Kurt Mendelssohn

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Kurt Mendelssohn (1967)

Kurt Alfred Georg Mendelssohn (born January 7, 1906 in Berlin , † September 18, 1980 in Oxford ) was a German-British physicist.

life and work

Kurt Mendelssohn was born as the only child of Ernst Moritz Mendelssohn and his wife Elisabeth Ruprecht. His father was a great-grandson of Saul Mendelssohn, the younger brother of Moses Mendelssohn , and a textile merchant. Even interested in science, he let his son attend the Goethe School from 1912 to 1925 and the Goethe Realgymnasium in Berlin-Wilmersdorf . In 1925 Kurt Mendelssohn began studying physics at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in his hometown (today's Humboldt University ), which he completed after just two years. Thanks to a suggestion from his older cousin Franz Eugen Simon , who had already made a name for himself as a low-temperature physicist , Mendelssohn also began researching this area at the Physikalisch-Chemisches Institut in Berlin. He was a student of Max Planck , Walther Nernst , Erwin Schrödinger and Albert Einstein . In 1930 he received his doctorate with a dissertation on calorimetric investigations in the temperature range of liquid helium .

Physical research

After completing his doctorate, Mendelssohn continued to work as "main assistant" to Franz Eugen Simon in his research group. When Simon was appointed to the TH Breslau in April 1931 , Mendelssohn followed him. In Breslau, he constructed several devices for liquefying helium. At the invitation of Frederick Lindemann , Mendelssohn traveled to Oxford during the 1932 Christmas break and installed the first helium liquefier in Great Britain in January 1933.

In view of the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists, Mendelssohn emigrated to England in April 1933, where Lindemann had already set up a research position for him at the Clarendon Laboratory of the University of Oxford . In autumn 1933, with the help of Lindemann, he also brought Simon, Heinz London and Nicholas Kurti from Germany to Oxford. Simon, Mendelssohn, London and Kurti set up low-temperature physics there. Following discoveries by Willem Hendrik Keesom , Franz Eugen Simon and Bernard Vincent Rollin (1911–1969), Mendelssohn's research on the superfluidity of helium II was groundbreaking . He examined the Rollin film of liquid helium, discovered by Rollin and Simon at the Clarendon Laboratory in 1938, and showed in 1938 with John Gilbert Daunt (1913–1987) that this forms on surfaces in contact with superfluid helium and moves at a well-defined speed. His research on superconductivity created the basis for the development of its technical use in the 1960s. Mendelssohn's other research areas were Transuranic elements and medical physics . He was regarded as a gifted experimenter (his colleagues spoke of "instrumental ingenuity") and as extremely hardworking. He left his own wedding party to complete an experiment before heading off on his honeymoon.

In 1939 Mendelssohn had taken British citizenship. From 1955 until his retirement in 1973 he was a reader in physics and from 1971 to 1973 "Professorial Fellow " at Wolfson College , Oxford.

Mendelssohn was one of the founding editors of the journal Contemporary Physics (from 1959), as well as editor of the yearbook Progress in Cryogenics (from 1959) and the journal Cryogenics. Low temperature engineering, applied super conductivity, cryoelectronics, cryophysics (from 1960). He was chairman of the International Cryogenic Engineering Committee and from 1957 to 1960 Vice President of the Physical Society .

Travel to China and turn to the history of science

Mendelssohn held many visiting professorships around the world, including a. in Ghana, Egypt, India, Japan and the People's Republic of China. Mendelssohn has been fascinated by China since he first visited the country in 1960 at the invitation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences . On his third trip to China in 1966, he experienced the Cultural Revolution that began in the same year . His radio essay "China's Cultural Revolution", which the BBC aired on November 20, 1966, is one of the first eyewitness accounts published outside of China. As he saw it, he was impressed by the combination of theory and practice: physics teachers who worked in factories and biology teachers who worked in the fields. He reported on the development of the natural sciences in China in the journal Nature . His impressions of the country as a whole - albeit surprisingly uncritical in view of the crimes of the Cultural Revolution and the personality cult practiced by Mao Zedong - he described in the book "In China Now" published in 1969.

Mendelssohn raised the question of why China, a country that was far ahead of the West in many areas of natural sciences and technology until the beginning of modern times, was then "overtaken" by the West in terms of science and technology. This question led him to the life's work of Joseph Needham : exploring the history of science and technology in China. Needham had given reasons why China "fell behind". Mendelssohn agreed with Albert Einstein , who said that the “stagnation” in China was not the exciting question, but rather the question of how that chain of science-based technical revolutions, which has continued to the present day, came about in the West. His work on the history of science, Science and Western Domination, is dedicated to this topic , with Mendelssohn referring primarily to physics in “Science”, alongside chemistry; biology is largely left out.

Egyptological work

Mendelssohn also wrote popular science books, e.g. B. About the Egyptian pyramids. His book The Riddle of the Pyramids (Das Rätsel der Pyramiden) was published in German translation in 1974. He advocated the thesis that the partial collapse of the Meidum pyramid was based on a construction error that had led to the inclination of the bent pyramid in Dahschur during of the building was flattened. The thesis was rejected by archaeologists such as IES Edwards immediately after the book was published, since, according to the archaeological findings, the collapse did not take place until a thousand years after the construction of the Dahshur pyramid and the current condition is assessed as a consequence of earthquakes and erosion in later times. Mendelssohn continued to take the position that the building of the pyramids served less to build tombs for the pharaohs than to unite the country politically and socially. This thesis was also not accepted.

