Fritz Lange (physicist)

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Fritz Lange (born December 16, 1899 in Berlin ; † July 25, 1987 there ) was a German physicist who invented the centrifuge method for isotope separation . He played a major role in the development of the Soviet atomic bomb .

Life

Lange was born in Berlin as the son of a civil servant. From 1918 to 1924 he studied at the universities of Freiburg, Kiel and Berlin. In 1924 he wrote a dissertation on the subject of the physics of low temperatures. From 1924 to 1933 he worked under the direction of his doctoral supervisor Walther Nernst as an assistant at the physics institute at Berlin University. Because of his anti-fascist activities, Lange had to emigrate in 1933. After a stay in Great Britain , he moved to the USSR in 1935 , where he worked at the Ukrainian Physical-Technical Institute in Kharkov. His new Soviet ID was personally signed by Stalin , which may have protected Lange from repression.

In 1936, Lange asked for Soviet citizenship, which he received on February 9, 1937. In April 1940 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences without defending a dissertation. From 1941 until the end of the war he worked in various institutes, including in Ufa and Sverdlovsk. In 1945 he worked in Moscow under Igor Wassiljewitsch Kurtschatow in Laboratory No. 2.

In 1959 Lange returned to Berlin, where he devoted himself to biophysics and from 1961 to 1964 he was director of the Institute for Biophysics at the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin .

During his emigration, Lange became known for his experiments in splitting atomic nuclei with the help of lightning discharges. In Kharkov, his laboratory built high-voltage discharge tubes that served as sources for generating neutrons and X-rays . The generator he built reached a voltage of 5 MegaVolt, making it the largest in the world.

In 1940, along with some of his colleagues, Lange submitted a proposal to the People's Commissariat for Defense to build a “uranium bomb”, but this was rejected. Lange dealt with the problem of the division of uranium isotopes and worked out a method of separation using a centrifuge.

Fritz Lange was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver in 1965 and in gold in 1980.

literature

  • Dieter Hoffmann:  Lange, Fritz . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • E. Kahrig, J. Erpenbeck: The separation process according to Fritz Lange. Berlin 1974.
  • Fritz Lange. In: L. Pasternak (Ed.): Scientists in biomedicine. Research center: Berlin-Buch 1930–2004 . Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2004, ISBN 3-631-52783-7 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dieter Hoffmann:  Lange, Fritz . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  2. ↑ Юрий Ранюк: "ДЕЛО УФТИ" Ланге, Фриц Фрицович (December 16, 1899 - July 25, 1987)
  3. ↑ Berliner Zeitung . May 7, 1965, p. 4.
  4. ↑ New Germany . October 4, 1980, p. 2.
personal data
SURNAME Lange, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH December 16, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH July 25, 1987
Place of death Berlin