Walter Gerlach

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Walter Gerlach bigraphy, stories - Physicists

Walter Gerlach : biography

1 August 1889 – 10 August 1979

Walt(h)er Gerlach (1 August 1889 – 10 August 1979) was a German physicist who co-discovered spin quantization in a magnetic field, the Stern-Gerlach effect.

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 3-436-01341-2
  • Walter Gerlach (editor) Physik. Neuasugabe Unter Mitarbeit Von Prof. Dr. Josef Brandmüller (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1978) ISBN 3-596-40019-8
  • Walther Gerlach Otto Hahn (WVG, 1984)
  • Gerlach, Walther; List, Martha Johannes Kepler : Der Begründer der modernen Astronomie München, (Piper Verlag GmbH, 1987) ISBN 3-492-15248-1

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.

Notes

Category:1889 births Category:1979 deaths Category:German nuclear physicists Category:German physicists Category:German military personnel of World War I Category:German people of World War II Category:People from Hesse-Nassau Category:University of Tübingen alumni Category:University of Tübingen faculty Category:University of Göttingen faculty Category:Goethe University Frankfurt faculty Category:University of Bonn faculty Category:Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich faculty Category:Nuclear program of Nazi Germany Category:Knight Commanders of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

Career

From 1915 to 1918, during the war, Gerlach did service with the German Army. He worked on wireless telegraphy at Jena under Max 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 the Georg-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 and Otto Stern discovered spin 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 the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, successor to Wilhelm 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 after World War II, the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG).