s orbiting the nucleus with specific, discrete energies.
He was the father of [[Carl Hellmuth Hertz]].


==Biography==
Gustav Ludwig Hertz was the son of a lawyer, Dr. Gustav Hertz, and his wife Auguste, née Arning. He attended the Johanneum School in Hamburg before commencing his university education at Göttingen in 1906; he subsequently studied at the Universities of Munich and Berlin, graduating in 1911. He was appointed Research Assistant at the Physics Institute of Berlin University in 1913 but, with the onset of World War I, he was mobilized in 1914 and severely wounded in action in 1915. Hertz returned to Berlin as Privatdozent in 1917. From 1920 to 1925 he worked in the physics laboratory of the Philips Incandescent Lamp Factory at Eindhoven.
Hertz was born in [[Hamburg]], the son of Auguste (née Arning) and a lawyer, Gustav Theodor Hertz (1858–1904),<ref name="Hertz"/> [[Heinrich Rudolf Hertz]]'s brother. He attended the [[Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums]] before studying at the [[Georg-August University of Göttingen]] (1906–1907), the [[Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich]] (1907–1908), and the [[Humboldt University of Berlin]] (1908–1911). He received his doctorate in 1911 under [[Heinrich Rubens|Heinrich Leopold Rubens]].<ref>Gustav Hertz ''Über das ultrarote Adsorptionsspektrum der Kohlensäure in seiner Abhängigkeit von Druck und Partialdruck. (Dissertation).'' (Vieweg Braunschweig, 1911)</ref><ref name="Mehra and Rechenberg, 2001, 197">Mehra and Rechenberg, 2001, 197.</ref>


From 1911 to 1914, Hertz was an assistant to Rubens at the University of Berlin. It was during this time that Hertz and [[James Franck]] performed experiments on inelastic electron collisions in gases,<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Franck | first1 = J. | last2 = Hertz | first2 = G. | year = 1914 | title = Über Zusammenstöße zwischen Elektronen und Molekülen des Quecksilberdampfes und die Ionisierungsspannung desselben | journal = Verh. Dtsch. Phys. Ges. | volume = 16 | pages = 457–467 }}</ref> known as the [[Franck–Hertz experiment]]s, and for which they received the [[Nobel Prize in Physics]] in 1925.<ref name="Hentschel 1996">Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see entry for Hertz.</ref>
In 1925, he was elected Resident Professor and Director of the Physics Institute of the University of Halle, and in 1928 he returned to Berlin as Director of the Physics Institute in the Charlottenburg Technological University. Hertz resigned from this post for political reasons in 1935 to return to industry as director of a research laboratory of the Siemens Company. From 1945 tot 1954 he worked as the head of a research laboratory in the Soviet Union, when he was appointed Professor and Director of the Physics Institute at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig. He was made emeritus in 1961, and since then he has lived in retirement, first in Leipzig and later in Berlin.


During World War I, Hertz served in the military from 1914. In 1915 he joined [[Fritz Haber]]'s unit that would introduce poisonous chlorine gas as a weapon.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Van der Kloot|first1=W.|title=April 1918: Five Future Nobel prize-winners inaugurate weapons of mass destruction and the academic-industrial-military complex|journal=Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond.|date=2004|volume=58|issue=2|pages=149–160|doi=10.1098/rsnr.2004.0053|s2cid=145243958}}</ref> He was seriously wounded in 1915. In 1917, he returned to the University of Berlin as a [[Privatdozent]]. In 1920, he took a job as a research physicist at the Philips Incandescent Lamp Factory in [[Eindhoven]], which he held until 1925.<ref name="Hertz">[http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1925/hertz-bio.html Hertz] – Nobel Biography.</ref>
Hertz's early research, for his thesis, involved studies on the infrared absorption of carbon dioxide in relation to pressure and partial pressure. Together with J. Franck he began his studies on electron impact in 1913 and before his mobilization, he spent much patient work on the study and measurement of ionization potentials in various gases. He later demonstrated the quantitative relations between the series of spectral lines and the energy losses of electrons in collision with atoms corresponding to the stationary energy states of the atoms. His results were in perfect agreement with Bohr's theory of atomic structure, which included the application of Planck's quantum theory.


