Hans Rau (physicist)

Hans Rau (born October 7, 1881 in Würzburg , † February 23, 1961 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen ) was a German physicist. He was a professor of physics at the Technical University of Darmstadt .

Life

Hans Rau was born in 1881 as the son of the businessman Hans Rau and his wife Charlotte. Seifert was born in Würzburg. He attended grammar school in Würzburg and then studied physics and mathematics in Munich and Würzburg. In 1906 Rau received his doctorate from the University of Würzburg as Dr. phil. with the topic "Observations on canal beams". He then worked as an assistant to Jonathan Zenneck at the Technical University of Braunschweig . In 1909 he completed his habilitation with an investigation into shock excitation of electrical vibrations and, after Zenneck left, he was able to gain experience as a representative on the professorship for physics through the large basic lecture in physics at a technical college and through the management of a physical institute.

In 1911, Rau went to the University of Würzburg as the successor to Hans Baerwald zu Wilhelm Wien , who had received the Nobel Prize in Physics that year for his work on thermal radiation. As early as 1914, Rau achieved an experimental achievement by expanding experiments by Franck and Hertz into a precision process with which the excitation of the helium atom by electron impact could be investigated. In the First World War Rau was a soldier and was used as a radio operator. He received u. a. the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Class and the Bavarian Military Merit Cross 3rd Class.

After the end of the First World War, Rau first went back to Würzburg. At the end of 1919, he and his sponsor Wilhelm Wien went to the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , where Vienna succeeded Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen .

In 1919 Rau was appointed associate professor at the LMU Munich. On October 1, 1922, Hans Rau was appointed full professor for experimental physics at the Technical University of Darmstadt . Here he succeeded Karl Schering . Rau was considered an excellent experimenter and a particularly fascinating teacher. Hans Rau had numerous talented students who further developed his work and got professorships themselves. One of the best-known was Gerhard Herzberg , who had been a Raus diploma student since 1926 and was a private lecturer at the TH Darmstadt from 1930, who introduced molecular spectroscopy to the institute. From 1936 Wolfgang Finkelnburg was senior assistant to Hans Rau. In 1942, Hans Rau classified the Physics Institute as a "military economy", which was associated with certain privileges for the institute.

Rau-Bau (S2 / 01), Hochschulstrasse 12

Hans Rau was dean of the Department of Mathematics and Natural Sciences from 1925 to 1927 and rector of the TH Darmstadt from 1928/29. From 1930 to 1933 he was chairman of the Association of Friends of the Technical University of Darmstadt . Alongside Walter Brecht , Rau played a key role in the preparations for the reopening of the TH Darmstadt after the Second World War . In March 1949 Rau retired. Even after that he was very connected to the TH Darmstadt and held lectures for a few more semesters. In 1950 he moved to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where he died on February 23, 1961.

The building with a conspicuously slated bell roof, located between the Physics Institute building and the Piloty building, bears the name “Rau-Bau”, as Hans Rau lived in this building until 1950 after his appointment to Darmstadt.

Works

• 1906: Observations on canal rays, dissertation, Würzburg.

literature

• Important researcher and teacher, in: Darmstädter Echo, March 11, 1961.
• Otto Scherzer: Physics in Darmstadt, in: Technische Hochschule Darmstadt (Ed.): 100 Years of Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, yearbook 1976/77, Darmstadt 1977, pp. 181–192.
• Christa Wolf and Marianne Viefhaus: Directory of professors at TH Darmstadt, Darmstadt 1977, p. 162.