Heinrich Rubens

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Grave site in the old St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof in Berlin-Schöneberg

Heinrich Leopold Rubens (born March 30, 1865 in Wiesbaden , † July 17, 1922 in Berlin ) was a German physicist .

Life

Rubens was the son of a jeweler from Amsterdam who had moved to Frankfurt am Main. He attended the Frankfurt secondary school " Wöhlerschule " and began studying electrical engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt in 1884 , which he continued in Berlin. In 1885 he changed the subject and studied physics, before moving to Strasbourg in the spring of 1886. In Strasbourg, he mainly heard the lectures of August Kundt , whom he followed as an assistant to Berlin and with whom he received his doctorate in 1889 at the University of Berlin (The selective reflection of metals). In 1892 he was able to complete his habilitation at the University of Berlin, where he became a private lecturer.

From 1895 he was associate professor for physics and from 1900 full professor at the Technical University Berlin-Charlottenburg (as successor to Karl Adolph Paalzow ), then from 1903 at the Military Technical Academy in Berlin. He mostly carried out his experiments at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in Ferdinand Kurlbaum's laboratory , with whom he also worked a lot. From 1906 he succeeded Paul Drude as professor of physics and director of the Physics Institute at Berlin University. His assistant Wilhelm Westphal considered his lectures on experimental physics to be the best in Germany at the time and emphasized the special role of his physics colloquium at the university. In 1907 he became a full member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences , in 1908 a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen and in 1918 a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

Rubens died of bone cancer - probably as a result of the careless handling of radium and other radioactive substances, which was customary at the time - and was buried in the old St. Matthew Cemetery in Berlin-Schöneberg . The grave has been one of the honor graves of the State of Berlin since 1980 .

His students include Gustav Hertz , Marianus Czerny and Gerhard Hettner and the private lecturers and assistants at his institute included Otto von Baeyer , James Franck (who carried out the Franck-Hertz experiment there with Gustav Hertz ), Wilhelm Westphal , Erich Regener , and Robert Wichard Pohl .

His wife Marie Rubens, née Hirschfeld, committed suicide when she was supposed to wear the yellow star under National Socialist rule as a Jew.

plant

Rubens worked on electromagnetic radiation, especially in the infrared. In 1900 he demonstrated through measurements with Ferdinand Kurlbaum that Wien's radiation law does not apply to the long-wave range. These precise investigations into black body radiation were essential for the development of the origins of quantum theory at Max Planck . He used the Auer gas incandescent light for this purpose and proved that Planck's law of radiation also applies in the infrared part of the spectrum. He developed the method of Rubens residual rays to generate infrared radiation and the Rubens flame tube named after him . He was considered a masterful experimenter who did not spare himself during his experiments (he carried out the precision measurement of black body radiation for a long time at night in winter in favorable weather conditions in an unheated laboratory). His lecture experiments were also considered exemplary.

Fonts

  • The development of atomistics, 1912
  • with Theodor Liebisch : About the optical properties of some crystals in the long-wave ultra-red spectrum, 3 parts, 1919 to 1921

literature

  • Hans Kangro , Prehistory of Planck's Radiation Law , Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1970.
  • Rudolf Vierhaus (ed.), German Biographical Encyclopedia, KG Saur, De Gruyter

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Westphal, 68 years as a physicist in Berlin, Physikalische Blätter, June 1972
  2. ^ Horst Kant:  Rubens, Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 154 f. ( Digitized version ).
  3. ↑ Gerd Löffler: Well prepared . In: Physics Journal . tape 16 , no. 3 , 2017, p. 51-54 .

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Rubens, Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rubens, Heinrich Leopold (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH March 30, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Wiesbaden
DATE OF DEATH July 17, 1922
Place of death Berlin