Helmuth Kulenkampff

Helmuth Kulenkampff (born December 5, 1895 in Bremen ; † June 12, 1971 ) was a German physicist.

Helmuth Kulenkampff came from the well-known Bremen merchant family Kulenkampff. After graduating from the New Gymnasium in Bremen in 1914, he began to study physics in Frankfurt, but was then a soldier in the First World War from 1916 to 1919. He then continued his studies at the University of Munich and was continued in 1922 at Ernst Wagner Dr. phil. doctorate (Wagner was substitute for the chair of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen ). He then worked as an assistant to Jonathan Zenneck at the Technical University of Munich . In 1926 he completed his habilitation and in 1932 he became an associate professor. On September 5, 1936, he became a full professor of physics at the University of Jena, succeeding Max Wien. In 1945 he went to the West with the American troops. In 1946 he became a professor at the University of Würzburg , where he retired in 1964. In Würzburg he modernized the Physics Institute at Röntgenring 8 as its board member. Thanks to his reputation, he was able to raise funds to purchase a Van de Graaff generator and a betatron . He used it to examine the X-ray brake radiation at higher energies.

In his dissertation he examined the spectrum of radiation in an X-ray tube and later he also dealt with the continuous spectrum of X-rays and the X-ray bremsstrahlung. He worked with the theorist Arnold Sommerfeld and his school.

Kulenkampff also dealt with cosmic rays. He cleared up a riddle in the absorption behavior of the hard component as a result of the relativistic time dilation when muons decay.

He received the X-ray badge and was a member of the Saxon and Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

Fonts (selection)

• About the continuous X-ray spectrum (abridged Munich dissertation), Annalen der Physik, Volume 374, 1922, pp. 548-596
• Investigations of the continuous X-ray radiation of thin aluminum foils, Annalen der Physik, Volume 87, 1928, pp. 597-637
• X-rays and structure of matter, treatises and reports, Deutsches Museum, Volume 3, Issue 2, Berlin, VDI Verlag 1931, pp. 27–74
• with Lore Schmidt: The energy distribution in the spectrum of X-ray bremsstrahlung, Annalen der Physik, Volume 43, 1943, p. 494
• X-rays: On the 50th anniversary of their discovery, treatises and reports, Deutsches Museum, year 16, issue 1, Munich: Leibniz-Verlag 1948
• Conversion of elements, treatises and reports, Deutsches Museum, Volume 17, Issue 2, Munich: Oldenbourg 1949
• with R. Fuchs: On energy distribution in the spectrum of X-ray bremsstrahlung, Zeitschrift für Physik, Volume 137, 1954, pp. 583-587

literature

• Obituary by MM Scheer , Physikalische Blätter, Volume 27, 1971, pp. 424-425.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg: Lecture directory for the summer semester of 1948. Universitätsdruckerei H. Stürtz, Würzburg 1948, pp. 14 and 18.