===Career===
On his return to Berlin in 1928, it was his first task to rebuild the Physics Institute and re-establish the School, and he worked tirelessly towards this end. There he was responsible for a method of separating the isotopes of neon by means of a diffusion cascade.
In 1925, Hertz became ordinarius professor and director of the Physics Institute of the [[Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg]]. In 1928 he became ordinarius professor of experimental physics and director of the Physics Institute of the ''[[Technische Hochschule]] Berlin'' ("THB"), now [[Technische Universität Berlin]]. While there, he developed an isotope separation technique via gaseous diffusion. Since Hertz was an officer during World War I, he was temporarily protected from National Socialist policies and the [[Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service]], but eventually the policies and laws became more stringent, and at the end of 1934, he was forced to resign his position at THB, as he was classified as a "second degree part-Jew" (his paternal grandfather [[Gustav Ferdinand Hertz]] (originally named David Gustav Hertz) (1827–1914) had been Jewish as a child, before his whole family had converted to Lutheranism in 1834).<ref name="Wolff_2008">{{cite journal |author-first=Stefan L. |author-last=Wolff<!-- Since there are several authors named Stefan Wolff, the author of the above mentioned article is this one: http://www.deutsches-museum.de/forschung/wissenschaftl-mitarbeiter/dr-stefan-wolff/ --> |title=Juden wider Willen – Wie es den Nachkommen des Physikers Heinrich Hertz im NS-Wissenschaftsbetrieb erging |journal=Jüdische Allgemeine |date=4 January 2008 |url=http://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/article/view/id/1394}}</ref> He then took a position at [[Siemens]], as director of Research Laboratory II. While there, he continued his work on [[atomic physics]] and [[ultrasound]], but he eventually discontinued his work on isotope separation. He held this position until he departed for the Soviet Union in 1945.<ref name="Mehra and Rechenberg, 2001, 197"/><ref name="Hertz"/><ref>Hentschel, 1996, 23 and Appendix F – see entry for Hertz.</ref>


===In the Soviet Union===
Hertz has published many papers, alone, with Franck, and with Kloppers, on the quantitative exchange of energy between electrons and atoms, and on the measurement of ionization potentials. He also is the author of some papers concerning the separation of isotopes.


===="Pact to defect"====
Gustav Hertz wass Member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, and Corresponding Member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences; he is also Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Member of the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences, and Foreign Member of the Academy of Sciences U.S.S.R. He was recipient of the Max Planck Medal of the German Physical Society.
Hertz was concerned for his safety and, like his fellow Nobel laureate [[James Franck]], was looking to move to the USA or any other place outside Germany. So he made a pact with three colleagues: [[Manfred von Ardenne]], director of his private laboratory ''Forschungslaboratorium für Elektronenphysik'', [[Peter Adolf Thiessen]], ordinarius professor at the [[Humboldt University of Berlin]] and director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie (KWIPC) in [[Dahlem (Berlin)|Berlin-Dahlem]], and [[Max Volmer]], ordinarius professor and director of the Physical Chemistry Institute at the THB.<ref>[http://www.sachsen.de/sadra/887.htm sachen.de] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080325042138/http://www.sachsen.de/sadra/887.htm |date=25 March 2008 }} – ''Zur Ehrung von Manfred von Ardenne''.</ref> The pact was a pledge that whoever first made contact with the Soviets would speak for the rest. The objectives of their pact were threefold: (1) prevent plunder of their institutes, (2) continue their work with minimal interruption, and (3) protect themselves from prosecution for any political acts of the past.<ref>Heinemann-Grüder, 2002, 44.</ref> Before the end of World War II, Thiessen, a member of the [[Nazi Party]], had Communist contacts.<ref>Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Thiessen.</ref>


