Eugen Goldstein

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Gotthilf- Eugen Goldstein (born September 5, 1850 in Gleiwitz , † December 25, 1930 in Berlin ) was a German physicist who dealt with gas discharge research and is the discoverer of canal rays .

Life

Goldstein came from a wealthy Jewish wine merchant family, grew up with relatives in Ratibor in Silesia after the early death of his parents and began studying medicine in Wroclaw in 1869 . During the war euphoria, he moved to Berlin and from 1871 worked as an intern and student with Hermann von Helmholtz in the Berlin Physics Institute, where he received his doctorate in the field of gas discharges in 1879. There he drew attention to his work by describing isolated gas discharge phenomena, in particular he introduced the term cathode rays and discovered canal rays in 1886 . In Helmholtz he had a sponsor who did provide him with scholarships and supported his publications, but could not help him to permanent employment.

tomb

He married the widowed Laura Kempke in 1925. Eugen Goldstein died on December 25, 1930 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee . In 1932 his wife gave his scientific and literary work to the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences . She perished in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943 .

His colleague Wilhelm Westphal remembered him as an amiable and extremely funny , old-fashioned eccentric, slight and with a full beard. According to Westphal, his life had a touch of tragedy, as the actual recognition in Germany was only given to him in his later years and a career was denied him. He was better known abroad, especially in England, and when he was invited to the British Association meeting in Canada in 1909, Ernest Rutherford had him sit down next to him at the opening.

scientist

Goldstein's Jewish origins may have played a role, which made his job in the middle of the “ Berlin anti-Semitism dispute ” from 1879 at least difficult. In the acquaintance of Wilhelm Foerster , the director of the Berlin observatory , he found a sponsor in the field of cosmic physics and a brilliant scientific organizer on the fringes of established physics and astronomy. On Foerster's initiative, Goldstein began work on electricity in space from 1885, which mainly revolved around cometary phenomena and was supposed to recreate these celestial bodies in the evacuated glass bottle and make them understandable. Further experiments concerned the polar lights and the frequency of their occurrence, sunspot phenomena and earth's magnetic field fluctuations - these phenomena showed a connection that was puzzling at the time, the secret of which Foerster wanted to unravel with Goldstein and a research program of cosmic physics, which at the time seemed avant-garde. In 1887 Goldstein was awarded the title of professor for his scientific achievements without habilitation - still without a job - in the following year, at Foerster's instigation, he was given an assistant position at the Berlin observatory for the first time, which he would hold throughout his life.

In this role he headed the physics department of Urania in Berlin , which Foerster co-founded , which was supposed to relieve the observatory of visitors. He developed unique show experiments that could be operated by the visitors with an electrical switch, and at the same time was able to pursue his research with discharge tubes. From 1892 to 1896 he was able to carry out his research as a guest in the premises of the newly founded Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt , which Helmholtz and Foerster were involved in establishing - but he continued to work there as an assistant at the observatory.

The assistant position should prove to be a hindrance to his scientific career: He was not employed for basic research, but as a physicist in the service of the observatory. In retrospect, significant discoveries about the discoloration of materials by cathode radiation (he referred to as post-color ), the resulting phosphorescent light and the short-wave UV radiation when they hit solid bodies were barely noticed. He was a close observer, who for the first time precisely described the different layers of the gas discharge. Goldstein also discovered the spark spectra of ionized atoms, before only the arc spectra of neutral atoms were known. In 1898 Goldstein received a room rented in Grunewaldstrasse Schöneberg near Berlin as the “Physics Laboratory of the Berlin Observatory” with a employed glassblower. It existed until 1927 and Goldstein lived there too. In 1913 the laboratory moved to the newly established Babelsberg observatory, which was renamed the "Goldstein Laboratory" after his death. However, this name had to disappear again under the Nazi regime in 1935.

Impact history

Building on the work of Julius Plücker and his student Johann Wilhelm Hittorf , Goldstein carried out extensive gas discharge experiments, for which he had almost 2,000 tubes manufactured by 1885, some of which were paid for out of his own pocket. In 1869, Hittorf succeeded in isolating the phenomenon of dark "glow rays" in the variety of phenomena of gas discharges, which Goldstein referred to as "cathode rays" for the first time in 1876 and understood it as a fundamental phenomenon of electricity, but interpreted it - in the Helmholtz tradition - as an etheric phenomenon . Experiments by Philipp Lenard , who took up previous discharge attempts by Heinrich Hertz , led to the construction of a tube to generate pure cathode radiation ( Lenard window ), which Conrad Röntgen used at the end of 1895 for the epochal discovery of X-rays. With the discussion about X-rays and thus also cathode radiation, Goldstein was honored as a brilliant experimental physicist, especially abroad.

From today's point of view , the discovery of canal rays associated with Eugen Goldstein in the reception today remained meaningless for the development of modern physics: The nine-page academy contribution from 1886 was ignored at the time, especially since the canal ray hypothesis did not particularly stand out from the variety of gas discharge phenomena. This also changed with the discovery of Röntgen's X-rays , when the canal rays became important for a short time. With the triumphant advance of the emerging atomic physics, however, they could be identified as ion radiation and lost their special status.

Goldstein shaped gas discharge research like no one else and conducted comet tail experiments in the discharge tube to conduct research in the dark and fringing areas of cosmic physics. He recognized early on the independent importance of cathode radiation in gas discharge processes as well as in comet tail, sun or polar light phenomena. Priority disputes with established scientists such as William Crookes in 1879 over the corpuscular interpretation of gas discharges or the Parisian astrophysicist Henri Deslandres over the explanation of solar activity with cathode rays in 1897 brought him recognition, especially abroad. Among other things, he received the Prix Hébert of the Paris Académie des sciences in 1903 or the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society in 1909 and was nominated for the Nobel Prize several times . In 1919 he became an honorary member of the German Physical Society . In spite of this, he was largely denied recognition in Germany until after the war; he was assistant to the observatory until the end. Sommerfeld in particular attached great importance to him by describing a phenomenon much later identified as the photoelectric effect and paid tribute to him in an article on his 70th birthday:

"We can therefore say without exaggeration that Goldstein recognized what is perhaps the most important and at least most puzzling proposition of quantum theory in general outlines as early as 1879, when the world was not yet troubled by any quantum conception, based on his in-depth, objective cathode ray experiences."

- Arnold Sommerfeld

This assessment of the physicist caught in the ether theory and the phenomenological experimental style was certainly exaggerated, but it shows the late recognition of his work in the now established atomic physics. Not least because of the Nazi regime, the Jewish scientist had to be forgotten.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jewish weekly. The truth. XLVIII. Volume, Vienna, June 17, 1932, number 25, p. 6 ( Memento of December 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 2.3 MB), accessed on April 3, 2013.
  2. ^ A b Wilhelm Westphal: On Eugen Goldstein's 100th birthday . In: Physical sheets . tape 6 , no. 9 , 1950, pp. 410-412 , doi : 10.1002 / phbl.19500060905 .
  3. ^ Arnold Sommerfeld: About some of Goldstein's spectroscopic work . In: Natural Sciences . tape 8 , no. 36 , 1920, pp. 723-725 , doi : 10.1007 / BF02448999 .
personal data
SURNAME Goldstein, Eugene
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH September 5, 1850
PLACE OF BIRTH Gliwice
DATE OF DEATH December 25, 1930
Place of death Berlin