Ernst Back

Ernst Emil Alexander Back (born October 21, 1881 in Freiburg im Breisgau ; † June 20, 1959 in Munich ) was a German physicist .

Life

Ernst Back attended school in Strasbourg until 1900 and then studied law in Strasbourg, Munich and Berlin from 1902 to 1906 . Until 1909 he worked in Alsace-Lorraine in the field of law. He then took a leave of absence and began studying physics in Tübingen . In 1912 he gave up the legal profession and obtained his doctorate in 1913. His doctoral thesis, which he wrote under the title Zur Preston's rule , dealt with the phenomenon that later became known as the Paschen-Back effect and is named after him and Friedrich Paschen .

From 1914 to 1918 he served in the German Army during the First World War . After the war he headed the Veifa-Werke laboratory in Frankfurt am Main . The company manufactured electrical appliances and X-ray equipment. In 1920 he left the company and took an assistant position at the Physics Institute in Tübingen. In 1926 he received a call to the University of Hohenheim and subsequently took over the chair there in 1929 . He held this position until 1936 when he returned to Tübingen to take on a professorship there.

From 1926 to 1927 he worked with Samuel Abraham Goudsmit on the first measurements of electron spin and the related Zeeman effect . Ernst Back retired in 1948 and died more than ten years later in Munich.

In 1976, Back crater on the moon was named after him.

Publications

• Ernst Back, Alfred Landé : Zeeman effect and multiplet structure of the spectral lines. J. Springer, Berlin 1925.