Gottfried Munzenberg

Gottfried Munzenberg (born March 17, 1940 in Nordhausen ) is a German physicist and university professor . He played a major role in the synthesis of the elements 107 Bohrium (Bh), 108 Hassium (Hs), 109 Meitnerium (Mt), 110 Darmstadtium (Ds), 111 Roentgenium (Rg) and 112 Copernicium (Cn) at the Society for Heavy Ion Research ( GSI) in Darmstadt .

Life

Munzenberg passed his Abitur at the Ratsgymnasium in Wolfsburg . He studied physics at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen and the Leopold Franzens University in Innsbruck and completed his studies in 1971 with a doctorate from the Justus Liebig University in Giessen. In 1976 he joined the nuclear chemistry department at GSI in Darmstadt, which was headed by Peter Armbruster . He was instrumental in the design of SHIP, the 'Separator of Heavy Ion Reaction Products'. He was the driving force behind the discovery of cold heavy ion fusion and its application to the synthesis of the heaviest elements. In 1984 he became head of the new GSI project FRS, the fragment separator. This experimental facility opened up new research areas such as the interaction of relativistic heavy ions with matter, generation and separation of exotic ion beams for research into the nuclear structure. He headed the “Core Structure and Nuclear Chemistry” department at GSI and held a professorship in physics at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz until his retirement in March 2005.

Gottfried Munzenberg grew up in a Protestant rectory (father pastor Heinz Munzenberg and mother Helene). Since his youth he has been concerned with the interactions between physics, theology and philosophy.

Among other things, he was honored with the Röntgen Prize from the Justus Liebig University in Gießen in 1983. In 1996 he and Sigurd Hofmann received the Otto Hahn Prize from the City of Frankfurt am Main . In 2000 he received the Lise Meitner Prize .

Gottfried Münzenberg is a member of the Chattia Gießen country team and the Hasso-Saxonia gymnastics club in Kaiserslautern.

literature

• Gottfried Munzenberg: Stigmatically focusing particle spectrometer with mass and energy dispersion. Dissertation, Giessen 1971.
• Gottfried Munzenberg, Mathias skull: Modern alchemy: the hunt for the heaviest elements. Vieweg, 1996, ISBN 3-528-06474-9 .
• CA Bertulani, MS Hussein, G. Münzenberg: Physics of radioactive beams. Nova Science Publ., Huntington, NY, 2001, ISBN 1-59033-141-9 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Gottfried Münzenberg in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ CC-Blätter issue 4/96, p. 91.