Bernhard Kockel

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Bernhard Kockel (born September 3, 1909 in Leipzig , † May 27, 1987 in Gießen , full name Wilhelm Paul Bernhard Kockel) was a German theoretical physicist .

Life

Bernhard Kockel was the son of the chemigrapher Bernhard Kockel and his wife Emma, ​​nee. Voigtländer. After graduating from high school in 1928 at a secondary school in Leipzig , he studied mathematics, physics and geography at the University of Leipzig . He was particularly interested in theoretical physics, with his teachers being the physicists Werner Heisenberg and Friedrich Hund and the mathematician Bartel van der Waerden . He passed the state examination for the higher teaching post in January 1933 and began as an assistant at the Institute for Theoretical Physics.

In 1934 he became a student assistant at the Königin-Carola-Gymnasium in Leipzig. He was denied an assistant position at the physical institute because he had belonged to the Socialist Student Union . Since Heisenberg valued his achievements very much, he made the further training possible for him by employing him as his private assistant. In December 1936, Kockel's doctorate was completed. phil. with the work "About some multiple processes between electrons, positrons and light quanta". He then went to the University of Göttingen as an assistant to Richard Becker . Since he was denied the position of an assistant for the same reason, he switched to the AEG research institute in Berlin as a research assistant , where - apart from an interruption due to a conscription to the Wehrmacht - he mainly dealt with Barkhausen-Kurz-Schwachsen .

In 1942 he was assigned to work as a mathematician in the demagnetization group (EMG) in Lübeck , a department of the Navy . After the war, he taught at the Friedrich-Engels-Gymnasium where he lives Reinickendorf .

Since the Leipzig chair for theoretical physics was orphaned when Friedrich Hund left for Jena, Bernhard Kockel was brought in in May 1947 as a scientific assistant with a teaching position. In 1949 he completed his habilitation with the thesis “Processes between light particles according to Dirac's theory” and became a full professor for theoretical physics. In 1952 he took over the chair for theoretical physics and became director of the theoretical-physical institute, where he had already carried out its tasks. Because of his advocacy of freedom to travel to the Federal Republic of Germany, he came into conflict with the Ministry for State Security in 1956 .

In the fall of 1959, Kockel ended his employment relationship with the University of Leipzig and took over the management of a "work center for theoretical chemistry" which was being established in Leipzig and which was subordinate to the Academy of Sciences of the GDR in Berlin.

After an invitation to take on a substitute professorship in Gießen , he became an associate professor in 1962 and a full professor in 1963 for theoretical physics at the Justus Liebig University in Gießen . Here too, as before, he dealt with research on the application of quantum mechanics to problems in theoretical chemistry. In 1974 he retired.

Through his Leipzig student Lutz Zülicke , Kockel was more or less the “doctoral grandfather” of Angela Merkel .

Bernhard Kockel was married and had two daughters, born in 1939 and 1941.

Publications (selection)

  • with Hans Euler: About the scattering of light on light according to Dirac's theory. In: Natural Sciences. Volume 23, 1935, p. 246
  • About several multiple processes between electrons, positrons and light quanta , J. Springer, 1937 (doctoral thesis)
  • Processes between light particles according to Dirac's theory , Leipzig: JA Barth, 1949 (habilitation thesis)
  • Order-Disorder-Transformations . In: Annals of Physics . Volume 442, 1950, Issue 1-2
  • The ground state of the hydrogen molecule . In: Annals of Physics . Volume 450, 1954, issue 2
  • Representation-theoretical treatment of simple wave mechanical problems , Leipzig: BG Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft, 1955

literature

Karl Wappler: Bernhard Kockel - On his 100th birthday on September 3, 2009 , In: Universität Leipzig, Anniversaries 2009 ISBN 978-3-941152-11-3 , pp. 59-64 ( online (PDF; 2.1 MB), with picture)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Special information (5th report) - Subject: Professor Dr. Kockel (member of the SED), director of the Theoretical-Physical Institute of the Karl-Marx-Universität Leipzig [Information No. M122 / 56] of June 7th, 1956 , in: Henrik Bispinck (edit): The GDR in view of the Stasi 1956. The secret reports to the SED leadership , Göttingen 2016, available online
  2. ↑ Henrik Bispinck: Walter Ulbricht will also stumble shortly - reactions to the XX. Party congress of the CPSU in Saxony . in: Peter Boeger; Elise Catrain (Ed.): Stasi in Saxony. The GDR secret police in the districts of Dresden, Karl-Marx-Stadt and Leipzig , Berlin 2017, pp. 17-21, available online ( memento from January 13, 2018 in the Internet Archive ), example Kockel, p. 18
  3. ^ Lutz Zülicke in the Theoretical Chemistry Genealogy Project
personal data
SURNAME Kockel, Bernhard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kockel, Wilhelm Paul Bernhard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH September 3, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH May 27, 1987
Place of death to water