Fritz Houtermans

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Fritz Houtermans
Born22 January 1903 Edit this on Wikidata
Died1 March 1966 Edit this on Wikidata (aged 63)
Occupation
  • University teacher Edit this on Wikidata
Academic career
FieldsPhysics, nuclear physics, geochemistry, astrochemistry Edit this on Wikidata
Doctoral advisorJames Franck

Friedrich Georg "Fritz" Houtermans (January 22, 1903 – March 1, 1966) was a Dutch-Austrian-German atomic and nuclear physicist and Communist born in Zoppot (now Sopot) near Danzig (now Gdańsk), West Prussia to a Dutch father, who was a wealthy banker. He was brought up in Vienna, where he was educated, and moved to Göttingen when he was 18 to study. It was in Göttingen where he obtained his Ph.D. under James Franck.[1]

Education

Houtermans began his studies at the

Gustav Hertz at the Technical University of Berlin, in 1932. Hertz and Franck were Nobel Prize laureates; they shared the 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics.[3][4][5]

While at Göttingen, Houtermans met

quantum tunneling in 1928. Houtermans, in 1929, with Robert d'Escourt Atkinson, made the first calculation of stellar thermonuclear reactions.[6][7] Their pioneering calculations were the impetus for Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and Hans Bethe, in 1939, to put forth the correct theory of stellar thermonuclear energy generation.[3][4]

Charlotte Riefenstahl, who received her doctorate in physics at the University of Göttingen in 1927, the same year as Houtermans and Robert Oppenheimer, was courted by both men.[8][a] In 1930, she left her teaching position at Vassar College and went back to Germany. During a physics conference at the Black Sea resort of Batumi, Riefenstahl and Houtermans were married in August 1930, in Tbilisi, with Wolfgang Pauli and Rudolf Peierls as witnesses to the ceremony.[9][10][11][12][b]

Career

From 1932 to 1933, Houtermans taught at the Technical University of Berlin and was an assistant to Hertz. While there, he met

Leó Szilárd
.

Houtermans was a

Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, Houtermans was turned over to the Gestapo in May 1940 and imprisoned in Berlin. Through efforts of Max von Laue, Houtermans was released in August 1940, whereupon he became employed Forschungslaboratorium für Elektronenphysik,[20] a private laboratory of Manfred Baron von Ardenne, in Lichterfelde, a suburb of Berlin. In 1944, Houtermans took a position as a nuclear physicist at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt.[3]
[4][17][21]

While imprisoned in the

Kiev University historian Konstantin Shteppa. They would later write a book together, Russian Purge and the Extraction of Confession,[22] under the pseudonyms of Beck and Godin to protect their many friends and colleagues back in the USSR.[23]

At the Forschunsinstitut Manfred von Ardenne, Houtermans showed that

Met Lab warning the USA's Manhattan Project of German work on fission: "Hurry up. We are on the track."[24]

During Houtermans's employment at the

Reich Research Council.[25][26][27] As a result, Houtermans moved to Göttingen in 1945, where Hans Kopferman and Richard Becker got him positions at the Institut für Theoretische Physik and II. Physikalisches Institut der Universität Göttingen.[28][29]

From 1952, Houtermans took a position as ordinarius professor of physics at the

Personal

Houtermans was married four times.[30] Charlotte was his first and third wife in four marriages. They had two children, a daughter Giovanna (born in Berlin, 1932) and a son Jan (born in Kharkov, 1935), and they were divorced the first time in 1943, due to a new law in Germany and enforced wartime separation.[12][31] In February 1944, Houtermans married Ilse Bartz, a chemical engineer; they worked together during the war and published a paper.[32] Houtermans and Ilse had three children, Pieter, Elsa, and Cornelia.[33] In August 1953, again with Pauli standing as a witness, Charlotte and Houtermans were again married, but they divorced again in only a few months. In 1955, Houtermans married Lore Müller, sister of his stepbrother, Hans. She brought her four-year-old daughter to the marriage, and she and Houtermans had a son, Hendrik, born in 1956.[8][34]

Houtermans died of lung cancer on 1 March 1966.[35]

Internal report

Houtermans authored a report which was published in

Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center and the American Institute of Physics.[36][37]

Works (selection)

