Gustav Ludwig Hertz
Gustav Ludwig Hertz | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | 30 October 1975 East Berlin, East Germany | (aged 88)
Alma mater | Humboldt University of Berlin |
Known for | Franck–Hertz experiment |
Spouse |
Ellen Dihlmann
(m. 1919; died 1941) |
Children | 2, including University of Leipzig |
Doctoral advisor | |
Doctoral students | Heinz Pose |
Gustav Ludwig Hertz (German:
Biography
Hertz was born in
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
In 1925, Hertz became ordinarius professor and director of the Physics Institute of the
In the Soviet Union
"Pact to defect"
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
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
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
Return to the GDR
Upon return from the Soviet Union, Hertz became ordinarius professor at the
Personal life
Gustav Hertz was a nephew of
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.[1]
Publications
- 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
- Electron diffraction
- Electric glow discharge
- Franck–Hertz experiment
- Plasma window
- Vacuum tube
- Scattering
- Russian Alsos
References
- ^ a b c d e f Hertz – Nobel Biography.
- ^ Gustav Hertz Über das ultrarote Adsorptionsspektrum der Kohlensäure in seiner Abhängigkeit von Druck und Partialdruck. (Dissertation). (Vieweg Braunschweig, 1911)
- ^ a b c Mehra and Rechenberg, 2001, 197.
- ^ Franck, J.; Hertz, G. (1914). "Über Zusammenstöße zwischen Elektronen und Molekülen des Quecksilberdampfes und die Ionisierungsspannung desselben". Verh. Dtsch. Phys. Ges. 16: 457–467.
- ^ a b Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see entry for Hertz.
- S2CID 145243958.
- ^ Wolff, Stefan L. (4 January 2008). "Juden wider Willen – Wie es den Nachkommen des Physikers Heinrich Hertz im NS-Wissenschaftsbetrieb erging". Jüdische Allgemeine.
- ^ Hentschel, 1996, 23 and Appendix F – see entry for Hertz.
- ^ sachen.de Archived 25 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine – Zur Ehrung von Manfred von Ardenne.
- ^ Heinemann-Grüder, 2002, 44.
- ^ Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Thiessen.
- ^ a b c d e f Oleynikov, 2000, pp 5, 10–13, 18, 21
- ^ a b Naimark, 1995, 213.
- ^ Kruglov, 2002, 131.
- ^ Naimark, 1995, 209.
- ^ Maddrell, 2006, 179–180.
- ^ Today, NII-9 is the Bochvar All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Inorganic Materials, Bochvar VNIINM. See Oleynikov, 2000, 4.
- ^ Holloway, 1994, 191–192.
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
- 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).
External links
- Media related to Gustav Hertz at Wikimedia Commons
- Gustav Hertz on Nobelprize.org
- 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