Franz Serafin Exner (physicist)

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Franz Serafin Exner 1915
Franz Serafin Exner and his students 1899

Franz Serafin Exner (born March 24, 1849 in Vienna ; † November 15, 1926 there ) was an Austrian physicist .

Life

Franz Serafin Exner (II.) Came from one of the most important academic families of the Habsburg monarchy . He was born after Adolf Exner , Karl Exner , Sigmund Exner and Marie von Frisch . Exner the youngest of five children of parents Franz Serafin Exner and Charlotte Dusensy (1814-1859). His father Franz Serafin was professor of philosophy in Prague from 1831 to 1848 and from 1848 Ministerialrat in the Ministry of Education in Vienna and an influential reformer of the Austrian teaching and university system, who had a lasting influence on Austrian educational policy.

The son began studying physics at the University of Vienna in 1867 and after a year of study in Zurich under August Kundt , during which he also worked with Kundt's pupil and assistant Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen , he received his doctorate in philosophy in Vienna in 1871. The greatest influence on his education came from Viktor von Lang , who was appointed professor of physics at the University of Vienna in 1866 and who significantly promoted his development.

In 1872 he became an assistant at the newly founded University of Strasbourg in Kundt, returned in 1873 to Vienna a year later with a thesis about the diffusion through liquid lamellae to habilitation . Then he was Viktor von Lang's assistant in Vienna and honorary lecturer at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences. In 1879 he was appointed associate professor and in 1891 professor at the Institute of Chemistry and Physics, renamed “Second Physics Institute” in 1902, as the successor to Johann Josef Loschmidt , who, as a friend of the Exner family, looked after the “Exner children” after the early death of his parents “Had taken care of. After Exner had received one of the separate prints sent on January 1, 1896 by his author and Exner's friend Röntgen, from Ueber a new type of radiation and had shown it to a small group of colleagues in the presence of Professor Ernst Lecher, he left it, including copies of some of the first Material containing X-rays from Ernst Lechner, whose father, Zacharias Konrad Lecher (1829–1905), published the news of the discovery of X-rays for the first time as the editor of Die Presse on January 5 in Vienna. When Exner was appointed rector of the University of Vienna in 1908, he was at the height of his scientific activities; within a generation it had become the “center of Austrian physics”. In 1920 he retired .

In his later years he dealt in an unpublished work “From Chaos to the Present” with philosophical-cultural-historical aspects of a cultural or scientific progress of mankind in the tension between Oswald Spengler's theories on the “Fall of the West”. His grave is at Sieveringer Friedhof in the 19th district of Döbling in Vienna .

meaning

Exner circle gathered around anniversary boy Viktor v. Lang 1908

Franz Exner is described by his students as a versatile, highly educated and cultivated physicist with strong visions. He was a pioneer in numerous areas of modern physics. It is largely thanks to him that the emerging topics of radioactivity, spectroscopy, electrochemistry (galvanic element), electricity in the atmosphere and color theory were dealt with early in Austria.

Among his most famous students were Marian Smoluchowski , a Viennese of Polish descent who independently of Albert Einstein and Friedrich Hasenöhrl discovered a theory of Brownian molecular motion, Victor Franz Hess , whose attention was drawn to the exciting and extensive topic of air electricity and the associated radioactivity from Franz Exner , was awakened together with Egon Schweidler , a pioneer in the research of air electricity and who later received the Nobel Prize with his discovery of "cosmic radiation", and the later Nobel Prize winner Erwin Schrödinger , who started at Exner in 1911, where he continued in the following Years worked as a temporary assistant and in 1914 completed his habilitation with "Studies on the kinetics of dielectrics, the melting point, pyro and piezoelectricity" and finally Stefan Meyer , who became the first director of the " Institute for Radium Research " founded by Exner . He was Lise Meitner's doctoral supervisor .

In the decades 1920 and 1930 most of the physics chairs were occupied by Exner students: Josef Thuma , Brno, later professor in Prague, Anton Lampa , Prague, Hans Benndorf , Graz, Marian von Smoluchowski , Lemberg, Krakow, Stefan Meyer , Vienna, Egon Schweidler , Innsbruck, Vienna, Eduard Haschek , Extraordinarius Vienna, Friedrich Hasenöhrl , Vienna, Arthur Szarvassi , Brno, Heinrich Mache , Vienna, Viktor Conrad , Brno, later USA, Felix Maria von Exner-Ewarten , Vienna, Friedrich von Lerch , Innsbruck , Karl Przibram , Vienna, Felix Ehrenhaft , Vienna, Erwin Lohr , Brno, Wilhelm Matthäus Schmidt , Vienna, Franz Aigner , Vienna, Victor Franz Hess , Graz, Innsbruck, New York, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Kohlrausch , Graz, Ludwig Flamm , Vienna, Erwin Schrödinger , Jena, Leipzig, Zurich, Berlin, Graz, Dublin, Vienna, Hans Thirring , Vienna.

Fonts (selection)

  • Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen , -: About the use of an ice calorimeter to determine the intensity of solar radiation . In: Session reports of the mathematical and natural science class of the Imperial Academy of Sciences . Volume 69.1874, p. 228, OBV .
  • Lectures on electricity . Deuticke, Leipzig / Vienna 1888, OBV .
  • with Sigmund Exner: The physical principles of flower coloration . In: Session reports of the mathematical and natural science class of the Imperial Academy of Sciences . Volume 119 / IKk Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1910, pp. 191–245,  ÖNB .
  • Lectures on the physical basics of the natural sciences . Deuticke, Vienna 1919, OBV . (95 fully developed physics lectures, 22 of them on the ether of physics ).
  • From chaos to the present. A cultural-historical study . (Printed as a manuscript). Self-published, Vienna 1923, OBV .

Awards, honors

  • 1881: Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
  • 1885: Corresponding and in 1896 actual member of the Imperial and Royal Austrian Academy of Sciences
  • 1937: Memorial plaque in the arcade courtyard of the University of Vienna , artist Michael Powolny

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinz Otremba: Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen. A life in the service of science. A documentation with a scientific appreciation by Walther Gerlach . Franconian Society Printing Office, Würzburg 1970, pp. 12-14.
  2. ^ Martin Goes: Friedrich Dessauer (1881–1963): X-ray pioneer from Aschaffenburg and since 1934 in exile. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 14, 1996, pp. 209-232; here: p. 209.
  3. ↑ Franz_Exner_ (physicist) in Vienna History Wiki of the city of Vienna
    grave site Franz Exner , Vienna, Sieveringer cemetery, Division 2, Group 13, no. 84th
  4. ↑ Ruth Lewin Sime , Lise Meitner, University of California Press 1997, pp. 17f
  5. ↑ Unveiling of the memorial plaque for Professor Dr. Franz Exner. In:  Neue Freie Presse , Morgenblatt (No. 25996 M / 1937), January 24, 1937, p. 6, center right. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nfp;
    Hans Benndorf: Commemorative speech for Franz Serafin Exner on the occasion of the unveiling of his monument in the University of Vienna on January 23, 1937 . Pohl, Vienna 1937, OBV .
personal data
SURNAME Exner, Franz Serafin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian physicist
DATE OF BIRTH March 24, 1849
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH November 15, 1926
Place of death Vienna