====Participation in Soviet program of nuclear weapons====
Professor Hertz was married in 1919, to Ellen née Dihlmann, who died in 1941. They had two sons, both physicists: Dr. Hellmuth Hertz, Professor at the Technical College in Lund, and Dr. Johannes Hertz, working at the Institute for Optics and Spectroscopy of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Professor Hertz married Charlotte, née Jollasse, in 1943. Gustav Hertz died on October 30, 1975.
On 27 April 1945, Thiessen arrived at von Ardenne's institute in an armored vehicle with a major of the Soviet Army, who was also a leading Soviet chemist.<ref name=Oleynikov>Oleynikov, 2000, pp 5, 10–13, 18, 21</ref> All four of the pact members were taken to the Soviet Union. Hertz was made head of Institute G, in Agudseri (Agudzery), about 10&nbsp;km southeast of [[Sukhumi]] and a suburb of Gul'rips (Gulrip'shi).<ref name=Oleynikov/><ref name="Naimark, 1995, 213">Naimark, 1995, 213.</ref> Topics assigned to Gustav Hertz's Institute G included:
(1) Separation of isotopes by diffusion in a flow of inert gases, for which Gustav Hertz was the leader,
(2) Development of a condensation pump, for which [[Justus Mühlenpfordt]] was the leader,
(3) Design and build a mass spectrometer for determining the isotopic composition of uranium, for which Werner Schütze was the leader,
(4) Development of frameless (ceramic) diffusion partitions for filters, for which Reinhold Reichmann was the leader, and
(5) Development of a theory of stability and control of a diffusion cascade, for which [[Heinz Barwich]] was the leader;<ref name=Oleynikov/><ref>Kruglov, 2002, 131.</ref>

Barwich had been deputy to Hertz at Siemens.<ref>Naimark, 1995, 209.</ref> Other members of Institute G were [[Werner Hartmann (physicist)|Werner Hartmann]] and Karl-Franz Zühlke.<ref>Maddrell, 2006, 179–180.</ref> Manfred von Ardenne was made head of Institute A. Goals of von Ardenne's Institute A included: (1) Electromagnetic separation of isotopes, for which von Ardenne was the leader, (2) Techniques for manufacturing porous barriers for isotope separation, for which Peter Adolf Thiessen was the leader, and (3) Molecular techniques for separation of uranium isotopes, for which [[Max Steenbeck]] was the leader.

In his first meeting with [[Lavrentiy Beria|Lavrentij Beria]], von Ardenne was asked to participate in building the bomb, but von Ardenne quickly realized that participation would prohibit his repatriation to Germany, so he suggested isotope enrichment as an objective, which was agreed to.

====Research at Sukhumi====
By the end of the 1940s, nearly 300 Germans were working at the institute, and they were not the total work force. Institute A was used as the basis for the Sukhumi Physical-Technical Institute in Sinop, a suburb of [[Sukhumi]].<ref name=Oleynikov/><ref name="Naimark, 1995, 213"/> Volmer went to the Scientific Research Institute No. 9 (NII-9)<ref>Today, NII-9 is the Bochvar All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Inorganic Materials, Bochvar VNIINM. See Oleynikov, 2000, 4.</ref> in Moscow; he was given a design bureau to work on the production of [[heavy water]]. In Institute A, Thiessen became leader for developing techniques for manufacturing porous barriers for isotope separation.<ref name=Oleynikov/>

In 1949, six German scientists, including Hertz, Thiessen, and Barwich were called in for consultation at [[Novouralsk|Sverdlovsk-44]], which was responsible for uranium enrichment. The plant, smaller than the American Oak Ridge [[K-25|gaseous diffusion plant]], was getting only a little over half of the expected 90% or higher enrichment.<ref>Holloway, 1994, 191–192.</ref>

After 1950, Hertz moved to Moscow. In 1951, Hertz was awarded a [[State Stalin Prize|Stalin Prize]], second class, with Barwich.<ref name=Oleynikov/> In that year, James Franck and Hertz were jointly awarded the [[Max Planck Medal]] by the [[Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft]]. Hertz remained in the Soviet Union until 1955.<ref name="Mehra and Rechenberg, 2001, 197"/>

====Return to the GDR====
Upon return from the Soviet Union, Hertz became ordinarius professor at the [[University of Leipzig]]. From 1955 to 1967, he was also the chairman of the Physical Society of the [[East Germany|Deutsche Demokratische Republik (GDR)]]; he was honorary chairman from 1967 to 1975.<ref name="Hentschel 1996"/>

===Personal life===
Gustav Hertz was a nephew of [[Heinrich Rudolf Hertz]] and a cousin of [[Mathilde Carmen Hertz]]. In 1919, Hertz married Ellen née Dihlmann, who died in 1941. They had two sons, [[Carl Helmut Hertz]] and Johannes Heinrich Hertz; both became physicists.<ref name="Hertz"/>

He died on 30 October 1975 in [[East Berlin]] at the age 88.

