Erwin Schopper

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Erwin Schopper (born June 26, 1909 in Heilbronn ; † June 29, 2009 in Bad Soden am Taunus ) was a German physicist and was considered a pioneer of heavy ion physics. In 1956 he founded the Institute for Nuclear Physics at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main . In 1969, together with Walter Greiner , he was one of the founders of the Society for Heavy Ion Research (today: GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research ) in Darmstadt .

Life

Erwin Schopper studied physics from 1927 , first at the University of Tübingen and there with Walther Gerlach among others ; later study locations were Berlin (among others with Max Planck ) and Munich (with Arnold Sommerfeld ). In 1931 he began his doctoral thesis at the former Technical University of Stuttgart in field experimental physics in the group of Erich Regener , where he by photographic emulsions the tracks of ionizing particles chronicled and he 1934 with the graduation to the Dr. rer. nat. completed. From 1934 to 1937 Schopper was employed as a scientific assistant at the Physics Institute of the TH Stuttgart, then until the end of World War II as a department head at the central scientific laboratory of the Agfa company in Wolfen , which at the time belonged to the IG Farbenindustrie .

In collaboration with the Agfa central laboratory, he did pioneering work in the field of exploration of the stratosphere by raising his “nuclear track emulsions” into the stratosphere by hot air balloon in order to study cosmic rays in this way . With the help of his “nuclear track detectors”, Schopper was the first to be able to detect a complete fragmentation of a silver nucleus induced by neutrons in 1937 . The procedure he further developed led, among other things, to the verification of the Pion in the late 1940s .

In 1945 Erwin Schopper returned to the Stuttgart Physics Institute as a research assistant and completed his habilitation there in 1948, which he had started in 1935 . Thereupon he was appointed lecturer in Stuttgart in the same year and in 1950 he was appointed professor for experimental physics. In 1952, as a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society, he also took over the management of a high-voltage laboratory in Hechingen , a branch of the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of the Stratosphere . With the 1.5 mega-volt cascade accelerator there, a new era of nuclear physics work began in Germany, in particular the bombardment of heavy atomic nuclei with accelerated neutrons. Schopper brought this accelerator with him to Frankfurt when he was appointed in 1956.

In Frankfurt, Schopper increasingly worked in the field of radiation biology , a research focus that Friedrich Dessauer had established in Frankfurt in the 1920s. Schopper used plant seeds and stone crabs to investigate the damage caused by high-energy particles from cosmic radiation in biological tissue. In 1977 his experiments were among other things part of the Apollo Soyuz Test Project ; At that time, an institute for extraterrestrial biology was affiliated with the Frankfurt Biology Department .

Erwin Schopper retired in 1979. He last lived in Bad Soden am Taunus, where he died on June 29, 2009, three days after his 100th birthday; he had been able to take part briefly in the celebrations for his birthday.

Memberships and honors

Erwin Schopper was a member of the German Atomic Energy Commission from 1963 to 1971 (successor: Radiation Protection Commission ), he advised the OECD and the Council of Europe on liability issues relating to nuclear energy, and he was chairman of the “Space Biophysics” working group in the Joint Committee of Science and Technology of the Council of Europe.

In 1977 Schopper's group received the Group Achievement Award from the US space agency NASA for its work on radiation biology . In 1984 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erwin Schopper died at the age of 100. In: Frankfurter Neue Presse (online edition) of July 3, 2009
personal data
SURNAME Schopper, Erwin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH June 26, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Heilbronn
DATE OF DEATH June 29, 2009
Place of death Bad Soden am Taunus