Carl Friedrich Weiss

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Carl Friedrich Weiss (born January 24, 1901 in Leipzig ; † October 28, 1981 there ) was a German physicist in the field of radioactivity .

Carl Friedrich Weiss

Life

Carl Friedrich Weiss, often called “CF” for short after his initials, came from a humble background. His ancestors were small farmers, spoon smiths and craftsmen in the Ore Mountains and Vogtland . His father Carl Richard Weiss was a traveling salesman for haberdashery (mainly yarn and zippers) from Rittersgrün ; his mother's name was Marie Ernestine geb. Teichmann.

Weiss attended school in Leipzig until he graduated from high school. In 1920 he began his studies of philosophy, physics, psychology and education at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Breslau , which he had to finance himself through secondary employment. His time in Breslau, during which he also met his future wife, he completed with a doctorate , for which he submitted a thesis in the field of atomic spectroscopy .

From 1929 to 1931 Weiss was senior assistant to Walther Bothe at the Physics Institute of the Ludwig University of Giessen . Here he found access to his main scientific field, radioactivity, which Bothe had been dealing with since the early 1920s. In 1931 he moved to the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt (PTR) in Berlin , of which he was a member until 1945. Most recently he was senior government councilor and head of department here. He was particularly interested in radium and its secondary products, which arise after radioactive decay . For example, by laboriously processing residues from lead production, he produced strong polonium-210 sources . Hence his lifelong high regard for radiochemistry . The production and precise determination of the activity of radioactive standard sources was his main profession.

In 1944, the Department of Atomic Physics and Physical Chemistry of the PTR, headed by Carl Friedrich Weiss, was relocated to a factory building in Ronneburg (Thuringia) as a result of the massive bombing raids by the Allies on Berlin . The entire reserve of the German Reich of radium in an amount of 21.8 grams and a value at that time of around 3 million Reichsmarks was stored in a mining tunnel in Ronneburg. Weiss had received the order in April 1945 to bring this reserve to Upper Bavaria to protect it from the American troops. After the SS escort team withdrew in view of the approaching front, Weiss and colleagues buried the radium in a forest near Bad Tölz . After his return to Ronneburg, Weiss was arrested by the Americans and had to dig up the valuable box himself and give it to them. On June 27, 1945, the New York Times reported: "All Reich's Radium in American's Hands".

After the occupation of Thuringia by the Red Army , Weiss was imprisoned in Dresden for 6 weeks and then brought to the Soviet Union with his family and other German specialists. Weiss had also agreed to a two-year contract because of his family: “We were starving at the time,” reports the son Cornelius Weiss . In the USSR, like other “looted Germans”, Weiss worked isolated behind a camp fence and comparatively privileged on basic research on the Soviet nuclear program. CF Weiss headed a laboratory for studying natural and artificial radioactivity in an institute in Obninsk . 30 other German scientists were also interned there with their families. From 1952 to 1955 he was housed in Sukhumi without doing any research so that he would not be up to date with the latest research when he returned to Germany.

Weiss was forced to stay in the USSR for a full 10 years instead of the agreed two. After his return to Germany in 1955, he was given the opportunity in Leipzig to set up a new research institute for the investigation of radioactive nuclides and their application in science and economy, which belonged to the Academy of Sciences of the GDR as an institute for applied radioactivity . Weiss was its director from 1956 to 1966. The structure comprised the design of the research directions as well as the institute building and the development and training of interdisciplinary teams of scientists.

In 1956, CF Weiss was able to complete his habilitation at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig and was soon afterwards appointed full professor. Numerous doctoral and diploma theses have been written at his institute. Weiss did not join the SED or any other bloc party.

Carl Friedrich Weiss was very interested in music and was also musically active as a cellist . He and his wife Hildegard geb. Joachim three children. One of his sons, the chemist Cornelius Weiss , was rector of the University of Leipzig from 1991 to 1997.

Awards and memberships

Fonts

  • Standard radioactive preparations . Berlin: German publisher d. Sciences, 1956
  • numerous other monographs and specialist articles as author and co-author

literature

  • Stefan Locke: Yes, it was bad . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 30, 2013, p. 3

References and comments

  1. ↑ Cornelius Weiss: In Memory of Professor Carl Friedrich Weiss , Isotopes Environment. Health Stud. 2000 Vol 36, pp 189-191
  2. ↑ Cornelius Weiss: cracks in time. A life between east and west . Rowohlt, Hamburg 2012, pp. 12–13. ISBN 9783498073749
  3. ↑ The topic of the dissertation was On the determination of corresponding transition probabilities from an excited state of the sodium atom.
  4. ↑ H. Koch: Professor Dr. phil. habil. Carl Friedrich Weiss 70 years old . Isotopepraxis, 7th year, issue 10/1971, pp. 399–400
  5. ↑ Stefan Locke: Yes, it was bad . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 30, 2013
  6. ^ The PTR in Ronneburg
  7. ↑ Stefan Locke: Yes, it was bad . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 30, 2013
  8. ↑ Pavel V. Oleynikov: German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic Project , The Nonproliferation Review Volume 7, Number 2, 1-30 (2000) (digitized version)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Weiss, Carl Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH January 24, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH October 28, 1981
Place of death Leipzig