James Franck
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| James Franck | |
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| Born | 26 August 1882 Hamburg, German Empire |
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| Died | 21 May 1964 (aged 81) Göttingen, West Germany |
| Nationality | Germany |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | University of Berlin University of Göttingen Johns Hopkins University University of Chicago |
| Alma mater | University of Heidelberg University of Berlin |
| Doctoral advisor | Emil Gabriel Warburg |
| Doctoral students | Wilhelm Hanle Arthur R. von Hippel |
| Known for | Franck-Condon principle Franck-Hertz experiment |
| Notable awards | Nobel Prize for Physics (1925) |
| Religious stance | Jewish |
James Franck (26 August 1882 – 21 May 1964) was a German physicist and Nobel laureate .
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[edit] Biography
Franck completed his Ph.D. in 1906 and received his venia legendi for physics in 1911, both at the University of Berlin, where he lectured and taught until 1918, having reached the position of extraordinarius professor. After World War I, in which he served and was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class, Franck became the Head of the Physics Division of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft for Physical Chemistry. In 1920, Franck became ordinarius professor of experimental physics and Director of the Second Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Göttingen. While there he worked on quantum physics with Max Born, who was Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics.
In 1925, Franck received the Nobel Prize in Physics, mostly for his work in 1912-1914, which included the Franck-Hertz experiment, an important confirmation of the Bohr model of the atom.
In 1933, after the Nazis came to power, Franck left his post in Germany and continued his research in the United States, first at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and then, after a year in Denmark, in Chicago. It was there that he became involved in the Manhattan Project during World War II; he was Director of the Chemistry Division of the Metallurgical Laboratory[1] at the University of Chicago. He was also the chairman of the Committee on Political and Social Problems regarding the atomic bomb; the committee consisted of himself and other scientists at the Met Lab, including Donald J. Hughes, J. J. Nickson, Eugene Rabinowitch, Glenn T. Seaborg, J. C. Stearns and Leo Szilard. The committee is best known for the compilation of the Franck Report, finished on 11 June 1945, which was a summary of the problems regarding the military application of the atomic bomb.
When Nazi Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue and James Franck in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from stealing them. He placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. After the war, he returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The Nobel Society then recast the Nobel Prizes using the original gold.
In 1946 Franck married Hertha Sponer, his former assistant in Göttingen. He died suddenly in 1964 while visiting Göttingen.[2]
[edit] Honours and awards
- 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics The award was shared with Gustav Ludwig Hertz, and it was for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of electrons on atoms
- 1951 Max Planck Medaille der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft
- 1953 Honorary citizen of Göttingen
- 1955 Rumford Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences - For his work on photosynthesis
- 1964 Elected as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London, for his contribution to the understanding of exchanges of energy in electron collisions, to the interpretation of molecular spectra, and to problems of photosynthesis
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ The Metallurgical Laboratory – known as the Met Lab – was one of four main sites working on the Manhattan Project. The other three were Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Hanford Site.
- ^ See this site at Duke University.
[edit] Further reading
- Kuhn, H.G. (1965). "James Franck, 1882-1964". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 11: 53–74. doi:. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0080-4606%28196511%2911%3C53%3AJF1%3E2.0.CO%3B2-V. Retrieved on 2008-03-03.
- Shampo, M. A.; Kyle, R. A. (September 1984). "James Franck and Gustav Hertz". JAMA 252 (11): 1426. doi:. PMID 6381774.
- Rosenberg, Jerome L. (2004). "The Contributions of James Franck to Photosynthesis Research: A Tribute". Photosyn. Res. 80 (1-3): 71–6. doi:. PMID 16328811.
[edit] External links
- Nobel Prize Biography
- Annotated bibliography for James Franck from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
- James Franck Biography – American Philosophical Society (Bio appears after Sommerfeld's)
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