Honors

Since 1951 Mendelssohn was a Fellow of the Royal Society . In 1967 he was awarded the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society and in 1968 the Simon Medal of the Institute of Physics.

family

In 1932 Kurt Mendelssohn married Lina Zarniko from East Prussia , daughter of the owner of the Ordensmühle in Heiligenbeil . Four daughters and a son were born to them.

Fonts

Writings on physics (selection)

  • Calorimetric investigations in the temperature range of liquid helium . Springer, Berlin 1932.
  • What is atomic energy? Sigma, London 1946.
  • Low Temperature Physics . Pergamon Press, London 1952 (with Franz Eugen Simon, Nicholas Kurti and John F. Allen).
  • Liquid helium . In: Siegfried Flügge (Ed.): Handbuch der Physik , Volume 3/15: Cold Physics , Part 2. Springer, Berlin 1956.
  • Cryophysics . Interscience Publishers, New York 1960.
  • The search for absolute zero . Kindler, Munich 1966.
    • English first edition: The Quest for Absolute Zero. The Meaning of Low Temperature Physics . Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1966 (translated into 13 languages, Mendelssohn's most successful book).
  • as editor: Cryogenic Engineering. Present Status and Future Development. The proceedings of the First International Cryogenic Engineering Conference held in Tokyo and Kyoto, Japan on April 9-13, 1967 . Heywood, London 1968.

Writings on the history of science

  • Walther Nernst and his time. The rise and fall of German natural science . Physik-Verlag, Weinheim 1976. ISBN 3-87664-027-X .
    • English first edition: The world of Walther Nernst. The rise and fall of German Science 1864-1941 . Macmillan, London 1973.
  • Science and Western Domination . Thames & Hudson, London 1976.
    • also under the title: The secret of Western domination . Praeger, New York 1976.

Other fonts

  • In China now . Hamlyn, London 1969.
  • The riddle of the pyramids . Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1974. ISBN 3-7857-0139-X (and other editions).
    • English first edition: The Riddle of the Pyramids . Thames & Hudson, London 1974 (and other editions).

literature

  • Nicholas Kurti: Kurt Mendelssohn . In: Physics Today , Vol. 34, No. 4 (April 1981), pp. 87-89 (obituary).
  • David Shoenberg : Kurt Alfred Georg Mendelssohn. 7 January 1906-18 September 1980 . In: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society . ISSN  0080-4606 . Vol. 29 (1983), pp. 361-398.
  • Arthur Vick : Dr. Kurt Mendelssohn, FRS In: Contemporary Physics , Vol. 21 (1980), pp. 539-540.
  • Jack Morrell: Mendelssohn, Kurt Alfred Georg (1906-1980), physicist . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Jack Morrell: Mendelssohn, Kurt Alfred Georg (1906-1980), physicist . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004.
  2. ↑ a b c Oxford University, Bodleian Library: Catalog of the Papers and Correspondence of Kurt Alfred Georg Mendelssohn, FRS (1906-1980) , accessed on August 26, 2014.
  3. ^ Nicholas Kurti: Kurt Mendelssohn . In: Physics Today, Vol. 34, No. 4 (April 1981), pp. 87-89. here p. 88.
  4. ↑ The Times, September 19, 1980 (obituary)
  5. ^ Nicholas Kurti: Kurt Mendelssohn . In: Physics Today , Vol. 34, No. 4 (April 1981), pp. 87-89. here p. 87.
  6. ↑ See Physics at the University of Oxford , University of Oxford
  7. ^ Nicholas Kurti: Kurt Mendelssohn . In: Physics Today , Vol. 34, No. 4 (April 1981), pp. 87-89. here p. 89.
  8. ↑ Julia Ley: Plum Cake . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of November 27, 2017.
  9. ↑ Arthur Vick: Dr. Kurt Mendelssohn, FRS In: Contemporary Physics , Vol. 21 (1980), pp. 539-540.
  10. ↑ Review: In China Now, By Kurt Mendelssohn . In: Eastern Horizon , vol. 10 (1971). Eastern Horizon Press, Hong Kong 1971. ISSN  0012-8813 . P. 61.
  11. ^ Tom Buchanan: East Wind China and the British Left, 1925-1976 . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012. ISBN 978-0-19-957033-1 . P. 181.
  12. ^ Jon Agar: "It's springtime for science": Renewing China-UK scientific relations in the 1970s . In: Notes and Records. The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science , vol. 67 (2013), issue 1 (March) pp. 7–24, here p. 11.
  13. ^ Kurt Mendelssohn: Science in China . In: Nature , 215 : 10-12 (1967).
  14. ↑ The majority of the book is made up of photos taken by him.
  15. ^ Kurt Mendelssohn: The world of Chinese scientific thought . In: New Scientist , Vol. 50 (1971), No. 755 of June 10, 1971, pp. 646-647, here p. 646 (Review by Joseph Needham: Science and Civilization in China , Vol. 4).
  16. ^ IES Edwards: The collapse of the Meidum Pyramid , Journal of Egyptian Archeology, Volume 60, 1974, p. 251
  17. ↑ Miroslav Verner : The pyramids (= rororo non-fiction book. Volume 60890). Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-499-60890-1 , there pp. 189–193: The pyramid of Snefru in Meidum
  18. ↑ Mark Lehner: The first wonder of the world - The secrets of the Egyptian pyramids , Econ 1997, pp. 97-99
  19. ^ IES Edwards: Review of Kurt Mendelssohn 'The Riddle of the Pyramids' . In: The Antiquaries Journal , Vol. 55 (1975), pp. 417-418

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personal data
SURNAME Mendelssohn, Kurt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mendelssohn, Kurt Alfred Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British physicist
DATE OF BIRTH January 7, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH September 18, 1980
Place of death Oxford