Horst Sackmann

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Horst Sackmann (born February 3, 1921 in Freiburg im Breisgau ; † November 2, 1993 in Halle (Saale) ) was a German chemist and held a professorship for physical chemistry at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg . He became particularly well known for his articles on liquid crystals and their systematics. From 1973 to 1987 he was Vice President of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina .

Live and act

Life

Horst Sackmann first attended the Freiburg and then the Offenburg secondary school . After graduating in 1939, he studied chemistry in Halle (Saale) and Freiburg im Breisgau. He had been a member of the NSDAP since 1939 . In 1941 he was called up for military service, but after being wounded in Russia he was able to continue his studies in Halle and graduate in February 1945. The physical chemist and Goethe researcher Karl Lothar Wolf , to whom he remained connected throughout his life, supervised his diploma thesis .

Shortly before the end of the war, he was drafted again and was taken prisoner by the Americans, but was soon able to return to Halle. There, the management of the Institute for Physical Chemistry was transferred to Franz Sauerwald , a metal and mixed phase researcher , where he became an assistant and doctoral candidate. In 1947 he married Traute Beyer, whom he had met at the Wolf Institute, and in 1950 their daughter Sybille was born. In the same year he received his doctorate . In 1954 the habilitation followed, as well as the appointment as a lecturer and in 1958 the professorship .

In 1963 Horst Sackmann was appointed director of the Physico-Chemical Institute as the successor to Franz Sauerwald. With the same duties, but reduced rights, he became head of the corresponding scientific area of ​​the chemistry section in the course of a university reform in the GDR in 1969 and remained so until his retirement in 1986. In 1965 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . In 1989 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

Research activity

While Horst Sackmann's habilitation thesis and the first diploma theses he supervised concerned inorganic compounds with approximately spherical molecules and their mixtures, his first doctoral thesis in 1957 was systematic miscibility studies on organic liquid crystals with elongated molecular shapes. This went back to the suggestion of his first academic teacher Wolf, and it was taken up again on work in organic chemistry, which had been carried out until the mid-1930s, as well as in physics, which had ended in 1945. As a novelty, there was a selective miscibility behavior, which led to a system with the "ABC" letter designation used to this day for the smectic crystalline-liquid phases. Horst Sackmann's associated “miscibility selection rule”, which has been verified in many other works, can be read, for example, in the end credits of his film, which illustrates the miscibility studies under the hot-stage microscope .

In the course of the expansion and deepening of physicochemical liquid crystal research, what was then internationally known as The Hallesian School was created. The cooperation with synthesis chemists from Halle turned out to be very fruitful, as shown, for example, in an interim balance sheet from the late 1970s. In total, Horst Sackmann was involved in more than 150 original publications, mostly relating to liquid crystals.

further activities

Even after his retirement, Horst Sackmann took an active part in university life. In the course of the renewal efforts of the University of Halle (MLU), from 1991 to 1993 he was chairman of its personnel committee for natural sciences / agriculture. The background for this was his longstanding advocacy of freedom at the MLU, which former rector Gunnar Berg described in a speech in 2006 with regard to the period from 1950 onwards: “Only a few publicly represented the ideals of academic freedom and the search for truth and were the academic youth a role model, especially the Leopoldina members Kurt Mothes , Horst Sackmann and Heinz Bethge in the natural sciences . ” Conflicts with this state system were not absent.

Horst Sackmann was Vice President of the Leopoldina from 1973 to 1987, while Kurt Mothes was President until 1974 and Heinz Bethge was his successor. Horst Sackmann had been a member of this oldest permanent natural research academy in the world, which has had the status of a German National Academy of Sciences (AdW) since 2008 . He was also a corresponding member of the Austrian AdW since 1974 and a corresponding member of the AdW zu Göttingen since 1989 .

For almost three decades Horst Sackmann was a member of the organizing committee of the "International Liquid Crystal Conference", which takes place every two years, and in 1975 co-founder of the "Liquid Crystal Conference of Socialist Countries". He was on the editorial boards of the Zeitschrift für Chemie and the international specialist body Molecular Crystals and Liquid Crystals .

On the basis of long-term contacts with Alfred Saupe and new activities from 1990 onwards, Horst Sackmann made a significant contribution to the formation of the Max Planck working group “Liquid-Crystalline Systems” in Halle, which existed from 1992 to 1997 under Saupe's leadership. Together with the groups in the institutes for physical and organic chemistry that were re-established and equipped with improved equipment, the greatly increased number of working groups established, for example, at the German Liquid Crystal Society. This successfully continues the important Halle traditions from the time before 1945, which Horst Sackmann took up in 1957 and expanded into the physicochemical direction.

