Max Volmer

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Max Volmer, 1958

Max Volmer (born May 3, 1885 in Hilden , Rhineland ; † June 3, 1965 in Potsdam ) was a German chemist specializing in physical chemistry (reaction kinetics). He was a professor at the Technical University of Berlin-Charlottenburg and, from 1955, at the Humboldt University of Berlin and developed the Butler-Volmer equation together with John Alfred Valentine Butler . From 1955 to 1959 he was President of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin .

education

Volmer comes from a wealthy family. He started school at the age of 6 in 1891 in the Protestant elementary school in Hilden. From 1895 he attended the municipal high school in Düsseldorf , which he successfully completed after the senior prima in Easter 1905 with the school leaving certificate (Abitur). From 1905 he studied chemistry in Marburg , Munich and Leipzig . He received his doctorate there in 1910 with a thesis on photochemical reactions in a high vacuum . In 1913 he completed his habilitation. 1912–1914 he was an assistant, then a private lecturer at the University of Leipzig .

First World War

1914-1918 he did military service. In this context he carried out research on chemical warfare agents. In 1916 he began his work at the Physico-Chemical Institute of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin due to the war, with predominantly military issues. The Stern-Volmer equation goes back to a collaboration with Otto Stern during this time.

Research and Teaching

From 1918 to 1920 he continued his research in the Auergesellschaft , where he invented the mercury steam jet pump in 1919 .

After a short time as an associate professor at the University of Hamburg , where he dealt with phase transitions between the gas and crystal state and introduced a new adsorption thermal bath ( Volmer isotherm ), he was appointed full professor at the Physico-Chemical Institute of the Technical University of Berlin in 1922 , today's Technical University of Berlin . There he worked until the end of the war in 1945, mainly on crystal surfaces and crystal growth. He discovered the surface migration of adsorbed molecules, which is now known as Volmer diffusion .

time of the nationalsocialism

In 1936 the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina appointed him a member.

In 1943 Volmer was elected a full member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . His appointment was prevented by the Nazi regime, although Otto Hahn had supported the nomination. The Reich Minister for Science, Art and Education, Bernhard Rust , justified the rejection with the words: "Volmer's political stance is not clear enough to represent the National Socialist state." He was accused of helping a Jewish employee to be deported revoke. The proceedings initiated against him still went smoothly: he was initially suspended, but then his salary was only reduced by a fifth. Volmer's importance for research, also for military purposes, played a decisive role there.

post war period

At the beginning of June 1945, Volmer was elected provisional rector of the future Technical University of Berlin by a provisional working group ; however, the office was not exercised.

Vollmer went to Agudzera near Sukhumi in August 1945 with a group of specialists led by Gustav Hertz . There he worked as part of the Soviet atomic bomb project to set up a plant for the production of heavy water (see Werner Hartmann: 1945–1955: The USSR Decade ). This was a prerequisite for the production of plutonium by natural uranium reactors . Along with Victor Bayerl and Gustav Richter succeeded to build a corresponding ammonia - distillation tower in Norilsk .

After Oskar Blumentritt, Volmer was committed to the Soviet Union in August. According to the director of the Natural History Museum in Potsdam, who organized an exhibition about Volmer, he was not “not collected”, but “left voluntarily”. Volmer himself wrote that the reason for the move to accept the invitation was largely determined by his experiences during a trip to Moscow in 1932 at the invitation of the Karpov Institute for Physical Chemistry. There he was surprised by the contrast to the gloomy mood in German student circles, "the lively interest and thirst for knowledge of young people, students of both sexes", their "future hope" and the goal that excited everyone.

In 1946, his appointment as a member of the newly founded German Academy of Sciences in Berlin was made up as the successor institution of the Prussian Academy. However, the report could not be delivered to Volmer in person because he was already in the Soviet Union.

Return to the GDR

Volmer was only able to return to East Berlin in March 1955 . On May 1, 1955, he was appointed full professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin for physical chemistry and electrochemistry. From November 10, 1955, Volmer was a member of the Scientific Council for the Peaceful Use of Atomic Energy at the GDR's Council of Ministers . From December 8, 1955 to October 23, 1958, he was also President and then until October 10, 1963 Vice President of the German Academy of Sciences, in both functions as the successor to Walter Friedrich . From August 27, 1957, he was also a founding member of the GDR Research Council . In 1958 he retired. In the same year he was accepted as a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR .

Honors

Because of his work in the Soviet Union, he received the GDR National Prize, First Class, the Award for Outstanding People's Scientist . In 1955 he was made honorary citizenship of Potsdam . In recognition of his scientific work, Volmer received an honorary doctorate from the TU Berlin . The Institute for Biophysical Chemistry at TU Berlin bears his name. In Berlin-Adlershof , Potsdam and in his hometown Hilden streets are named after him.

Personal

Volmer married Charlotte Pusch , who had a PhD in chemistry and physics . Max and Lotte, as he affectionately called them, had been known since the 1920s and were friends with the physicist Lise Meitner and the chemist Otto Hahn .

Publications

  • Kinetics of phase formation , Dresden, Steinkopff, 1939 (110 pages with 15 tables).
  • On the kinetics of phase formation and electrode reactions. Eight works , Academic Publishing Company Geest & Portig KG, 1983
  • with L. Dunsch, On the kinetics of phase formation and electrode reaction. Eight works , Harri GmbH, 1983.

literature

Web links

Commons : Max Volmer  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://page-one.springer.com/pdf/preview/10.1007/978-3-642-18916-6_49
  2. ↑ a b Oskar Blumentritt: Max Volmer (1885–1965). A biography. Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-7983-1053-X , p. 50 ff.
  3. ↑ Potsdamer Latest News from May 3, 2005. https://www.pnn.de/potsdam/ehre-einem-humanisten/22403352.html
  4. ↑ Linked to progress . Supplement to Knowledge and Life, Issue 11, 1957, p. 29.
  5. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Max Volmer. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed October 30, 2015 (Russian).
personal data
SURNAME Volmer, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist specializing in physical chemistry (reaction kinetics)
DATE OF BIRTH May 3, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Hilden , Rhineland
DATE OF DEATH June 3, 1965
Place of death Potsdam