  • Atkinson, R. and Houtermans, F.G. "Aufbaumöglichkeit in Sternen" (Z. für Physik 54, 656-665, 1929)
  • Houtermans, F.G. "Über ein neues Verfahren zur Durchführung chemischer Altersbestimmungen nach der Blei-Methode" (Springer, 1951)
  • Houtermans, Fritz "Publikationen von Friedrich Georg Houtermans aus den Jahren 1926-1950" (Zusammengestellt im Physikalischen Institut Universität Bern, 1955)
  • Geiss, J. and E. D. Goldberg and F. G. Houtermans "Earth Science and Meteoritics- dedicated to F. G. Houtermans on his sixtieth birthday F.G. Houtermans" (North Holland, 1963)

For a partial list of works by Houtermans, see the Wolfram biography.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ She was no relation to Leni Riefenstahl, the German filmmaker.
  2. ^ Three other references cite the year as being 1931.[4][13][14]

References

  1. ^ From: http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Houtermans.html
  2. ^ As cited in Charlotte Riefenstahl Archived 2012-07-26 at the Wayback Machine – Nernst Memorial Website: Houtermans, Fritz. Thesis title: Über die Bandenfluoreszenz und die lichtelektrische Ionisierung des Quecksilberdampfes. Georg-August University of Göttingen, 1927, under James Franck.
  3. ^ a b c d Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Houtermans.
  4. ^ a b c d Houtermans Biography – Wolfram
  5. ^ Jungk, 1958, 48.
  6. ^ Atkinson, R. and Houtermans, F. Aufbaumöglichkeit in Sternen, Z. für Physik 54 656-665 (1929).
  7. ^ Martin Harwit The Growth of Astrophysical Understanding, Physics Today Volume 58 Number 11 38 (2003) Physics Today Archived 2005-04-14 at the Wayback Machine
  8. ^ a b Hentschel, Ann M., 2005, 127.
  9. ^ Landrock, 2003, 190.
  10. ^ Charlotte Riefenstahl Archived 2012-07-26 at the Wayback Machine - Nernst Memorial Website
  11. ^ a b Hentschel, Ann M., 2005, 124.
  12. ^ a b Khriplovich, 1992, 32.
  13. ^ Bird, 2005, 63 and 69.
  14. ^ Powers, 1993, 85.
  15. ^ Frisch, 1980, 71.
  16. ^ Hentschel, Ann M., 2005, 123 (second footnote).
  17. ^ a b c Landrock, 2003, 191.
  18. ^ The Accused – Alexander Weissberg
  19. ^ Khriplovich, 1992, 33.
  20. ^ sachen.de Archived 2008-01-24 at the Wayback Machine - Zur Ehrung von Manfred von Ardenne.
  21. ^ Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Ardenne.
  22. ^ Beck, F. and Godin, W. "Russian Purge and the Extraction of Confession" (Hurst and Blackett, 1951).
  23. ^ Khriplovich, 1992, 35.
  24. ^ Wigner, 1992, 241.
  25. ^ Bernstein, 2001, 364.
  26. ^ Powers, 1993, 413-414.
  27. ^ Khriplovich, 1992, 36.
  28. ^ Landrock, 2003, 197.
  29. ^ Khriplovich relates the tobacco story also, but places it as having taken place at the Forschunsinstitut Manfred von Ardenne; see Khriplovich, 1992, 36. The timeline and places of Houtermans's employment given by Powers agrees with that of Landrock; see Landrock, 2003, 191.
  30. ^ Fritz Houtermans Archived 2005-05-03 at the Wayback Machine Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  31. ^ Landrock, 2003, 196.
  32. ^ Houtermans, F. and Bartz, I. Kernphotoeffekt im Beryllium. Phys. Z. 44 167-176 (1943).
  33. ^ Hentschel, Ann M., 2005, 126.
  34. ^ Landrock, 2003, 196-198.
  35. ^ Khriplovich, 1992, 37.
  36. ^ Hentschel and Hentschel, 1996, Appendix E; see the entry for Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte.
  37. ^ Walker, 1993, 268.
  38. ^ Walker, 1993, 271.

Sources

  • Beck, F. and Godin, W. Russian Purge and The Extraction of Confession (Hurst and Blackett, 1951). Houtermans and Konstantine F. Shteppa, the authors of this book, took the pseudonyms Beck and Godin to protect their many friends and colleagues back in the USSR.
  • Amaldi, E. “The Adventurous Life of Friedrich Georg Houtermans, Physicist (1903-1966)”, S. Braccini, A. Ereditato, P. Scampoli Eds. (SpringerBriefs in Physics, 2010)

Further reading

External links