Guido Beck (physicist)
Guido Beck (born August 29, 1903 in Reichenberg in Bohemia , † October 21, 1988 in Rio de Janeiro ) was an Argentine theoretical physicist .
life and work
Guido Beck grew up in Switzerland , where the family moved in 1907, and from 1920 in Vienna . After graduating from school, he studied physics at the University of Vienna and received his doctorate in 1925 under Hans Thirring on the theory of relativity. Shortly afterwards he wrote a thesis on the Compton effect . He then worked first at the University of Bern , again in Vienna with Ehrenhaft and from February 1928 for four years as Werner Heisenberg's first assistant in Leipzig
In 1930/31 he was in Cambridge with Ernest Rutherford , then briefly in Copenhagen and then in Prague . This was followed by stations in Kansas and Japan , where he gave lectures, before he worked at the invitation of Jakow Ilyich Frenkel from 1935 to 1937 at the University of Odessa , where he founded the chair for theoretical physics.
When the political situation in the Soviet Union came to a head, Beck went via Copenhagen, where Niels Bohr helped him with his departure, to Lyon , where he did research for the CNRS at the Atomic Institute . When the Second World War broke out in 1939, he was interned in France as a German, but managed to do research in Montpellier and then teach in Lyon. The conquest of France by National Socialist Germany endangered him as a Jew and he went to neutral Portugal in 1941 , where he accepted visiting professorships at the universities in Coimbra and Porto , and from there to Argentina in 1943 . As a stateless person, he was no longer able to save his mother. She was murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz . He taught at the University of Buenos Aires , where, among other things, José Antonio Balseiro was one of his students, and from 1951 in Brazil. In 1962 he returned to Argentina to succeed Balseiro at the institute named after him. From 1975 he worked at the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas (CBPF) in Brazil. He was instrumental in setting up the training for physicists in South America.
In 1988 he died in a car accident in Rio.
Topics of his research
Beck dealt with nuclear physics and beta decay in the 1920s and 1930s. Around 1930 he wrote articles on quantum mechanics for the handbook of radiology and contributions for the handbook of physics. In South America he dealt with applications of quantum mechanics, for example in nuclear physics, on scattering problems and the tunnel effect, and with diffraction theory. He played an important role in establishing the university education for South American physicists and was also involved in the efforts of the Argentine President Juan Perón to expand nuclear physics and technology research in Argentina in the 1950s.
He was a friend of the writer Ernesto Sabato .
Awards
- Corresponding member of the Academia Brasileira de Ciências
- 1965: the Johann Joseph Ritter von Prechtl Medal
- 1972: Honorary member of the Austrian Physical Society
- 1977: Honorary doctorate from the TH Darmstadt .
literature
- Ignacio Klich (1995): Richard Gans , Guido Beck and the Role of German Speaking Jewish Scientists in the Early Days of Argentinia's Nuclear Project , Ibero-American Archives 21, 1/2, 127 - 167.
- D. Angetter: Beck, Guido . In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 . 2nd revised edition (online only).
Web links
- Literature by and about Guido Beck in the catalog of the German National Library
- Oral History Interview 1967 with Heilbron
Individual evidence
- ↑ Heisenberg also supported Beck on his escape from the National Socialists, cf. Jewish scientists at the University of Leipzig
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Beck, Guido |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Argentine physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 29, 1903 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Reichenberg |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 21, 1988 |
| Place of death | Rio de Janeiro |