George Jaffe

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George Cecil Jaffé (born January 16, 1880 in Moscow , Russian Empire ; died March 8, 1965 in Göppingen ) was a German-American physicist and chemist .

life and work

George Jaffé was the son of the German wholesale merchant Ludwig Jaffé (1845-1923) from Hamburg and his wife Henriette, née Marks (1853-1929), a native of the United States from New Orleans . He was born in Moscow on January 18, 1880 as a German citizen.

The Jaffé family returned to Hamburg in 1888 to enable the children to go to school in Germany. There Jaffé attended elementary school , secondary school and finally a humanistic grammar school for eight years. After graduating in 1898, he studied mathematics , physics and chemistry with a focus on physical chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . One of his academic teachers there was the chemist Adolf von Baeyer . Jaffe continued his studies at the University of Leipzig in the later Nobel laureate Wilhelm Ostwald continued where he with the subject studies in supersaturated solutions doctorate . In Leipzig also had Ludwig Boltzmann great influence exerted on it.

With a recommendation from Boltzmann, Jaffé continued his studies at Cambridge University in 1903/04 . During a visit by the French Nobel Prize winner Pierre Curie , the latter offered him the opportunity to work in the laboratory of Marie and Pierre Curie in Paris . Jaffé accepted this offer. After spending a year at the Sorbonne , Jaffé went to the United States. There he visited several universities on the east coast and the National Bureau of Standards and then returned to Leipzig. In 1908 habilitated to Jaffé in Leipzig with the habilitation The electrical conductivity of pure hexane . He then worked there as an assistant and gave lectures as a private lecturer . In 1911 and 1912 he worked again in the laboratory of the Curies in Paris, as a Carnegie scholarship holder, before he was appointed associate professor at the University of Leipzig in 1916 .

Jaffé's university career was then interrupted by the First World War. After becoming a soldier in 1915, he was promoted to lieutenant in 1917. He received several high military awards, including the Iron Cross II and I Class, the Hanseatic Cross and the Bavarian Order of Military Merit IV Class with Swords. He also earned a special reputation for his skills in deciphering. In 1919 he returned to Leipzig from military service.

In 1923, Jaffé was appointed a scheduled associate professor for mathematical physics in Leipzig. He dealt with the ionization of gases , light absorption in metals and non-conductors , hydrodynamics, high vacuum discharges, the theory of relativity , anisotropic radiation fields and statistical mechanics .

From 1926 to 1933 Jaffé taught theoretical physics as a full professor at the University of Giessen . There he was now also concerned with ion conductivity and kinetic gas theory. In 1932 he held the office of Dean of the Philosophical Faculty.

Jaffé was only able to teach and research for six years at the University of Giessen. He was of Jewish descent. After coming to power in 1933 by the Nazis , he would indeed have been entitled to a special position because of its considerable military service in the First World War, but he University was soon suggested by the Chancellor, "in the interest of uninterrupted teaching activities postpone the commencement of his lectures." On September 6, 1933, the Hessian State Ministry informed him that he had been dismissed under Section 4 of the Reich Law of April 7, 1933, which in March 1934 was reduced to a forced retirement under Section 3. In 1938, Jaffé, together with Emil Cohn , Richard Gans , Leo Graetz , Walter Kaufmann and other physicists of Jewish descent, announced to Peter Debye that he was leaving the German Physical Society at his request .

Jaffé then worked on private research projects in Freiburg / Breisgau. In 1939 he emigrated to the USA, where he was Visiting Lecturer until 1942, then Associate Professor and from 1946 Full Professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge . His main scientific interest here was the conduction of electricity in liquids and related problems. He retired in 1950 at the age of 70. After his retirement he dealt with the theory of the electrical conductivity of semiconductors and with the diffusion of neutrons .

George Jaffé was married to the pianist Paula Hegner (1889–1943) since 1912, with whom he had a son. He spent part of the last years of his life in Germany, where he died in Göppingen on March 18, 1965. His remains were transferred to the United States and buried in the Hebrew Rest Cemetery in New Orleans.

As George Jaffé's last will, his estate is being kept in the Giessen University Library. The estate comprises thirteen volumes of personal notes. Three volumes under the motto My Life are titled: The Story of a Book (1905), The New Abélard and Letters from a Father to His Son . Six volumes contain travelogues. Four other volumes contain poetry: Herbst (I) , Herbst (II) , Winter und Nachlese . Loose leaves from the estate also contain sonnets (Jaffé played the violin), biblical chants and translations from Pindar.

Publications (selection)

  • About the ionization of liquid dielectrics by radium rays . In: Annals of Physics . Volume 25, 1908, pp. 257 ff.
  • Dispersion and absorption . In: W. Wien and F. Harms (eds.): Handbuch der Experimentalphysik . Volume VIII, 1928.
  • Three dialogues about space, time and causality (The first two dialogues in 2nd edition), Berlin / Göttingen / Heidelberg 1954.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Jaffe, George
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jaffé, George Cecil (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American physicist and chemist
DATE OF BIRTH January 16, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Moscow , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH March 8, 1965
Place of death Goeppingen