Honors

Fonts

  • About volume changes when organic substances melt, especially in homologous series. Dissertation. University of Halle 1950.
  • Physical chemistry. Fachbuchverlag, Leipzig 1953.
    Czech translation: Fysikální chemie. Státní Nakl. technické literatury, Prague 1957.
  • Contribution to the question of isomorphic relationships between tetrahalides of Group IV. Habilitation thesis. University of Halle 1959.
  • with Heinrich Arnold: Transformation processes in a binary system with crystalline-liquid phases. Supplement to the university film HF 163. DZI for teaching aids. People and Knowledge, Berlin (East) 1961. ( Video )
  • with Horst Kehlen u. Frank Kuschel: Fundamentals of chemical kinetics. Akademie-Verl. Berlin (East) and Vieweg, Braunschweig 1974.
  • with Horst Kehlen u. Werner Schulze: Atoms and Molecules. Part 1: Atoms. Akademie-Verl. Berlin (East) 1976.
  • with Gerhard Geiseler (Ed.): Dynamic structures in chemistry and physical chemistry. Leopoldina discussion group 1983. In: Nova acta Leopoldina. NF, No. 268, Vol. 61; Barth, Halle 1989.
  • Smectic Liquid Crystals. A Historical Review. In: Liquid Crystals. To International Journal. 5, 1989, pp. 43-55, doi : 10.1080 / 02678298908026351 .

literature

  • Horst Stegemeyer: Horst Sackmann on his 65th birthday. In: Reports Bunsenges. Physically. Chemistry. 90, 1986, pp. 103-104.
  • Helmut Hartung, Horst Kresse: Prof. Dr. habil. Dr. hc Horst Sackmann, researcher and university professor of high standing. In: Scientia Halensis. 1, H. 4, 1993, p. 33.
  • Adolf Neckel: Horst Sackmann. In: Almanach Oesterr. Akad. Wiss. 194, 1993/1994, pp. 355-362.
  • Gerhard Pelzl: Obituary: Prof. Dr. Dr. hc Horst Sackmann. In: Liquid Crystals. 16, 1994, pp. 719f.
  • Benno Parthier : Horst Sackmann's work in the Leopoldina. In: Jahrb. Dt. Academy d. Naturalist Leopoldina. 40, 1995, pp. 409-412.
  • Heinrich Arnold: Atmospheric and anecdotal from Halle's physical chemistry under Horst Sackmann. 2010 ( reproduced in the Digital Library Thuringia (DBT) )
  • Heinrich Arnold: 50 years of miscibility rule for liquid crystals. In memory of Horst Sackmann, died November 2, 1993. 2013 ( reproduced in the DBT )
  • Michael Kaasch:  Sackmann, Horst . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Frank Kuschel: Mühlpforte No. 1 and physical chemistry at the University of Halle. The story of a university refuge. Diepholz, Berlin: GNT-Verlag 2017, pp. 77-102. ISBN 978-3-86225-108-7 .

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ The year of birth 1916 is given in other sources.
  2. ↑ Literally for Harry Waibel : Servants of many gentlemen: Former Nazi functionaries in the Soviet Zone / GDR. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2011 ISBN 978-3-631-63542-1 p. 279. No further information there and no evidence of Sackmann's activity as a Nazi functionary . The information on his activity in the GDR needs to be corrected; for example, he was not head of a chemistry section of the Academy of Sciences.
  3. ↑ According to the index card in the Federal Archives , membership in the NSDAP was suspended from 1942 after he had been drafted into the Wehrmacht.
  4. ↑ Horst Sackmann: On the history of chemistry in Halle. Posthumously published and edited by Helmut Hartung. In: Nachr. Chem. Tech. Lab. 42, 1994, pp. 262-268, doi : 10.1002 / nadc.19940420308 .
  5. ↑ Horst Sackmann: Franz Sauerwald on his 70th birthday. In: Journal of Chemistry. 4. H. 6, 1964, pp. 201-202.
  6. ↑ a b c Heinrich Arnold 2010 (see section 4).
  7. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 208.
  8. ^ Crystals that Flow. Classic Papers from the History of Liquid Crystals. Compiled with translation and commentary by Timothy J. Sluckin, David A. Dunmur an Hort Stegemeyer. London 2004, ISBN 0-415-25789-1 .
  9. ↑ Heinrich Arnold 2013 (see section 4).
  10. ^ Horst Stegemeyer: Professor Horst Sackmann, 1921–1993 . In: Liquid Cryst. Today. 4, 1994, pp. 1f.
  11. ^ Horst Sackmann, Dietrich Demus: The work on the problem area of ​​liquid crystals at the Martin Luther University Halle. In: Scientific journal Univ. Halle-Wittenberg. 28, H. 5, 1979, pp. 69-81.
  12. ↑ Steffen Reichert: Under Control: The Martin Luther University and the Ministry for State Security 1968-1989 . Vol. 1: Presentation. Vol. 2: Sources, register of persons etc. Mitteldeutscher Verl., Halle (Saale) 2007. ISBN 3-89812-380-4 and ISBN 978-3-89812-380-8 .
  13. ↑ Gunnar Berg: Vivat, crescat, floreat in aeternum. Sixty years of the post-war university in Halle. In: Scientia Halensis. 1/2006, pp. 14–15 ( abridged version ; PDF; 1.3 MB).
  14. ^ Sybille Gerstengarbe, Horst Hennig: Opposition, Resistance and Persecution at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg 1945–1961: A Documentation. Leipziger Universitäts-Verlag, Leipzig 2009, ISBN 978-3-86583-262-7 .
  15. ↑ DFKG: Working groups ( Memento from October 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Sackmann, Horst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physical chemist
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Freiburg in Breisgau
DATE OF DEATH 2nd November 1993
Place of death Halle (Saale)