Kurt Lion

Kurt Siegfried Lion (born May 17, 1904 in Kassel ; † February 27, 1980 in Watertown (Massachusetts) , USA) was a German-American physicist .

Life

Kurt Lion was born as the son of the businessman Moritz Lion and his wife Ida. Mayer was born in Kassel in 1904. He attended the Friedrichsgymnasium (Kassel) , where he passed the Abitur in 1923. After six months as an intern at the Henschel company, he studied electrical engineering and later physics at the TH Darmstadt from autumn 1923 . In the spring of 1928 he passed the diploma examination in technical physics. He then did his doctorate with Hans Rau (physicist) and graduated in December 1932 with the title “with distinction”. His dissertation, published in 1933, was entitled The Excitation of X-Rays by High Velocity Impact of Positive Ions .

From September 1928 Lion was employed by Hans Rau as the first assistant. There he met Gerhard Herzberg , who had been Rau's second assistant since 1930. Lion was dismissed from university service at the end of May 1933 on June 1, 1933, citing Section 3 of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. His salary was then paid for another three months. He first tried to find a job as a scientist in various European countries. However, this did not succeed. 1934–35 he worked in a physical-technical laboratory in Frankfurt-Oberrad.

In 1935, through the mediation of Friedrich Dessauer , he got a two-year job at the Turkish State University in Istanbul. In 1937 he moved to Switzerland with Dessauer and worked at the Physics Institute in Freiburg im Üechtland . Despite his qualifications, he was advised there not to do his habilitation for “ideological reasons”. Since he had difficulties with the residence permit in Switzerland and could not return to Germany, he tried to get an exit visa, which he received at the end of 1940.

After an arduous journey with the young family, he finally reached Lisbon and in the spring of 1941 began the voyage to the USA . He managed to get an assistant position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . After a few years he was given a professorship for applied biophysics.

Kurt Lion died on February 27, 1980 in Watertown, Massachusetts, USA. Lion had been married to Elsa Strauss (born 1905) from Reinheim / Odenwald since 1934. The son Joachim (* 1938) emerged from the marriage.

Honors

In honor of Kurt Lion, a stumbling block was laid on March 15, 2010 on the grounds of the TU Darmstadt, Hochschulstrasse, near his former place of work.

Publications

Lion has written over 100 academic articles and numerous books. He has also applied for a number of patents.

literature

• Isabel Schmidt: The TH Darmstadt in the post-war period (1945-1960) , dissertation, Darmstadt 2014.
• Dorothee Hoppe: Dr. Kurt Lion , in: Stolpersteine ​​in Darmstadt, Justus von Liebig Verlag, Darmstadt 2013, pp. 142f.