Max Vienna

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Max Karl Werner Vienna (born December 25, 1866 in Königsberg (Prussia) (today Kaliningrad), † February 24, 1938 in Jena ) was a German physicist . He was the cousin of Nobel Prize winner Wilhelm Wien .

Life

Vienna's ancestors were tenants in Mecklenburg who had become wealthy through land purchases. His father became a partner in a grain export business in Königsberg.

Like his cousin Wilhelm Wien , with whom he remained in close contact for life, Max Wien wanted to study physics . He began in Königsberg in 1884 , then studied for six months in Freiburg and went to Berlin in 1885 . In 1887 he completed his dissertation with Hermann von Helmholtz and August Kundt , for which he had chosen to measure the tone strength with the Helmholtz resonator with a barometer capsule attached .

Vienna then did his one year military service with the 3 Cuirassier Regiment in Königsberg and returned to Berlin in 1889 to work on the further development of sound measurement. In 1892 he moved to Würzburg as an assistant to Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen . He completed his habilitation in 1893 with the dissertation on a new form of induction scales .

At Easter 1898, Vienna became a lecturer at the TH Aachen , where he was appointed professor that same year. There he developed a new field of work in 1902 with the investigation of wireless telegraphy .

In 1904 Vienna was appointed full professor at the newly founded Technical University of Danzig . In 1911 he became director of the Physics Institute at the University of Jena . There he developed the extinguishing spark transmitter from 1906 to 1909 and wrote many works on alternating current , electrical vibrations and wireless telegraphy. His criticism of Helmholtz's resonance theory of hearing has entered the literature as a Viennese objection . The Wien effect via the behavior of electrolytes in strong electrical fields is named after him.

For theoretical physics in Jena, Vienna wanted a student of Arnold Sommerfeld , but who would have to be as little a Jew as possible , as he wrote to his cousin Wilhelm Wien. His anti-Semitism was shown again and again in his letters to his cousin, for example on the occasion of Heinrich Rubens' appointment to Berlin or a vacancy in Jena.

Right at the beginning of the First World War , Vienna became head of the scientific department for radio equipment of the army with the rank of Rittmeister . In autumn 1914 he took part in the planning of long-range weapons. With Ferdinand von Zeppelin he discussed the possible control of a boat from a flying object. At the end of 1914, he was one of the 16 signatories of his cousin Wilhelm Wien's request not to cite English more often than Germans in publications. In view of the war aims , Vienna was in favor of territorial expansion with Germanic settlement areas from which the existing locals were to be expelled. Vienna later brought Walther Gerlach , Robert Wichard Pohl and Gustav Hertz to his department .

From 1924 to 1925 Vienna was chairman of the German Physical Society . In 1920 Vienna brought Erwin Schrödinger to Jena, but he only stayed for half a year. Politically, he joined the German National People's Party . In 1935, according to the new legislation, he was sent into retirement after reaching the age of 65. In 1936, together with Werner Heisenberg and Hans Geiger , he wrote the memorandum signed by 75 professors against the attacks by the representatives of German physics around Johannes Stark and Philipp Lenard on modern theoretical physics.

Honors

In 1921 he was accepted as a full member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences and in 1929 as a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . In 1934 he was elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina . In 1937 Vienna became an honorary member of the German Physical Society together with Walther Nernst .

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Stefan L. Wolff: Between pure and technical physics - Max Wien was born 150 years ago . In: Physics Journal . tape 15 , no. 12 , 2016, p. 39-43 .
  2. ^ Members of the SAW: Max Wien. Saxon Academy of Sciences, accessed on December 13, 2016 .
  3. ↑ 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. 258.
  4. ↑ List of members Leopoldina, Max Wien (with picture)
personal data
SURNAME Vienna, Max
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vienna, Max Karl Werner (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH Königsberg (Prussia)
DATE OF DEATH February 24, 1938
Place of death Jena