==Scientific memberships==
Hertz was a Member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, Corresponding Member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, an Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, a Member of the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences, and a Foreign Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.<ref name="Hertz"/>

==Publications==
*{{cite journal | last1 = Franck | first1 = J. | last2 = Hertz | first2 = G. | year = 1914 | title = Über Zusammenstöße zwischen Elektronen und Molekülen des Quecksilberdampfes und die Ionisierungsspannung desselben | journal = Verh. Dtsch. Phys. Ges. | volume = 16 | pages = 457–467 }}
*Gustav Hertz ''Über das ultrarote Adsorptionsspektrum der Kohlensäure in seiner Abhängigkeit von Druck und Partialdruck. (Dissertation).'' (Vieweg Braunschweig, 1911)
*Gustav Hertz (editor) ''Lehrbuch der Kernphysik I-III'' (Teubner, 1961–1966)
*Gustav Hertz (editor) ''Grundlagen und Arbeitsmethoden der Kernphysik'' (Akademie Verlag, 1957)
*Gustav Hertz ''Gustav Hertz in der Entwicklung der modernen Physik'' (Akademie Verlag, 1967)


==See also==
==See also==
*[[Electron diffraction]]
*[[Electron diffraction]]
*[[Electric glow discharge]]
*[[Electric glow discharge]]
*[[Franck–Hertz experiment]]
*[[Plasma window]]
*[[Plasma window]]
*[[Vacuum tube]]
*[[Vacuum tube]]
*[[Scattering]]
*[[Scattering]]
*[[Russian Alsos]]
* [http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/1925/hertz-bio.html Biography at Nobel.se]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
* Albrecht, Ulrich, Andreas Heinemann-Grüder, and Arend Wellmann ''Die Spezialisten: Deutsche Naturwissenschaftler und Techniker in der Sowjetunion nach 1945'' (Dietz, 1992, 2001) {{ISBN|3-320-01788-8}}
* Barwich, Heinz and Elfi Barwich ''Das rote Atom'' (Fischer-TB.-Vlg., 1984)
* Beneke, Klaus ''Die Kolloidwissenschaftler Peter Adolf Thiessen, Gerhart Jander, Robert Havemann, Hans Witzmann und ihre Zeit'' (Knof, 2000)
* Heinemann-Grüder, Andreas ''Die sowjetische Atombombe'' (Westfaelisches Dampfboot, 1992)
* Heinemann-Grüder, Andreas ''Keinerlei Untergang: German Armaments Engineers during the Second World War and in the Service of the Victorious Powers'' in Monika Renneberg and Mark Walker (editors) ''Science, Technology and National Socialism'' 30–50 (Cambridge, 2002 paperback edition) {{ISBN|0-521-52860-7}}
* Hentschel, Klaus (editor) and Ann M. Hentschel (editorial assistant and translator) ''Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources'' (Birkhäuser, 1996) {{ISBN|0-8176-5312-0}}
* Holloway, David ''Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy 1939–1956'' (Yale, 1994) {{ISBN|0-300-06056-4}}
* Kruglov, Arkadii ''The History of the Soviet Atomic Industry'' (Taylor and Francis, 2002)
* Maddrell, Paul "Spying on Science: Western Intelligence in Divided Germany 1945–1961" (Oxford, 2006) {{ISBN|0-19-926750-2}}
* [[Jagdish Mehra|Mehra, Jagdish]], and [[Helmut Rechenberg]] ''The Historical Development of Quantum Theory. Volume 1 Part 1 The Quantum Theory of Planck, Einstein, Bohr and Sommerfeld 1900–1925: Its Foundation and the Rise of Its Difficulties''. (Springer, 2001) {{ISBN|0-387-95174-1}}
* Naimark, Norman M. ''The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949'' (Belknap, 1995)
* Oleynikov, Pavel V. 2000. [http://cns.miis.edu/npr/pdfs/72pavel.pdf ''German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic Project'']. ''The Nonproliferation Review'' Volume 7, Number 2, 1 – 30 The author has been a group leader at the Institute of Technical Physics of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center in [[Snezhinsk]] (Chelyabinsk-70).

