Christian Møller

Christian Møller, born in Copenhagen in 1963

Christian Møller (born December 22, 1904 in Hundslev , Alsen , † January 14, 1980 in Ordrup near Copenhagen ) was a Danish physicist.

Life

Møller, who attended German and Danish schools (Alsen was part of Germany at the time), first studied mathematics at the University of Copenhagen from 1923, but switched to theoretical physics at Niels Bohr's Institute for Theoretical Physics in 1926 . There he heard lectures by Oskar Klein and Werner Heisenberg . During study stays in Hamburg he heard lectures on relativity theory by Wolfgang Pauli in the summer of 1926 and Erwin Schrödinger and Albert Einstein in Berlin in 1928 . In 1929 he received his master's degree (Mag. Scient. Phys.) At the University of Copenhagen and was then at the Niels Bohr Institute , where he was a research assistant from 1931. In 1932 he received his doctorate from Niels Bohr ( on the theory of the passage of fast electrons through matter ) and was then a lecturer at his institute. In 1934/35 he was a Rockefeller Fellow in Cambridge and Rome . In 1943 he became professor of mathematical physics at the University of Copenhagen. 1954 to 1957 he was director of the theory group of the CERN in Copenhagen, which is under construction , and from 1957 to 1971 director of Nordita in Copenhagen. In 1975 he retired.

From 1948 he was a member of the scientific committee of the Solvay Institute . From 1959 to 1972 he was a member of the Scientific Policy Committee of CERN. From 1959 to 1980 he was secretary of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences. In 1972 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

Møller is known for his contributions to the theory of relativity (about which he wrote a textbook) and to quantum chemistry , where in 1934 he and the American Milton Plesset laid the basis for a perturbative method named after them. At the beginning of the 1930s, he dealt with the early formulation and application of quantum electrodynamics, especially with the deceleration of fast elementary particles in matter (as did, for example, Hans Bethe and Enrico Fermi ). The Møller scattering (relativistic electron-electron scattering) is named after him. He also dealt with general relativity , relativistic thermodynamics and theoretical nuclear physics, where he collaborated with Léon Rosenfeld among others on the field theory of mesons .

From 1946 he corresponded with Wolfgang Pauli on the analytical theory of the scatter matrix , which had been introduced by Werner Heisenberg shortly before , and from 1952 until his death in 1955 with Pauli on meson theory.

Fonts

• with Ebbe Rasmussen: The World and the Atom. London 1940; 2nd edition, Allen and Unwin, 1948
• Theory of relativity. Bibliographical Institute, Mannheim 1976
• The Theory of Relativity. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2nd edition 1972.
• Editor: Evidence for Gravitational Theories. Proceedings of the International School of Physics Enrico Fermi , Course 20 (July 1961), Academic Press 1963.
• Atomic physics basis i elementær Fremdstilling. Copenhagen 1964 (Fundamentals and elementary treatment of atomic physics)

literature

• Helge Kragh : Relativistic Collisions: The Work of Christian Møller in the Early 1930s. In: Arch. Hist. Ex. Sci. Volume 43, 1992, pp. 299-328.
• Hubert Goenner : Christian Møller. In: Physical sheets. Volume 36, 1980, p. 341
• Helmut Rechenberg and Jagdish Mehra : Historical Development of Quantum Theory. Volume 6, Part 1, p. 663

Web links

• Oral History Interview

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The English short biography in Niels Bohr Institute, Archive, Moeller Papers ( Memento of the original from July 29, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , gives to Lecturer 1933, Associate Professor 1940, from 1943 extraordinary Professor 
2. ↑ Bethe, Oral History Interview with Judith Goodstein, Caltech, 1982/3
3. ^ Moeller, Rosenfeld On the field theory of nuclear forces , Kgl. Danske Videnskab Selskab, Mat.-Fys. Medd., Volume 17, 1940, No. 8
4. ↑ Enz No time to be brief , Oxford UP, 2002, p. 406. Res Jost , who was visiting Copenhagen from Switzerland, also worked at Moeller in Copenhagen in 1946 on the S-Matrix.
5. ↑ Niels Bohr Institute, Archive, Moeller Papers ( Memento of the original from July 29, 2009 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. . Brief biographical information can also be found there.