Frederick Seitz

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Frederick Seitz, 1963

Frederick Seitz , often also Fred Seitz , (born July 4, 1911 in San Francisco , † March 2, 2008 in New York City ) was an American physicist . Seitz was initially an important scientist who had received many awards. After his retirement in the 1970s, he turned away from science and faced various environmental and health problems for various industrial sectors, such as B. the dangers of tobacco consumption , the ozone hole , acid rain or the existence of man-made climate change .

Life

Scientific career

Seitz graduated from Stanford in 1932 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics after three years. His further path led him to Princeton University , where he received his doctorate in physics under Eugene Wigner in 1934 . He dealt with metals, in his doctorate with sodium , and their internal structure. The two developed the Wigner-Seitz cell . From 1935 to 1937 he worked at the Faculty of Physics at the University of Rochester, New York, then he changed as a researcher first in the laboratories of General Electric , then to the University of Pennsylvania. During this period, he wrote his highly acclaimed book The Modern Theory of Solids , which appeared in 1940 and dealt with developments in solid state physics.

Around 1939 he worked on cleaning processes for silicon on behalf of the Radiation Laboratory and at the same time on the improvement of white pigments for wall paint on behalf of the chemical company DuPont. Toxic lead compounds were still being used as pigments in the 1930s. These pigments were then replaced with non-toxic titanium dioxide, and DuPont looked for improved manufacturing methods for titanium dioxide or a cheaper pigment. At that time, the only possible substitute seemed to be exactly stoichiometric silicon carbide (SiC). He developed a process, later known as the DuPont process, to produce pure silicon by reducing silicon tetrachloride using zinc at comparatively low costs. From mid-1941 onwards, researchers on the British-American radar project had access to small, high-quality silicon crystals.

His next book, The Physics of Metals , was published in 1943 . From 1942 to 1949 he worked for the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg. During the Second World War he did research in the field of nuclear and radar technology, among other things, in 1946 and 1947 he worked for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. In 1949 he was appointed professor of physics at the University of Illinois in Chicago, from 1957 he was division director and from 1964 dean and vice president for research. There he managed to win John Bardeen for an extensive and newly formed research group . He was President of the National Academy of Sciences from 1962 to 1969 and President of Rockefeller University in New York City from 1968 until his retirement in 1979 . During his presidency at Rockefeller University, research programs in reproductive, cellular, and molecular biology were initiated. In addition, the university was able to acquire a land for the field of ethnology and ecology in Millbrook, New York, where field research on animal behavior and environmental biology was later carried out. The archive center in Pocantico, New York, was also built during his tenure. In 1959 and 1960 he also advised NATO , and from 1962 to 1969 he was a member of the scientific advisory staff to the President of the United States.

Activity as a lobbyist and "Merchant of Doubt"

After his retirement, Seitz stopped the publication of scientific papers and from the 1970s teamed up with industrial companies and think tanks in order to sow doubts for them about scientific knowledge in environmental and health issues. Among other things, Seitz worked for the tobacco industry, for which he doubted the dangers of tobacco smoking and passive smoking , and denied the dangers of the ozone hole and acid rain . Seitz was also a central figure in the organized denial of global warming .

Seitz is considered to be the first of the "universally applicable purchasable deniers" of scientific findings. Among other things, he was responsible for distributing more than $ 45 million in "research funds" from the tobacco company RJ Reynolds from the 1970s onwards , which were intended to deny the knowledge about the health dangers of tobacco consumption. Seitz, who later admitted that Reynolds was not interested in studying the health effects of smoking, received $ 585,000 for his services.

In 1984 Seitz was one of the founders of the conservative think tank George C. Marshall Institute , of which he was chairman until 2001. As chairman of the Marshall Institute, he received donations from the oil company ExxonMobil for fighting man-made climate change. In total, he was in contact with five organizations that received funding from Exxon, including serving on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT).

In 1994 he published the book On the Frontier, My Life in Science . In 1995 he was a co-signer of the Leipzig Declaration , in which man-made global warming is questioned, and co-initiator of the later Oregon petition against the Kyoto Protocol . With the Oregon petition, he included a cover letter written and signed by Arthur B. Robinson , Noah E. Robinson and Willie Soon , which was deliberately designed to resemble a technical article in the high-ranking journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences to work. This practice was subsequently condemned by the National Academy of Sciences , which in an unprecedented response accused its former chairman of deliberate deception and stressed that Seitz's opinion was very different from that of science.

Honors

In the course of time, his work has been recognized by various institutions, so he received

In 1983 he received the fourth Vannevar Bush Award from the National Science Board of the National Science Foundation and the R. Loveland Memorial Award from the American College of Physicians. Rockefeller University presented him with the David Rockefeller Award in 2000 for his services to their home. There are also honors awarded by a total of 32 different universities worldwide.

In 1951 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and became its first full-time president in 1965. He was also a member of various scientific organizations, including the American Physical Society , of which he was President in 1961, the Göttingen Academy of Sciences (1961), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1962), the American Philosophical Society (1946), the American Society for Metals , the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum Engineers , the American Crystallographic Society , the Optical Society of America , the Washington Academy of Science, and other European scientific societies. In 1964 he was elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ E. Goldwasser, AV Granato, RO Simmons: Frederick Seitz (obituary, July 2008), in Physics Today , pp. 66-67, Volume 61, Issue 7, Volume 2008 ( online at aip.org ( Memento from February 24th 2013 in the web archive archive.today ))
  2. ↑ See Naomi Oreskes , Erik M. Conway : The Machiavellis of Science. The network of denial . Wiley-VCH, Weinheim 2014, especially 347.
  3. ^ Philip Kitcher , The Climate Change Debates . In: Science 328, No. 5983, 2010, 1230-1243, doi: 10.1126 / science.1189312 .
  4. ↑ a b c Michael E. Mann , Tom Toles: The madhouse effect. How climate change denial threatens our planet, destroys our politics and drives us insane . Erlangen 2018, pp. 83–85.
  5. ↑ James Lawrence Powell: The Inquisition of Climate Science. New York 2012, p. 61.
  6. ^ Union of Concerned Scientists : Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air. How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco's Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science . January 2007, accessed July 14, 2019.
  7. ^ List of members . In: Yearbook of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . tape 2008 , no. 1 , 2009, p. 59 .
  8. ↑ Member entry by Frederick Seitz at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on June 20, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Seitz, Frederick
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist
DATE OF BIRTH 4th July 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH San Francisco
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 2008
Place of death New York City