Ewald five

Ewald Fünfer (born October 14, 1908 in Heidenheim an der Brenz ; † June 29, 1995 ) was a German experimental physicist ( nuclear physics , plasma physics ) and director at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Garching near Munich .

Fünfer studied physics in Tübingen and Berlin and received his doctorate in 1932 with Hans Geiger with a dissertation on nuclear physics. From 1935 he was at the Aviation Technology Academy in Berlin in the Institute for Materials Testing and then in the Institute for Physics, where he dealt with short-term physics (spark photography, X-ray flash photography) for example for ballistics . After the Second World War he worked for the French at the Saint-Louis Research Institute , where he also worked with Hugo Neuert and dealt with gas discharges and nuclear physics measurement technology. In 1952 he completed his habilitation in Freiburg on high vacuum penetration and in 1953 became a lecturer and employee of Heinz Maier-Leibnitz at the Technical University of Munich . There he began to deal with nuclear fusion ( Z-Pinch ) and in 1958 he and his group produced neutrons from nuclear fusion for the first time in Germany. In 1960 he was a founding member of the MPI for Plasma Physics in Garching and also a professor at the Technical University of Munich . At the IPP he was department head of an experimental group that built and operated the Z-Pinch Experiment Isar I (from 1961). His group also did pioneering work in measurements on fusion plasmas (1963 first measurement of the electron temperature of a fusion plasma with laser scattering).

He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Stuttgart (1976) and the Federal Cross of Merit (1978). From 1967 to 1975 he was editor of the Zeitschrift für Physik .

Fonts

• with Hugo Neuert : Counting tubes and scintillation counters , Karlsruhe: Braun, 1954, 2nd edition 1959

Web links

• Isabella Milch: Personal information: On the death of Ewald Fünfer , Physikalische Blätter October 1995
• Entry at Leo-BW