==External links==
*{{Commons category inline}}
*{{Nobelprize|name=Gustav Hertz}}
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20140221125415/http://www.sipt.org/photo.html SIPT] – Sukhumi Institute of Physics and Technology, on the website are published the photographs of the German nuclear physicists who had been working for the Soviet nuclear program


{{Nobel Prize in Physics}}
{{Nobel Prize in Physics Laureates 1901-1925}}
{{1925 Nobel Prize winners}}


{{Authority control}}
[[Category:Quantum Theory physicists|Hertz, Gustav Ludwig]]
[[Category:1887 births|Hertz, Gustav Ludwig]]
[[Category:1975 deaths|Hertz, Gustav Ludwig]]
[[Category:German physicists|Hertz, Gustav Ludwig]]
[[Category:Nobel laureates in Physics|Hertz, Gustav Ludwig]]
[[Category:German Nobel laureates|Hertz, Gustav Ludwig]]


[[bs:Gustav Ludwig Hertz]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hertz, Gustav Ludwig}}
[[Category:1887 births]]
[[ca:Gustav Ludwig Hertz]]
[[Category:1975 deaths]]
[[da:Gustav Ludwig Hertz]]
[[Category:Nobel laureates in Physics]]
[[de:Gustav Hertz]]
[[Category:German Nobel laureates]]
[[es:Gustav Hertz]]
[[Category:Jewish Nobel laureates]]
[[eu:Gustav Hertz]]
[[Category:20th-century German physicists]]
[[fr:Gustav Ludwig Hertz]]
[[Category:German experimental physicists]]
[[hr:Gustav Ludwig Hertz]]
[[Category:German people of Jewish descent]]
[[id:Gustav Hertz]]
[[Category:Scientists from Berlin]]
[[it:Gustav Hertz]]
[[Category:Scientists from Hamburg]]
[[sw:Gustav Hertz]]
[[Category:Humboldt University of Berlin alumni]]
[[nl:Gustav Ludwig Hertz]]
[[Category:German quantum physicists]]
[[ja:グスタフ・ヘルツ]]
[[Category:Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni]]
[[no:Gustav Hertz]]
[[Category:Academic staff of Leipzig University]]
[[pl:Gustav Ludwig Hertz]]
[[Category:Nuclear weapons program of the Soviet Union people]]
[[pt:Gustav Ludwig Hertz]]
[[Category:Academic staff of Technische Universität Berlin]]
[[ru:Герц, Густав Людвиг]]
[[Category:East German scientists]]
[[sl:Gustav Ludwig Hertz]]
[[Category:German expatriates in the Soviet Union]]
[[sr:Густав Лудвиг Херц]]
[[Category:Foreign members of the USSR Academy of Sciences]]
[[sv:Gustav Hertz]]
[[Category:Winners of the Max Planck Medal]]
[[Category:People educated at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums]]
[[Category:Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin]]
[[Category:Burials at the Ohlsdorf Cemetery]]

Latest revision as of 01:27, 16 December 2024

Gustav Ludwig Hertz
Gustav Ludwig Hertz (1887–1975) ca. in 1925.
Born(1887-07-22)22 July 1887
Hamburg, German Empire
Died30 October 1975(1975-10-30) (aged 88)
Berlin, Germany
Resting placeOhlsdorf Cemetery
57°18′22″N 4°27′32″W / 57.30611°N 4.45889°W / 57.30611; -4.45889
NationalityGerman
Citizenship Germany
Alma materUniversity of Berlin
Known forFranck–Hertz experiment
Soviet program of nuclear weapons
Spouse
Ellen Dihlmann
​
​
(m. 1919; died 1941)​
Children
RelativesHeinrich Hertz (uncle)
Hans Hertz (grandson)
Awards Nobel Prize (1925)
Stalin Prize (1951)
Max Planck Medal (1951)
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
Institutions
Thesis Über das ultrarote Adsorptionsspektrum der Kohlensäure in seiner Abhängigkeit von Druck und Partialdruck  (1911)
Doctoral advisorHeinrich Rubens
Other academic advisorsMax Planck
Doctoral studentsHeinz Pose
Werner Hartmann

Gustav Ludwig Hertz (/hɜːrts/; German: [ˈɡʊs.taf ˈluːt.vɪç hɛʁt͡s] ⓘ; 22 July 1887 – 30 October 1975)[1] was a German physicist and a Nobel laureate in Physics for his work on inelastic electron collisions in gases.

