Alfred Eckardt

Alfred Eckardt (Source: Professors Gallery of the Physics and Astronomy Faculty of the University of Jena)

Alfred Julius Wilhelm Eckardt (born October 21, 1903 in Sondershausen ; † May 8, 1980 in Jena ) was a German experimental physicist , electrical engineer and professor at the University of Jena who dealt with nuclear physics , technical physics and material testing .

Life

After attending grammar school in Hamburg and Flensburg, he studied electrical engineering and physics at the TH Hannover and physics at the University of Kiel , where he then worked with Hans Geiger and Christian Gerthsen . He received his doctorate in 1930 under Walter Kossel at the University of Kiel with a thesis on the interaction of protons with matter. He completed his habilitation as an assistant to Heinrich Rausch von Traubenberg at the Kiel Institute for Theoretical Physics in 1936 with an investigation into nuclear reactions in lithium and magnesium . Shortly afterwards he left Kiel for political reasons and went to the Siemens-Reiniger-Werke in Rudolstadt . During the Second World War he was conscripted to the Deutsche Seewarte Hamburg. He was politically persecuted and 1944 in the concentration camp Emslandlager Papenburg detained. In 1946 he took over the newly founded Institute for Materials Research at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena . In 1947 he was entrusted with the management of the Technical and Physical Institute and in 1949 he was appointed professor to the chair for applied physics. He gave lectures on nuclear physics, electrophysics but also on photography. Building on his experience, he began to investigate nuclear physics and was a co-founder of nuclear physics in the GDR . A number of successful device developments, such as betatrons , cloud chambers , bubble chambers and mass spectrographs, as well as the commissioning of a 1 MV high-voltage cascade and a 2 MV Van de Graaff generator followed. He founded the "Research Center for Super Microscopy", which continued the Jena tradition in electron microscopy and, together with ultrasound and X-ray methods, brought it into the field of materials testing , while also cooperating with Carl Zeiss Jena . A betatron was later used for medical research and treatment. In 1960 he was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences for two terms. In addition to a number of journal articles, he was co-author of the "Textbook for Nuclear Physics" and the "Handbook for Energy Economics". In 1953 he was co-founder and editor of the magazine "Experimental Technique of Physics". In 1951 he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR . In 1958 he received the Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze and in 1963 the National Prize, 2nd class, for his services to the development, research and application of nuclear physics methods for non-destructive material testing . In 1964 he received an honorary doctorate from the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. He retired in 1968.

Works (selection)

• Loss of velocity of H-channel rays when passing through solid bodies , dissertation, University of Kiel 1930, Annalen der Physik 5, 5, 3 (1930), pp. 401-428.
• About the formation of radioactive elements when lithium and magnesium are bombarded with Th (c, alpha) rays , Habilitation, University of Kiel 1936, Annalen der Physik 5, 29, 6 (1937), pp. 498-513.

swell

• Professors' gallery of the Physics and Astronomy Faculty of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena
• Franz Bolck (Ed.): "Physics Section - on the development of physics after 1945 at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena", Jenaer Reden und Schriften, Jena, 1982.
• Siegfried Schmidt, Ludwig Elm, Günter Steiger (eds.): “Alma mater Jenensis - History of the University of Jena”, Hermann Böhlaus Nachsteiger, Weimar, 1983.
• Helmbold, Bernd, "Nuclear Physics at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena from 1946 to 1968" in Jena Contributions to the History of Physics , Wolfgang Ziegler, Paul Seidel, Ralf Hahn (Eds.), Volume 1, GNT-Verlag, Diepholz, 2010 , ISBN 978-3-86225-100-1 .