Arthur Wehnelt

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Arthur Rudolph Berthold Wehnelt (born April 4, 1871 in Rio de Janeiro , † February 15, 1944 in Berlin ) was a German physicist who made important contributions to electrodynamics .

Life

His grandfather was the Fürstenwald master cloth maker Samuel Wehnelt. His father, Berthold Ferdinand Adolph Wehnelt (* February 4, 1833, † July 2, 1872 in Hamburg) was a shipbuilding engineer and co-founder and co-owner of the Brazilian Lloyd . On May 23, 1867, in Fürstenwalde, he married Marie Luise Charlotte, the daughter of the shoemaker Johann Friedrich Muckelberg, with whom he had two children. After an illness he died on the way home from Brazil. In March 2008, his crypt was rediscovered in Fürstenwalde.

After Arthur Wehnelt had stayed twice at the Luisenstädtisches Gymnasium in Berlin in Tertia, he was sent to the Realgymnasium in Landsberg an der Warthe , where he passed the school leaving examination in 1892. He did his military service in Brandenburg.

He studied physics at the Technical University of Charlottenburg and from 1893 to 1897 at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin . He received his doctorate in Erlangen in 1898 , where Eilhard Wiedemann was his teacher. After his habilitation in 1901, he taught as a private lecturer and from 1904 as an associate professor of physics at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg . In 1906 Wehnelt returned to the University of Berlin as a professor, in 1934 he was appointed director of the Physics Institute, and in 1937 he retired . He spent the last years of his life in Berlin-Frohnau .

Act

Wehnelt interrupter

1899 invented the Wehnelt Wehnelt interrupter on electrolyte base , the fast rhythmic interrupting a direct current permits.

His developments in the field of electron emission , the Wehnelt cylinder (1902/03) and the oxide cathode / Wehnelt cathode (1905), improved the cathode ray tube invented by Ferdinand Braun . a. became essential for televisions and computer monitors.

In 1926, Wehnelt was the first to experimentally demonstrate the space charge in electron tubes .

Others

In the Siemensstadt district of Berlin , the street Wehneltsteig has been named after him since September 9, 1931 .

Fonts (selection)

  • Studies on the dark cathode compartment. Barth, Leipzig 1898, (Erlangen, dissertation, 1898).
  • Current and voltage measurements at cathodes in discharge tubes. Hirzel, Leipzig 1901, (Erlangen, habilitation thesis, 1901).
  • About the escape of negative ions from glowing metal compounds and related phenomena. In: Annals of Physics . Vol. 319, No. 8, 1904, pp. 425-468, doi : 10.1002 / andp.19043190802 .
  • as editor: Gustav Wiedemann , Rudolf Franz: About the heat conductivity of metals. Working (= Ostwald's Classics of Exact Sciences. 222, ISSN  0232-3419 ). Academic Publishing Company, Leipzig 1927.
  • with Sergius Seiliger: About the emission of electrons and positive ions at the melting point of metals. In: Journal of Physics. A: Hadrons and Nuclei. Vol. 38, No. 6/7, 1926, pp. 443-464, doi : 10.1007 / BF01397164 .

literature

  • Christoph Wehnelt: The Prussian Clan. History, Spirit & Disasters. Josef Fink Kunst Verlag, Lindenberg (Allgäu) 2007, ISBN 978-3-89870-228-7 .

Web links

Commons : Arthur Wehnelt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Builders come across an old crypt in Fürstenwalde in the online edition of the Märkische Oderzeitung from March 15, 2008, accessed on August 17, 2016
  2. ^ Klaus Pegler: Arthur Wehnelt, Frohnauer Professor and Inventor . In: Frohnau stories
personal data
SURNAME Wehnelt, Arthur
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wehnelt, Arthur Rudolph Berthold (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 4, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Rio de Janeiro
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1944
Place of death Berlin