Biography

[edit]

Hertz was born in Hamburg, the son of Auguste (née Arning) and a lawyer, Gustav Theodor Hertz (1858–1904),[1] Heinrich Rudolf Hertz's brother. He attended the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums before studying at the Georg-August University of Göttingen (1906–1907), the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (1907–1908), and the Humboldt University of Berlin (1908–1911). He received his doctorate in 1911 under Heinrich Leopold Rubens.[2][3]

From 1911 to 1914, Hertz was an assistant to Rubens at the University of Berlin. It was during this time that Hertz and James Franck performed experiments on inelastic electron collisions in gases,[4] known as the Franck–Hertz experiments, and for which they received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1925.[5]

During World War I, Hertz served in the military from 1914. In 1915 he joined Fritz Haber's unit that would introduce poisonous chlorine gas as a weapon.[6] He was seriously wounded in 1915. In 1917, he returned to the University of Berlin as a Privatdozent. In 1920, he took a job as a research physicist at the Philips Incandescent Lamp Factory in Eindhoven, which he held until 1925.[1]

Career

[edit]

In 1925, Hertz became ordinarius professor and director of the Physics Institute of the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg. In 1928 he became ordinarius professor of experimental physics and director of the Physics Institute of the Technische Hochschule Berlin ("THB"), now Technische Universität Berlin. While there, he developed an isotope separation technique via gaseous diffusion. Since Hertz was an officer during World War I, he was temporarily protected from National Socialist policies and the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, but eventually the policies and laws became more stringent, and at the end of 1934, he was forced to resign his position at THB, as he was classified as a "second degree part-Jew" (his paternal grandfather Gustav Ferdinand Hertz (originally named David Gustav Hertz) (1827–1914) had been Jewish as a child, before his whole family had converted to Lutheranism in 1834).[7] He then took a position at Siemens, as director of Research Laboratory II. While there, he continued his work on atomic physics and ultrasound, but he eventually discontinued his work on isotope separation. He held this position until he departed for the Soviet Union in 1945.[3][1][8]

In the Soviet Union

[edit]

"Pact to defect"

[edit]

Hertz was concerned for his safety and, like his fellow Nobel laureate James Franck, was looking to move to the USA or any other place outside Germany. So he made a pact with three colleagues: Manfred von Ardenne, director of his private laboratory Forschungslaboratorium für Elektronenphysik, Peter Adolf Thiessen, ordinarius professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin and director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie (KWIPC) in Berlin-Dahlem, and Max Volmer, ordinarius professor and director of the Physical Chemistry Institute at the THB.[9] The pact was a pledge that whoever first made contact with the Soviets would speak for the rest. The objectives of their pact were threefold: (1) prevent plunder of their institutes, (2) continue their work with minimal interruption, and (3) protect themselves from prosecution for any political acts of the past.[10] Before the end of World War II, Thiessen, a member of the Nazi Party, had Communist contacts.[11]

Participation in Soviet program of nuclear weapons

[edit]

On 27 April 1945, Thiessen arrived at von Ardenne's institute in an armored vehicle with a major of the Soviet Army, who was also a leading Soviet chemist.[12] All four of the pact members were taken to the Soviet Union. Hertz was made head of Institute G, in Agudseri (Agudzery), about 10 km southeast of Sukhumi and a suburb of Gul'rips (Gulrip'shi).[12][13] Topics assigned to Gustav Hertz's Institute G included: (1) Separation of isotopes by diffusion in a flow of inert gases, for which Gustav Hertz was the leader, (2) Development of a condensation pump, for which Justus Mühlenpfordt was the leader, (3) Design and build a mass spectrometer for determining the isotopic composition of uranium, for which Werner Schütze was the leader, (4) Development of frameless (ceramic) diffusion partitions for filters, for which Reinhold Reichmann was the leader, and (5) Development of a theory of stability and control of a diffusion cascade, for which Heinz Barwich was the leader;[12][14]

