Jan Weyssenhoff (physicist)

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Jan Wirgiliusz Weyssenhoff (born November 27, 1889 in Warsaw , † August 11, 1972 in Cracow ) was a Polish physicist and professor at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow .

Life

He came from an old German-Baltic aristocratic Catholic family that became Polish in the 17th century. His father was the successful writer Baron Józef Weyssenhoff (1860–1932), his mother came from a wealthy Jewish family that owned, among other things, the Warsaw-Vienna railway. He went to high school in Cracow and began to study physics (with Wladyslaw Natanson and August Witkowski ) and mathematics (with Stanisław Zaremba and Kazimierz Żorawski ). Under Witwkowski he worked experimentally with the Hall effect in thin selenium layers and began to do his doctorate on the thermal conductivity of water, which was interrupted by the First World War. During this time he went to Zurich, where he met Albert Einstein and received his doctorate in 1916 with a theoretical thesis (application of quantum theory to rotating objects and the theory of paramagnetism) and then initially worked as an assistant to Edgar Meyer at the university and then at the ETH Zurich with Auguste Piccard . He worked both experimentally and theoretically. In 1919 he was again in Kraków with Konstanty Zakrzewski and completed his habilitation in 1921 on the application of the Stokes law.

From 1922 to 1935 he was Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Vilnius and then Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Krakow, succeeding Natanson.

Before taking office in Krakow, he spent a few weeks at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. During this time he dealt with relativistic physics (relativistic theory of particles with spin and relativistic theory of fluids) and organized the first nationwide Polish seminar in theoretical physics there in 1939.

From 1939 to 1941 he was in Lwów , which was then occupied by the Russians , where he taught experimental physics at the Technical University, and then again in Krakow, where he took part in the underground university. From 1937 to 1939 he worked with Myron Mathisson , whom he brought to Krakow and who emigrated abroad in 1939, with Józef Lubanski and the mathematician Adam Bielecki (1910-2003), later professor at the Maria Curie Skłodowska University . Results on relativistic particles with spin in general relativity (in continuation of the work with Mathisson), which he achieved during this time with his assistant Antoni Raabe , were published after the war. He hid Raabe in his own house for a long time, but he was murdered in Auschwitz. In 1947 he organized an international conference of the IUPAP on cosmic rays in Cracow and in 1948 he was with Wolfgang Pauli in Zurich, where he mainly dealt with relativistic quantum field theory, as did his student Jerzy Rayski at the same time .

From 1947 to 1972 he was editor of Acta Physica Polonica and 1960 to 1972 of Progress in Physics (Postępów Fizyki).

Among other things, he wrote a textbook on the principles of electromagnetism and classical optics .

Active as an athlete, he was one of the founders of the Polish Football Association (and Wisła Kraków ) and also wrote a textbook on football. Wealthy by nature, he used his wealth and contacts with wealthy friends to help colleagues.

In 1951 he became an officer of the Order of Polonia Restituta .

Fonts

  • About the classical-relativistic treatment of the spin problem, in: Max Planck Festschrift, Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften 1959
  • Principles of Electromagnetism and Classical Optics (Polish), Warsaw 1957

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jan Wirgiliusz Weyssenhoff h. Łabędź. Retrieved March 22, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Brief biographical information in P. Horvathy Mathisson´s spinning electron: noncommutative mechanics and exotic Galileian symmetry, 66 years ago , 2003, Arxiv
  3. ↑ After the war, this resulted in summer conferences, organized by Leopold Infeld
  4. ↑ Bronislaw Sredniawa Myron Mathisson's and Jan Weyssenhoff's work on the problem of motion in general relativity , in Eisenstadt, Kox (eds.) Studies in the History of General Relativity , Birkhäuser 1992
  5. ↑ Zasady elektromagnetyki optyki klasycznej, Warsaw 1957
personal data
SURNAME Weyssenhoff, Jan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weyssenhoff, Jan Wirgiliusz (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish physicist
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw
DATE OF DEATH August 11, 1972
Place of death Krakow