Friedrich von Lerch
Friedrich von Lerch (born May 30, 1878 in Preßburg , † December 19, 1947 in Innsbruck ) was an Austrian physicist .
Life
Friedrich von Lerch spent his youth and high school as well as the beginning of his studies in Prague . After the family moved to Vienna, he studied physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna and received his doctorate in 1901 under Franz-Serafin Exner with a dissertation on "The dependence of polarization on current density and temperature". In 1903/1904 he was a private assistant at Walter Nernst in Göttingen, where he dealt with problems of surface tension at the boundary layers of two solutions and with electrolytic cells as a detector of an AC bridge circuit. After his return to Vienna in 1904, he was assistant to Franz-Serafin Exner at the 2nd Physics Institute until 1908. 1905 habilitation. 1907 teaching position at the Technical University of Vienna for general and technical physics. In 1908 he was appointed associate professor of physics at the University of Innsbruck and, after Egon Schweidler was called to Vienna, full professor and in 1927 head of the Innsbruck Physics Institute. In 1946 von Lerch, who was an excellent pianist, retired.
meaning
Lerch was one of the first young physicists to turn to the study of radioactivity at the suggestion of Exner. As early as 1903 he had started electrolytic investigations on radioactive substances. The first work concerned the electrolysis of thorium B (= lead212) and the short-lived isotope thorium-X . At that time, Lerch was able to prove the existence of soft beta rays in thorium B, which is considered radiationless . His clarification of the electrochemical behavior of byproducts of the radium or thorium emanation and the possibilities of their assignment to known elements provided by Frederick Soddy (1912) gave important insights for the justification of the term isotope . A group of his works dealt with the investigations of Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner . Otto Hahn writes in his memoirs: I still remember what a great impression it made on Nernst when F. von Lerch mentioned the method he first discovered of separating radium C (an isotope of bismuth, as it turned out later)
Fonts
- Induced thorium activity . Annals of Physics, 1903
- About the use of the electrolytic detector in the bridge combination . 1904, together with W. Nernst
- Separation of radium C from radium E . Annals of Physics, 1906
literature
- Oberkofler: Lerch Friedrich von. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 5, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1972, p. 150.
- Berta Karlik , Erich Schmid : Franz S. Exner and his circle . Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1982
- Otto Hahn : Some personal memories from the history of natural radioactivity . In: Naturwissenschaften , 1948, pp. 35, 67–74
Web links
- Literature by and about Friedrich von Lerch in the catalog of the German National Library
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lerch, Friedrich von |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 30, 1878 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Pressburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 19, 1947 |
| Place of death | innsbruck |