Eugene Kappler

Eugen Kappler (born April 1, 1905 in Schömberg , Württemberg, † October 31, 1977 in Münster ) was a German physicist .

Eugen Kappler attended the secondary school in Calw and studied philosophy , physics and mathematics in Tübingen and Munich . In Munich he did his doctorate under Walther Gerlach with a fundamental thesis on the molecular kinetically excited torsional vibrations of a torsion pendulum . He observed the fluctuations caused by the Brownian molecular motion of a very small mirror suspended from a very thin quartz thread, known as the “Kappler experiment”.

With this he succeeded in determining the Loschmidt number or Avogadro number , which was the most precise of his time .

After his habilitation (Munich 1939) and a scheduled associate professor for physics, he became a full professor for experimental physics at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster in 1949 . Kappler set up the physics institute in the former provincial school college built in 1911/12 on Schlossplatz; In the bombing war of 1943, the institute building, which was built around 1900 and located between Aa and Johannis-Strasse, was completely destroyed.

Eugen Kappler devoted himself scientifically to the properties of precious metal contacts, the determination of the hardness of metallic materials, their plastic deformation and the properties of single crystals with extremely few defects .

Ulrich Bonse is one of his doctoral students .

literature

• A. Eucken: Textbook of chemical physics. Volume I, 2nd edition. 1938, p. 67 f.
• E. Kappler: Ann. Physics. Volume 5, No. 11, 1931, p. 233.
• E. Kappler: Physics of Liquids and Gases. Fiat Review of German Science 1939-1946. Dieterich'sche, Wiesbaden 1948.