Gerhard Heiland (physicist)

Gerhard Heiland (born October 11, 1917 in Erlangen , † September 6, 2005 in Aachen ) was a German physicist .

Gerhard Heiland studied physics in Erlangen and Göttingen and received his doctorate in Göttingen in 1948 with a thesis on the discoloration of potassium chloride by electrical means . He completed his habilitation in Erlangen in 1955 ( on the influence of light and electron radiation on the electrical conductivity of zinc oxide crystals ). During a research stay from 1957 to 1959 at the University of Illinois in Urbana , which came about at the invitation of Nobel Prize winner John Bardeen , he became familiar with semiconductor technology . In 1962 he accepted a call from RWTH Aachen University to set up the Institute for Applied Physics - but since he didn't like the name, it was later renamed the 2nd Physics Institute . He was mainly concerned with semiconductor surface physics and is considered the founder of this discipline in Germany. Together with Heinz Beneking and Ludwig Josef Balk , he headed the Collaborative Research Center for Solid State Electronics from 1970 to 1983 , which laid the foundations for the physics of heterostructure components . He retired in 1983.