Gottfried Falk

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Gottfried Falk (born August 16, 1922 in Gelsenkirchen ; † October 20, 1991 in Karlsruhe ) was a German theoretical physicist and physics didacticist.

Falk studied mathematics and physics at the Philipps University of Marburg , where he received his doctorate in 1951 with a thesis on axiomatics as a method of building physical theories . Kurt Reidemeister was one of his teachers . In 1953 he completed his habilitation in Marburg and was a lecturer there. From 1954 to 1958 he was a lecturer at RWTH Aachen University (where he was assistant to Josef Meixner ), from 1957 as an adjunct professor. In 1957 he was Visiting Associate Professor at New York University . Then he went to the TH Karlsruhe , where he became full professor for mathematical physics in 1960 and later head of the institute for didactics of natural science.

He dealt in particular with the conceptual fundamentals of physics and especially thermodynamics (he worked on their axiomatization as early as the 1950s), from which a didactic concept of physics with emphasis on extensive (set-like) quantities such as energy, entropy, momentum, charge and Amount of material developed (and associated intensive quantities, flows), which was expanded at the Center for Didactics of Natural Sciences in Karlsruhe ( Karlsruhe physics course ). This was reflected , among other things, in two textbooks with Wolfgang Ruppel . The conceptual structure is similar to that in the theory of electricity, only z. B. in mechanics no charges, but momentum and angular momentum, or in thermodynamics entropy (energy is added as another extensive quantity exchanged between two systems, momentum in mechanics or entropy in thermodynamics are understood as the respective energy carriers) . Accordingly, the terms energy, momentum and entropy play a more central role in the didactic structure than in the usual treatment of mechanics in the Newtonian framework, see point mechanics . The presentation of physical chemistry is also carried out in this context, with amounts of substance as an extensive basic quantity. Falk sees this as a general dynamic that generalizes thermodynamics and, with the consideration of states and transitions between states, also has conceptual proximity to quantum mechanics.

Fonts

  • with Wolfgang Ruppel: Mechanics, Relativity, Gravitation , Springer 1973.
  • with Wolfgang Ruppel: Energy and Entropy - An Introduction to Thermodynamics , Springer 1976.
  • with Friedrich Herrmann : New Physics - Das Energiebuch , Schroedel 1981.
  • Theoretical physics based on general dynamics , 2 volumes (Vol. 1 Elementare Punktmechanik , Vol. 2 Thermodynamik ) and 2 volumes of exercises with solutions, Springer, Hochschultaschenbücher 1966, 1968.
  • Physics, number, reality - the conceptual and mathematical foundations of a universal quantitative description of nature , Birkhäuser 1990.
  • with Herbert Jung: Axiomatik der Thermodynamik , 1959, in Flügge (Ed.) Handbuch der Physik , sub-volume Principles of Thermodynamics and Statistics .
  • Algebra , 1955, in Siegfried Flügge (Ed.) Handbuch der Physik , sub-volume Mathematical Methods , Vol. 2
  • What is it that concerns us all in physics? , Physikalische Blätter 1977, issue 12.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Falk, Gottfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH August 16, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Gelsenkirchen
DATE OF DEATH October 20, 1991
Place of death Karlsruhe