Claus Rolfs

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Claus E. Rolfs (* 1941 in Bad Peterstal ) is a German experimental physicist who deals with materials science and nuclear astrophysics .

Rolfs went to school in Offenburg and studied physics at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg . From 1973 he was a close associate of William A. Fowler at Caltech , where Rolfs was a Millikan Fellow. From the 1970s he was a professor at the University of Münster . He has been a professor at the Ruhr University Bochum since 1990 , where he retired in 2007 . He lives in Münster . In 1980 he was visiting professor at Ohio State University .

Rolfs experimentally investigated the nuclear fusion reactions taking place in the sun in the laboratory.

From 2005 he also dealt with the treatment of radioactive waste . In his experiments, he found that the fusion rate was higher when the target nuclei were stored in a metal (and when cooled) and hopes that the treatment of alpha and beta emitters from radioactive waste from nuclear power plants will result in a similar installation in metals and cooling to very low temperatures (a few Kelvin ) a reduction in half-lives by a factor of up to 100, for example for radium 226 (one of the most harmful substances in nuclear waste from nuclear power plants) from 1622 years to 100 years. Rolfs assumes that this is because the cloud of free electrons in the metal reaching the core accelerates positive decay products such as alpha particles from the core. The change in half-life has not yet been proven by any experiments. The isotope ratio of uranium is also identical in the most diverse ore deposits around the world, apart from the measurement inaccuracy. This means that the half-life is not measurably influenced by the chemical environment or by temperature.

Claus Rolfs has published over 450 articles and is also the author of various books for young people.

In 1972 he was the representative of Canada at the IAEA in Vienna. In 1979 he received the Röntgen Prize from the University of Giessen . He has multiple honorary doctorates (Naples, Catania, Lisbon). In 2006 he received the Saha Memorial Prize in Calcutta and in 1989 the Belgian-German Humboldt Prize. In 2010 he received the Hans A. Bethe Prize for his significant contributions to the experimental determination of the nuclear cross-section in stars, including the first direct determination of the cross-section of the helium 3 fusion reaction under solar conditions .

Rolfs plays several instruments.

Michael Wiescher , who received the Hans A. Bethe Prize in 2003, was one of his doctoral students .

Fonts

  • with William Rodney: Caldrons in the Cosmos. University of Chicago Press, 1988.
  • Off into space - a companion for young and old. Wagner Verlag, Gelnhausen 2009, ISBN 978-3-86683-506-1 .
  • How the biosphere and medicine use physics. Wagner Verlag, Gelnhausen 2009.
  • What you should know about energy. Wagner Verlag, Gelnhausen 2009.
  • Sound in humans and animals and the art of music. Verlag Die Blaue Eule, Essen 2009.
  • Animal Physics - From Hummingbirds to Whales: Physics in Our Time. Vol. 41, 2010, issue 3, p. 152.
  • with Karlheinz Langanke : Nucleosynthesis in homogeneous and inhomogeneous big bang models. Physikalische Blätter, Vol. 49, 1993, p. 31.
  • The heavenly source of energy: how does the sun work? The history of the chemical elements , in Müller-Krumbhaar, H.-F. Wagner (editor) ..and he throws the dice! , Wiley / VCH 2001, pp. 100–109 (anthology on the year of physics 2000, on behalf of the German Physical Society / Federal Ministry of Education and Research)
  • with H. Trautvetter: Experimental nuclear astrophysics , Annual Rev. Nucl. Part. Sci., Vol. 28, 1978, 115-159
  • Laboratory approaches of nuclear reactions involved in primordial and stellar nucleosynthesis , Progress Part. Nucl. Phys., Vol. 17, 1986, 365-391
  • Nuclear reactions in stars , Progress Particle Nuclear Phys., 46, 2001, 23
  • Nuclear reactions in stars far below the Coulomb barrier , Progress Part. Nucl. Phys., 59, 2007, 43
  • with C. Barnes: Radiative capture reactions in nuclear astrophysics , Ann. Rev. Nucl. Part. Sci., 40, 1990, 45-78

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rolfs u. a. First Hints on a change of 22 Na Beta Decay Half Life in the metal Pd. European Physics Journal A, Vol. 28, 2006, p. 251. See also: Nuclear waste: Dismantle faster instead of burying it. In: weltderphysik.de. August 4, 2006, archived from the original on 20081207122739 .;
  2. ↑ 2010 Hans A. Bethe Prize Recipient Claus Rolfs. APS, 2010, accessed February 17, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Rolfs, Claus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rolfs, Claus E.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Peterstal