Fritz Sauter

Infobox Scientist
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name = Fritz Sauter

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image_size = 300px
caption = Fritz Eduard Josef Maria Sauter (1906-1983)
birth_date = 1906
birth_place = Austria
death_date = 1983
death_place = Germany
residence = Germany
citizenship =
nationality = Austrian
ethnicity =
fields = Physicist
workplaces = University of Munich
Technical University of Berlin
University of Königsberg
alma_mater = University of Innsbruck
doctoral_advisor = A. Mar
academic_advisors = Arnold Sommerfeld
Richard Becker
doctoral_students = Herbert Kroemer
Friedrich Bopp
Gerhard Wolf
notable_students =
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Fritz Eduard Josef Maria Sauter (1906 – 1983) was an Austrian-German physicist who worked mostly in quantum electrodynamics and solid-state physics.

Education

From 1924 to 1928, Sauter studied mathematics and physics at the Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck. He received his doctorate in 1928 under A. Mar, with a thesis on Kirchoff’s theory of diffraction. After graduation, he did postdoctoral studies with Arnold Sommerfeld and was his assistant at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich. In January 1931, Sommerfeld recommended [ [http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~Sommerfeld/KurzFass/03552.html Sauter] – Sommerfeld recommends Sauter to Max Born, 31 January 1931] Sauter to Max Born, director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the Georg-August University of Göttingen. [ Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Fritz Sauter.] [ Beyerchen, 1977, p. 181.] [ [http://www.aapps.org/archive/bulletin/vol13/13_6/13_6_p06p41.pdf Sauter] – Assistant to Sommerfeld, 1930] [ [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2000/kroemer-autobio.html Kroemer] – Nobel Prize Laureate]

Career

From 1931 to 1934, Sauter was an assistant to Richard Becker at the Technische Hochschule Berlin (Today: Technische Universität Berlin.) in Charlottenburg. From 1933, he was also a lecturer at Berlin. While at Berlin, he did work on atomic physics and Dirac’s theory of electrons. [ Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Fritz Sauter.]

Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany on 30 January 1933 and Max Born took leave as director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the Georg-August University of Göttingen on 1 July of that year and emigrated to England. In 1934, Sauter, while only a Privatdozent, was brought in to Göttingen as acting director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics and lecturer on theoretical physics; Born was officially retired under the Nuremberg Laws on 31 December 1935. Sauter continued in this role until 1936, when Becker was appointed director, after the Reichserziehungsministerium (Reich Education Ministry) eliminated his position at Berlin and reassigned him to Göttingen. [ Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Fritz Sauter.] [ Beyerchen, 1977, pp. 38-39.]

After Göttingen, Sauter took a teaching assignment and became acting director of the theoretical physics department at the University of Königsberg. In 1939, he became ordinarius professor of theoretical physics and director of the theoretical physics department at Königsberg. From 1942 to 1945, Sauter was ordinarius professor of theoretical physics at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich. [ Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Fritz Sauter.] [ Hoffmann, 2005, p. 314.]

From 1950 to 1951, Sauter had a teaching assignment and was substitute director of the theoretical physics department at Technische Hochschule Hanover. From 1951 to 1952, he had a teaching assignment at Göttingen and Bamberg Universities. In 1952, he became ordinarius professor and director of the theoretical physics department at the University of Cologne, which he held until achieving emeritus status in 1971. [ Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Fritz Sauter.]

Having been a student of Sommerfeld, Sauter was a superb mathematician. [ [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2000/kroemer-autobio.html Kroemer] – Nobel Prize Laureate] He wrote his own book on differential equations of physics, and, after Sommerfeld’s death in 1951, Sauter was editor on the 4th, 5th, and 6th editions of Sommerfeld’s book on the same subject, and he was also editor of the four volume, collected works of Sommerfeld. Sauter was also editor of books by Becker, with whom he had been an assistant in Berlin.

Selected literature

*Fritz Sauter "Über das Verhalten eines Elektrons im homogenen elektrischen Feld nach der relativistischen Theorie Diracs", "Zeitschrift für Physik" 69 (11-12) 742-764 (1931). Author cited as being at Munich.

*Fritz Sauter "Über die Bremsstrahlung schneller Elektronen" "Annalen der Physik" 412 (4) 404-412 (1934)

Books

*Fritz Sauter "Differentialgleichungen der Physik" (de Gruyter, 1950, 1958, and 1966)

*Arnold Sommerfeld, author and Fritz Sauter, editor "Vorlesungen über theoretische Physik. Band 6: Partielle Differentialgleichungen der Physik. 4. Auflage, bearbeitet und ergänzt" (Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1958)

*Arnold Sommerfeld, author and Fritz Sauter, editor "Vorlesungen über theoretische Physik. Bd. 6. Partielle Differentialgleichungen der Physik. 5. Auflage, bearbeitet und ergänzt" (Akademische Verl. Ges., 1962)

*Arnold Sommerfeld, author and Fritz Sauter, editor "Vorlesungen über theoretische Physik. Band 6: Partielle Differentialgleichungen der Physik. 5. Auflage, bearbeitet und ergänzt" (Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1962)

*Richard Becker, author and Fritz Sauter, editor "Theorie der Elektrizität. Bd. 1. Einführung in die Maxwellsche Theorie" (Teubner, 1957, 1962, 1964, and 1969)
**Richard Becker, author, Fritz Sauter, editor, and Ivor De Teissier, translator "Electromagnetic Fields and Interactions, Volume I: Electromagnetic Theory and Relativity" (Blaisdell, 1964)

*Richard Becker, author and Fritz Sauter, editor "Theorie der Elektrizität. Bd. 2. Einführung in die Quantentheorie der Atome und der Strahlung" (Teubner, 1959, 1963, 1970, and 1997)
**Richard Becker, author, Fritz Sauter, editor, and Ivor De Teissier, translator "Electromagnetic Fields and Interactions, Volume II: Quantum Theory of Atoms and Radiation" (Blaisdell, 1964)

*Arnold Sommerfeld, author and Fritz Sauter, editor "Vorlesungen über theoretische Physik. Band 6: Partielle Differentialgleichungen der Physik. 6. Auflage, bearbeitet und ergänzt" (Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1966)

*Fritz Sauter, editor "Arnold Sommerfeld: Gesammelte Schriften", 4 Volumes (Braunschweig, 1968)

*Richard Becker, author and Fritz Sauter, editor "Theorie der Elektrizität. Bd. 3. Elektrodynamik der Materie" (Teubner, 1969)

Bibliography

*Beyerchen, Alan D. "Scientists Under Hitler: Politics and the Physics Community in the Third Reich" (Yale, 1977) ISBN 0-300-01830-4

*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

*Hoffmann, Dieter "Between Autonomy and Accommodation: The German Physical Society during the Third Reich", "Physics in Perspective" 7(3) 293-329 (2005)

References