Barwich had been deputy to Hertz at Siemens.[15] Other members of Institute G were Werner Hartmann and Karl-Franz Zühlke.[16] Manfred von Ardenne was made head of Institute A. Goals of von Ardenne's Institute A included: (1) Electromagnetic separation of isotopes, for which von Ardenne was the leader, (2) Techniques for manufacturing porous barriers for isotope separation, for which Peter Adolf Thiessen was the leader, and (3) Molecular techniques for separation of uranium isotopes, for which Max Steenbeck was the leader.

In his first meeting with Lavrentij Beria, von Ardenne was asked to participate in building the bomb, but von Ardenne quickly realized that participation would prohibit his repatriation to Germany, so he suggested isotope enrichment as an objective, which was agreed to.

Research at Sukhumi

[edit]

By the end of the 1940s, nearly 300 Germans were working at the institute, and they were not the total work force. Institute A was used as the basis for the Sukhumi Physical-Technical Institute in Sinop, a suburb of Sukhumi.[12][13] Volmer went to the Scientific Research Institute No. 9 (NII-9)[17] in Moscow; he was given a design bureau to work on the production of heavy water. In Institute A, Thiessen became leader for developing techniques for manufacturing porous barriers for isotope separation.[12]

In 1949, six German scientists, including Hertz, Thiessen, and Barwich were called in for consultation at Sverdlovsk-44, which was responsible for uranium enrichment. The plant, smaller than the American Oak Ridge gaseous diffusion plant, was getting only a little over half of the expected 90% or higher enrichment.[18]

After 1950, Hertz moved to Moscow. In 1951, Hertz was awarded a Stalin Prize, second class, with Barwich.[12] In that year, James Franck and Hertz were jointly awarded the Max Planck Medal by the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. Hertz remained in the Soviet Union until 1955.[3]

Return to the GDR

[edit]

Upon return from the Soviet Union, Hertz became ordinarius professor at the University of Leipzig. From 1955 to 1967, he was also the chairman of the Physical Society of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (GDR); he was honorary chairman from 1967 to 1975.[5]

Personal life

[edit]

Gustav Hertz was a nephew of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz and a cousin of Mathilde Carmen Hertz. In 1919, Hertz married Ellen née Dihlmann, who died in 1941. They had two sons, Carl Helmut Hertz and Johannes Heinrich Hertz; both became physicists.[1]

He died on 30 October 1975 in East Berlin at the age 88.

Scientific memberships

[edit]

Hertz was a Member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, Corresponding Member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, an Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, a Member of the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences, and a Foreign Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.[1]

Publications

[edit]
  • Franck, J.; Hertz, G. (1914). "Über Zusammenstöße zwischen Elektronen und Molekülen des Quecksilberdampfes und die Ionisierungsspannung desselben". Verh. Dtsch. Phys. Ges. 16: 457–467.
  • Gustav Hertz Über das ultrarote Adsorptionsspektrum der Kohlensäure in seiner Abhängigkeit von Druck und Partialdruck. (Dissertation). (Vieweg Braunschweig, 1911)
  • Gustav Hertz (editor) Lehrbuch der Kernphysik I-III (Teubner, 1961–1966)
  • Gustav Hertz (editor) Grundlagen und Arbeitsmethoden der Kernphysik (Akademie Verlag, 1957)
  • Gustav Hertz Gustav Hertz in der Entwicklung der modernen Physik (Akademie Verlag, 1967)

