Arno Brasch

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Arno A. Brasch (born 1910 in Berlin ; died May 5, 1963 in New York City ) was a German physicist .

Life

With Fritz Lange and Kurt Urban (1904–1928) he made high-voltage experiments at the AEG transformer factory, with which they probably wanted to smash atoms. Ernest Rutherford had proposed such a discharge attempt in 1927. In 1927 they made high-voltage tests with lightning in Italy on Monte Generoso, where they reached 15 MV.

Around 1929 they adapted Coolidge's design. From around 1930 the two young physicists were supported by AEG in Berlin and were able to use the high-voltage laboratory in Oberschönweide, where a Marx generator for 2.4 MV was available.

They developed a discharge tube, a so-called lamellar tube, in which ring-shaped metal disks a few centimeters thick are alternately stacked and pressed with insulating disks. This made it possible to achieve a uniform potential curve in the interior, considerably lengthening the sliding path and avoiding disruptive sliding discharges. The overall length of 2 to 3 m has been shortened to 84 cm. In order to avoid external flashovers, it was operated in an oil tank. In the artificial lightning strikes from 1 to 100 μS, currents of 1000 A occurred. The X-rays generated at the anti-cathode corresponded to the hardest radium radiation of 100 kg radium equivalence. If the anti-cathode was replaced by a Lenard window , the emerging electron beam was visible in the air, glowing blue. This should be used for deep therapy. However, the director of the radiation therapy department of the Institute for Cancer Research Ludwig Halberstädter , who was responsible for the testing, lost his position in 1933 and immediately emigrated to Palestine.

On December 21, 1934, he and Lange applied for a patent for a “method for the initiation and implementation of core processes” (AEG Patent No. 622,036). Long in 1935 went to the USSR, where he worked until 1957, where he was first in Kharkov, then in Sverdlovsk in the laboratory of Isaac Kikoin the gas centrifuge specialized. Your colleague Adnan Waly , who had an Egyptian passport, first went to Egypt and then to the USA after the war.

Brasch went to the USA in 1936. Here he worked at the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn with Frederick B. Traub, Wolfgang Huber and Helen Carleton. In 1947, he and Huber described a new pulsed linear accelerator with which meat and other foods could be sterilized. They also investigated the influence of temperature and atmosphere during irradiation on the quality of milk and dairy products and found that changes in taste could be minimized through low temperatures and the absence of oxygen. In 1948, John G. Trump († Feb. 21, 1985) and Robert Jemison Van de Graaff at MIT developed a different type of accelerator. This made the necessary means for the irradiation of food available.

They received a large number of patents.

Publications

  • Experimental-technical preparations for atom fragmentation by means of high electrical voltages , Zeitschrift für Physik, Volume 70 (1931) No. 1-2, pp. 10-33.
  • The beginning of the atomic age , in: Aufbau, August 10, 1945

literature

  • Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945. Edited by the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem. Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 44

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ New York Times Chronology (May 1963)
  2. ↑ NYTimes.com: ARNO BRASCH, 53, PHYSICIST, IS DEAD - Worked on Preserving Food by Electron Bombardment Measured Lightning
  3. ^ Timothy Koeth, Rutgers University: Accelerators , accessed January 8, 2014.
  4. ↑ Arno Brasch, Fritz Lange: Experimental-technical preparations for atomic fragmentation by means of high electrical voltages. In: Journal of Physics. 70, 1931, pp. 10-37, doi : 10.1007 / BF01391028 .
  5. ^ Walther Nernst , Fritz Lange: Kurt Urban. In: The natural sciences. 16, 1928, pp. 796-796, doi : 10.1007 / BF01506608 .
  6. ↑ ARCHIVE information 7th year 2006 issue No. 1
  7. ^ Wolfgang Uwe Eckart: 100 years of organized cancer research . Thieme, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-13-105661-4 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  8. ↑ Heiko Petermann: The way to the bomb - a timeline ( Memento from August 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ FB TRAUB, A. BRASCH, W. HUBER: The effect of high intensity electron bursts on antibodies. In: Journal of Immunology (Baltimore, Md.: 1950). Volume 70, Number 4, April 1953, pp. 366-371, ISSN  0022-1767 . PMID 13035128 .
  10. ↑ Historical food irradiation ( Memento of the original from January 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mri.bund.de
  11. ↑ Patent US2796545: Electronic discharge tube
personal data
SURNAME Brasch, Arno
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brasch, Arno A.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH uncertain: 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH May 5th 1963
Place of death New York City