Carl Wilhelm Oseen

Carl Wilhelm Oseen (* 1879 in Lund , † 1944 in Uppsala ) was a Swedish theoretical physicist in Uppsala and director of the Nobel Institute for Theoretical Physics in Stockholm .

CW Oseen (1909)

Life

Oseen studied from 1896 at the University of Lund , where 1900 he the licentiate took off. He also studied in Göttingen . In 1902 he became a lecturer in mathematics and finally between 1904 and 1906, and 1907 and 1910, deputy professor of mathematics. From 1909 to 1933 Oseen was Professor of Mechanics and Mathematical Physics at Uppsala University . In 1921 he became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 1933 head of its Nobel Institute, which previously under Svante Arrhenius had its focus on physical chemistry and, with Oseen, focused on theoretical physics. In 1924 he became a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

He formulated the main features of the elasticity theory of liquid crystals (Oseen's elasticity theory). In 1921 he proposed Albert Einstein for the Nobel Prize . He was one of the first Swedish physicists to accept Niels Bohr's atomic theory and, like Oskar Klein, accompanied him on Bohr's lecture tour in 1922 to Göttingen.

One result of Oseen's work are the Oseen's equations from fluid mechanics . These are a linearized version of the stationary incompressible Navier-Stokes equations .

In 1936 he gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Oslo (Problems of Geometric Optics).

As chairman of the Nobel Committee, he was averse to theoretical work on the atom, which contributed significantly to the fact that Arnold Sommerfeld, despite many nominations, never received the award and that his student Werner Heisenberg had to wait a relatively long time for it.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Volker Mrasek : Die Ewig Nominieren , Deutschlandfunk, December 7, 2016. He quotes the science historian Robert Marc Friedman in Oslo.