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c d e f Hertz – Nobel Biography.
  2. ^ Gustav Hertz Über das ultrarote Adsorptionsspektrum der Kohlensäure in seiner Abhängigkeit von Druck und Partialdruck. (Dissertation). (Vieweg Braunschweig, 1911)
  3. ^ a b c Mehra and Rechenberg, 2001, 197.
  4. ^ Franck, J.; Hertz, G. (1914). "Über Zusammenstöße zwischen Elektronen und Molekülen des Quecksilberdampfes und die Ionisierungsspannung desselben". Verh. Dtsch. Phys. Ges. 16: 457–467.
  5. ^ a b Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see entry for Hertz.
  6. ^ Van der Kloot, W. (2004). "April 1918: Five Future Nobel prize-winners inaugurate weapons of mass destruction and the academic-industrial-military complex". Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 58 (2): 149–160. doi:10.1098/rsnr.2004.0053. S2CID 145243958.
  7. ^ Wolff, Stefan L. (4 January 2008). "Juden wider Willen – Wie es den Nachkommen des Physikers Heinrich Hertz im NS-Wissenschaftsbetrieb erging". Jüdische Allgemeine.
  8. ^ Hentschel, 1996, 23 and Appendix F – see entry for Hertz.
  9. ^ sachen.de Archived 25 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine – Zur Ehrung von Manfred von Ardenne.
  10. ^ Heinemann-Grüder, 2002, 44.
  11. ^ Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Thiessen.
  12. ^ a b c d e f Oleynikov, 2000, pp 5, 10–13, 18, 21
  13. ^ a b Naimark, 1995, 213.
  14. ^ Kruglov, 2002, 131.
  15. ^ Naimark, 1995, 209.
  16. ^ Maddrell, 2006, 179–180.
  17. ^ Today, NII-9 is the Bochvar All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Inorganic Materials, Bochvar VNIINM. See Oleynikov, 2000, 4.
  18. ^ Holloway, 1994, 191–192.

Further reading

[edit]
  • Albrecht, Ulrich, Andreas Heinemann-Grüder, and Arend Wellmann Die Spezialisten: Deutsche Naturwissenschaftler und Techniker in der Sowjetunion nach 1945 (Dietz, 1992, 2001) ISBN 3-320-01788-8
  • Barwich, Heinz and Elfi Barwich Das rote Atom (Fischer-TB.-Vlg., 1984)
  • Beneke, Klaus Die Kolloidwissenschaftler Peter Adolf Thiessen, Gerhart Jander, Robert Havemann, Hans Witzmann und ihre Zeit (Knof, 2000)
  • Heinemann-Grüder, Andreas Die sowjetische Atombombe (Westfaelisches Dampfboot, 1992)
  • Heinemann-Grüder, Andreas Keinerlei Untergang: German Armaments Engineers during the Second World War and in the Service of the Victorious Powers in Monika Renneberg and Mark Walker (editors) Science, Technology and National Socialism 30–50 (Cambridge, 2002 paperback edition) ISBN 0-521-52860-7
  • Hentschel, Klaus (editor) and Ann M. Hentschel (editorial assistant and translator) Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Birkhäuser, 1996) ISBN 0-8176-5312-0
  • Holloway, David Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy 1939–1956 (Yale, 1994) ISBN 0-300-06056-4
  • Kruglov, Arkadii The History of the Soviet Atomic Industry (Taylor and Francis, 2002)
  • Maddrell, Paul "Spying on Science: Western Intelligence in Divided Germany 1945–1961" (Oxford, 2006) ISBN 0-19-926750-2
  • Mehra, Jagdish, and Helmut Rechenberg The Historical Development of Quantum Theory. Volume 1 Part 1 The Quantum Theory of Planck, Einstein, Bohr and Sommerfeld 1900–1925: Its Foundation and the Rise of Its Difficulties. (Springer, 2001) ISBN 0-387-95174-1
  • Naimark, Norman M. The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Belknap, 1995)
  • Oleynikov, Pavel V. 2000. German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic Project. The Nonproliferation Review Volume 7, Number 2, 1 – 30 The author has been a group leader at the Institute of Technical Physics of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center in Snezhinsk (Chelyabinsk-70).
[edit]
  • Media related to Gustav Hertz at Wikimedia Commons
  • Gustav Hertz on Nobelprize.org Edit this at Wikidata
  • SIPT – Sukhumi Institute of Physics and Technology, on the website are published the photographs of the German nuclear physicists who had been working for the Soviet nuclear program
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Gustav_Ludwig_Hertz&oldid=1263327983"