- Walter Gerlach
Infobox Scientist
name = Walter Gerlach
image_width = 200px
birth_date = birth date|1889|8|1|df=y
birth_place = Biebrich, Germany
death_date = death date and age|1979|8|10|1889|8|1
death_place =Munich ,Germany
nationality = German
field =Physicist
work_institutions =Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen
alma_mater =Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen
academic_advisor =Friedrich Paschen
known_for =Stern-Gerlach experiment
Space quantizationWalt(h)er Gerlach (
1 August 1889 -10 August 1979 ) was a Germanphysicist who co-discovered space quantization in a magnetic field, the Stern-Gerlach effect.Education
Gerlach was born in Biebrich,
Hessen-Nassau .He studied at the
University of Tübingen from 1908, and received his doctorate in 1912, underFriedrich Paschen . The subject of his dissertation was on the measurement of radiation. After obtaining his doctorate, he continued on as an assistant to Paschen, which he had been since 1911. Gerlach completed hisHabilitation at Tübingen in 1916, while serving duringWorld War I . Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Walter Gerlach.]Career
From 1915 to 1918, during the war, Gerlach did service with the German Army. He worked on wireless telegraphy at
Jena underMax Wien . He also served in the Artillerie-Prüfungskommission under Rudolf Ladenburg. Mehra and Rechenberg, Vol. 1, Part 2, 2001, 436.] Bernstein, 2001, 364.]Gerlach became a
Privatdozent at the University of Tübingen in 1916. A year later, he became a Privatdozent at theGeorg-August University of Göttingen . From 1919 to 1920, he was the head of a physics laboratory of Farbenfabriken Elberfeld, formerly Bayer-Werke.In 1920, he became a teaching assistant and lecturer at the
Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main . The next year, he took a position as extraordinarius professor at Frankfurt. It was in November 1921 that he andOtto Stern discovered space quantization in a magnetic field, known as the Stern-Gerlach effect. [ Breitislav, 2003, 53-59.] [ Walther Gerlach and Otto Stern "Das magnetische Moment des Silberatoms", "Zeitschrift für Physik" Volume 9, Number 1, 353-355 (1922).]In 1925, Gerlach took a call and became an ordinarius professor at the University of Tübingen, successor to
Friedrich Paschen . In 1929, he took a call and became ordinarius professor at theLudwig Maximilians University of Munich , successor toWilhelm Wien . He held this position until May 1945, when he was arrested by the American and British Armed Forces.From 1937 until 1945, Gerlach was a member of the supervisory board of the
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (KWG). After 1946, he continued to be an influential official in its successor organization afterWorld War II , the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG).On
1 January 1944 , Gerlach officially became head of the physics section of theReichsforschungsrat (RFR, Reich Research Council) and Bevollmächtigter (plenipotentiary) of nuclear physics, replacingAbraham Esau . In April of that year, he founded the "Reichsberichte für Physik", which were official reports appearing as supplements to the "Physikalische Zeitschrift".From May 1945, Gerlach was interned in France and Belgium by British and American Armed Forces under
Operation Alsos . From July of that year to January 1946, he was interned in England at Farm Hall underOperation Epsilon , which interned 10 German scientists who were thought to have participated in the development of atomic weapons . [ The nine other scientists interned at Farm Hall with Gerlach were:Erich Bagge ,Kurt Diebner ,Otto Hahn ,Paul Harteck ,Werner Heisenberg ,Horst Korsching ,Max von Laue ,Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker , andKarl Wirtz .]Upon Gerlach’s return to Germany in 1946, he became a visiting professor at the
University of Bonn . From 1948, he became an ordinarius professor of experimental physics and director of the physics department at the University of Munich, a position he held until 1957. He was also rector of the university from 1948 to 1951.From 1949 to 1951, Gerlach was the founding president of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, which promotes applied sciences. From 1949 to 1961, he was the vice-president of the Deutsche Gemeinschaft zur Erhaltung und Förderrung der Forschung (German Association for the Support and Advancement of Scientific Research); also known in short as the
Deutsche Forschungs-Gemeinschaft (DFG), previously theNotgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft .In 1957, Gerlach was a co-signer of the Göttingen Manifesto, which was against rearming the Federal Republic of Germany with atomic weapons.
He died in Munich in 1979.
Other positions
*From 1935 – Chairman of the committee to appoint a successor to
Arnold Sommerfeld .
*From 1939 – Member of the Comerlin working group on ship degaussing and torpedo physics.
*From 1948 – a member of the Göttingen, Halle, and Munich Academies of Sciences.
*Member of the Ordre pour le Mérite.Literature
*Walther Gerlach and Otto Stern "Das magnetische Moment des Silberatoms", "Zeitschrift für Physik" Volume 9, Number 1, 353-355 (1922). The article was received on 1 April 1922. Gerlach is cited as being at the University of Frankfurt am Main and Stern is cited as being at the University of Rostock.
Books
*Walter Gerlach "Matter, Electricity, Energy: The Principles of Modern Atomistic and Experimental Results of Atomic Investigations" (D. Van Nostrand, 1928)
*Mac Hartmann and Walther Gerlach "Naturwissenschaftliche Erkenntnis und ihre Methoden" (Springer, 1937)
*Walther Gerlach "Die Quantentheorie. Max Planck sein Werk und seine Wirkung. Mit einer Bibliographie der Werke Max Plancks" (Universität Bonn, 1948)
*Walther Gerlach "Probleme der Atomenergie" (Biederstein Verlag, 1948)
*Walther Gerlach "Wesen und Bedeutung der Atomkraftwerke" (Oldenbourg, 1955)
*Walter Gerlach and Martha List "Johannes Kepler. Leben und Werk" (Piper, 1966)
*Gerlach, Walter (editor) "Das Fischer Lexikon - Physik" (Fischer Bücherei, 1969)
*Walter Gerlach "Physik des täglichen Lebens - Eine Anleitung zu physikalischem Denken und zum Verständnis der physikalischen Entwicklung" (Fischer Bücherei, 1971) ISBN: 3436013412
*Walter Gerlach (editor) "Physik. Neuasugabe Unter Mitarbeit Von Prof. Dr. Josef Brandmüller" (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1978) ISBN: 3596400198
*Walther Gerlach "Otto Hahn" (WVG, 1984)
*Gerlach, Walther; List, Martha "Johannes Kepler : Der Begründer der modernen Astronomie" München, (Piper Verlag GmbH, 1987) ISBN: 3492152481References
*Bernstein, Jeremy "Hitler’s Uranium Club: The Secret Recording’s at Farm Hall" (Copernicus, 2001) ISBN 0-387-95089-3
*Friedrich, Bretislav and Dudley Herschbach " [http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-56/iss-12/p53.html Stern and Gerlach: How a Bad Cigar Helped Reorient Atomic Physics] " "Physics Today" Volume 56, Issue 12, 53-59 (2003).
*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
*Mehra, Jagdish, and Helmut Rechenberg "The Historical Development of Quantum Theory. Volume 1 Part 2 The Quantum Theory of Planck, Einstein, Bohr and Sommerfeld 1900 – 1925: Its Foundation and the Rise of Its Difficulties." (Springer, 2001) ISBN 0-387-95175-XNotes
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