Heinrich Wänke
Heinrich Wänke (born September 5, 1928 in Linz ; † November 21, 2015 ) was an Austrian physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz ( cosmochemistry ).
Wänke studied at the University of Vienna , where he received his doctorate in nuclear physics . From 1953 he was assistant to Friedrich Paneth at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz. From 1967 until his retirement in 1996 he headed the cosmochemistry department there.
He examined meteorites and extraterrestrial rocks, such as material from the Apollo 11 mission from the moon in 1969 and from the Pathfinder mission to Mars in 1997 , where the APX spectrometer developed by his group carried out the first chemical rock analyzes on Mars. He developed the spectrometer with Rudolf Rieder (* 1940). In 1997, both became Scientists of the Year in Austria.
He set up a large meteorite collection in Mainz (around 1900 meteorites until 1996), which came to the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt after the cosmochemistry department in Mainz was closed (2005). In 1991 Wänke received the Friedrich Becke Medal .
Web links
- Obituary at the MPI Chemie, December 8, 2015
- Entry on Heinrich Wänke in the Austria Forum (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wänke, Heinrich |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian chemist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 5, 1928 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Linz |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 21, 2015 |