Heinrich Gustav Johannes Kayser

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Heinrich Kayser

Johannes Heinrich Gustav Kayser (born March 16, 1853 in Bingen , † October 14, 1940 in Bonn ) was a German physicist .

Origin and family

Heinrich Kayser was the youngest of five children of the manor owner Johann Jacob August Heinrich Kayser (* June 12, 1817 in Königsberg; † January 28, 1910, in Tyrol near Meran ; this son of the notary August Imanuel Kayser * February 17, 1785 in Treptow Rega; † October 12, 1858 and Wilhelmine Henriette Amalie von Schaffstedt, born June 12, 1789 in Brandenburg a. H., † Königsberg April 5, 1867) and Amalie Dorothea von Metz (born July 10, 1812 in Smolensk; † December 4, 1880, in Berlin, this daughter of the major of Russia immigrated from Alsace, Friedrich von Metz († St. Petersburg 1819) and Elisabeth Maria von Wachten (born November 19, 1784 in Estonia; † May 31, 1862 in Halle a . S.), head of the imperial education center in Moscow).

Heinrich Kayser was the only brother of the geologist Emanuel Kayser .

In 1887 Heinrich Kayser married Auguste Juliane Hoffmann, c. Prümm (daughter of August Hoffmann, Danzig, and Juliane Kirschstein, * 1840 in Berlin; † April 1915 in Bonn). The marriage remained childless.

His diverse non-professional interests included art and literature in particular, so after the death of his friend Carl Justi in 1922 and 1923, he published his works Letters from Italy (1922) and Spanish Travel Letters (1923) and wrote the forewords for them.

Life

Heinrich Kayser was a student of August Kundt , one of Germany's leading experimental physicists, with whom he had studied physics in Strasbourg since 1873, along with chemistry.

Kayser von Kundt was introduced to his teacher Hermann von Helmholtz in the spring of 1876 on the occasion of a lecture to the Crown Prince couple and outstanding scientific representatives after Kayser Kundt had assisted Kundt in the difficult implementation of the experiments. From 1877 Kayser studied in Berlin with Gustav Robert Kirchhoff, among others .

From March 1, 1878, he was assistant to Hermann von Helmholtz at the Physics Institute of Berlin's Friedrich Wilhelms University for seven and a half years . Heinrich Kayser received his doctorate on February 6, 1879 at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin with a thesis on the properties of sound waves under Herrmann von Helmholtz .

In 1881 he completed his habilitation at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin, which was followed by his work as a private lecturer. His students included Wilhelm Wien and James Edward Keeler , and Heinrich Hertz worked as his assistant .

His first work concerned issues of sound propagation.

In 1885 Heinrich Kayser was offered a professorship for physics at the TH Hannover .

According to the Biographical Memoirs of the Royal Society, written by Nobel laureate Gerhard Herzberg , in 1894, at the special request of his predecessor Heinrich Hertz , Kayser was appointed professor of physics at the University of Bonn , where he remained until his retirement in 1920.

Act

In 1894, Heinrich Kayser established the first institute entirely dedicated to spectroscopy at the University of Bonn .

From 1900 onwards Heinrich Kayser wrote the “Handbuch der Spektoskopie”, a critical review of the literature, about apparatus, measurement methods and wavelength values ​​of emission and absorption spectroscopy and spectrography, about fluorescence and phosphorescence and astrophysics. Heinrich Kayser's "Handbuch der Spektoskopie" appeared in its 8th volume in 1932.

Heinrich Kayser was known as the “old master of spectroscopy” and “Nestor of German physics” because of his experimental and literary work.

Heinrich Kayser discovered the occurrence of helium in the earth's atmosphere .

Kayser was co-editor of the journal for scientific photography, photophysics and photochemistry founded in 1903 .

In 1903 he wrote a treatise on electron theory .

Honors

The physical unit Kayser was named after him, wave number .

In 1905, 1916 and 1917 Heinrich Kayser was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics .

On March 20, 2000 the asteroid (10509) Heinrichkayser was named after him.

  • Dr. iur. hc (Bonn)
  • Dr. hc (University of St. Andrews, 1912)
  • Member of the Royal Society London (1909)
  • Member of the Royal Institution London (1899)
  • Member of the St. Petersburg Academy
  • Member of the Lund Academy
  • Member of the Haarlem Academy
  • Member of the Soc. the spectroscopist in Italy
  • Member of the Leopoldina (1886)
  • Secret government council

Fonts (selection)

  • Heinrich Kayser: Handbook of Spectroscopy. 8 volumes. S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1900–1932.
  • Heinrich Kayser: Table of the oscillation numbers of the wavelengths reduced to the vacuum between 2,000 Å and 10,000 Å. S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1925.
  • Heinrich Kayser: Table of the main lines of the line spectrum of all elements sorted by wavelength. J. Springer, Berlin 1926. (reprinted 1968)
  • Heinrich Kayser: Textbook of Spectral Analysis. J. Springer, Berlin 1883.
  • Heinrich Kayser: textbook of physics for students . 6th edition. Enke, Stuttgart 1921, urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 2-22581 .
  • Heinrich Kayser: The electron theory. Rohrscheid and Ebbecke, Bonn 1903.
  • Heinrich Kayser: About the influence of the intensity of sound on its speed of propagation . In: Annals of Physics and Chemistry . tape 242 , no. 4 , 1879, p. 465-485 .

literature

  • Gerhard Herzberg: Heinrich Kayser, 1853-1940. In: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. (1), 1955, pp. 135-143.
  • FJM Stretton: Heinrich Kayser. In: Nature. (London) 158, 1947, p. 732.
  • Henry Crew : in: Astrophysical Journal. 94, 1941, pp. 5-11.
  • Walther Gerlach:  Kayser, Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 381 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Arnold Sommerfeld in: Zeitschrift für Astrophysik. 20, 1941, p. 308 f.
  • Arnold Sommerfeld in: Space. 41, 1941, p. 83.
  • Rudolf Frerichs in: The natural sciences. 29, 1941, pp. 153-156.
  • Rudolf Frerichs in: Research and Progress. 17, 1941, p. 51 f.
  • Chronicle of the Rheinische-Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität Bonn. 64, 1949, p. 61 f.
  • Paul Trommsdorff: The faculty of the Technical University of Hanover 1831-1931. Hanover 1931, p. 29.
  • Matthias Dörries, Klaus Hentschel (ed.): Heinrich Kayser, memories from my life. Annotated science-historical edition of the original typescript from 1936. Institute for the History of Natural Science, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-89241-019-4 .
  • Joseph F. Mulligan: Doctoral oral examination of Heinrich Kayser, Berlin, 1879. In: Am. J. Phys. 60, 1992, pp. 38-4.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b Bernhard Koerner: East Prussian Gender Book . tape 1 . Starke, Görlitz 1928, p. 151, 169 .
  2. a b German biography: Kayser, Heinrich - German biography. Retrieved February 2, 2017 .
  3. Heinrich Kayser, 1853–1940 In: royalsocietypublishing.org , accessed on January 18, 2018. (PDF; 1.6 MB)
  4. ^ A. Sommerfeld: Heinrich Kayser. In: Journal of Astrophysics. Vol. 20, p. 308. (titurel.org , accessed January 18, 2018).
  5. ^ Nomination Database. Retrieved February 2, 2017 .