Otto Hittmair

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Otto Hittmair (born March 16, 1924 in Innsbruck ; † September 5, 2003 on the Innsbrucker Nordkette (mountain accident)) was an Austrian theoretical physicist .

Life

Otto Hittmair was the son of a professor for English studies in Innsbruck, his mother was the owner of the university bookstore in Innsbruck. Hittmair attended a humanistic grammar school and after graduating from high school in 1942 and after studying physics for a year, he became a soldier in a radio company, which he remained until 1945. In 1945 he continued his studies of mathematics and physics at the University of Innsbruck , where he joined the AV Austria Innsbruck in 1945 . In 1950 he received his doctorate and went to Markus Fierz in Basel, where he dealt with quantum field theory . At the beginning of his academic career, in 1951, he was a scholar at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies with Nobel Prize winner Erwin Schrödinger , with whom he worked on his experiments on a unified field theory (of electromagnetism and gravitation), which also led to a joint publication. In 1951 he was a Fulbright scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , where, at the suggestion of Martin Deutsch, he described angle correlations of successive decays of atomic nuclei using group theory, which was extended to nuclear reactions. At the invitation of Alfred Kastler , he was at the Institut Henri Poincaré of the Sorbonne in Paris from 1952 to 1954 and extended his theory of angular correlations to the continuum with the help of the statistical core model. In 1953 he completed his habilitation in Innsbruck. 1954-1956 he was at the University of Sydney , where he met Stuart Thomas Butler of deuteron - Strippingreaktionen , leading researcher at a joint 1957 published book. He was also a tutor at St. Andrews College at the University. In 1956/57 he was in Argentina, in Buenos Aires and at the research center in San Carlos de Bariloche . At the synchro cyclotron there , he was able to compare the theoretically investigated nuclear reactions (stripping reactions) on the deuteron with the experiment.

From 1958 to 1960 he worked at the Atomic Institute of the Austrian Universities under Gustav Ortner and from 1960 full professor for theoretical physics and head of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the Technical University of Vienna . The main subject of research remained nuclear reactions.

He wrote textbooks on quantum physics , the theory of heat and superconductivity .

Hittmair 1968/1969 Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and 1977 to 1979 Rector of the Technical University of Vienna, whose Prechtl Medal he received. In 1970 he was elected a full member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences , from 1987 to 1991 its President of the Academy, from 1991 to 1997 Vice-President.

He was a passionate mountaineer and had a fatal accident in the mountains in 2003.

Honourings and prices

In 2001 an asteroid was named after him. There is now an Otto-Hittmair-Platz in Innsbruck.

Works

  • Heat theory, 1971, 4th edition, Vieweg / Teubner 1992 (with Gerhard Adam)
  • Textbook of quantum theory, Thiemig 1972
  • Nuclear Stripping Reactions, Wiley 1957 (with Stuart Thomas Butler )
  • Superconductivity, Thiemig 1979 (with Harald W. Weber)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB)
personal data
SURNAME Hittmair, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian physicist
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH innsbruck
DATE OF DEATH September 5, 2003
Place of death Inntal chain