Gustav Hertz (original) (raw)

Gustav Hertz

Gustav Hertz AKA Gustav Ludwig Hertz

Born: 22-Jul-1887
Birthplace: Hamburg, Germany
Died: 30-Oct-1975
Location of death: Berlin, Germany
Cause of death: unspecified
Remains: Buried, Ohlsdorf Cemetery, Hamburg, Germany

Gender: Male
Religion: Jewish
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Physicist

Nationality: Germany
Executive summary: Franck-Hertz experiment

Military service: German Army (WWI, 1914-15, injured)

German physicist Gustav Hertz won the Nobel Prize in 1925, for the Franck-Hertz Experiment conducted in 1914 with James Franck, who shared the Nobel honor. Their work helped explain the quantized nature of energy transfer, confirmed Niels Bohr's quantum theory about the existence of the stationary energy states, and laid the foundation for nuclear physics. Jewish by heredity, Hertz was forced out of German academia by the Nazi regime, and he worked on the Soviet Union's atomic weapons program from the close of World War II until 1955. He also studied the infrared absorption spectrum of carbon dioxide, and separation of neon isotopes. His uncle, Heinrich Hertz, discovered electromagnetic radiation.

Father: Gustav Hertz (attorney)
Mother: Auguste Arning Hertz
Wife: Ellen Dihlmann Hertz (m. 1919, d. 1941, two sons)
Son: Carl Hellmuth Hertz (physicist, b. 1920, d. 1990)
Son: Johannes Hertz (physicist)
Wife: Charlotte Jollasse Hertz (m. 1943)

High School: Johanneum Gymnasium, Hamburg, Germany (1906)
University: University of Göttingen (attended, 1906-07)
University: University of Munich (attended, 1907-09)
University: PhD Physics, University of Berlin (1911)
Scholar: Physics, University of Berlin (1913-14)
Teacher: Physics, University of Berlin (1917-20)
Professor: Physics, University of Halle (1925-28)
Administrator: Physics Institute, Technological University of Berlin (1928-35)
Administrator: Institute G, Agudzery, Georgia, USSR (1945-54)
Professor: Physics, University of Leipzig (1954-61)

Siemens Director of Physics Research (1935-45)
Philips Lamp Engineering (1920-25)
Nobel Prize for Physics 1925 (with James Franck)
Max Planck Medal 1951 (with James Franck)
Stalin Prize 1951 (with Heinz Barwich)
East German Physical Society President (1955-67)
German Academy of Science
Russian Academy of Sciences Foreign Member
German Ancestry
Jewish Ancestry

Author of books:
Einf�hrung in die Plasmaphysik (Introduction to Plasma Physics) (1965, textbook; with Robert Rompe)

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