Otto Schärpf

Otto Schärpf (born August 8, 1929 in Walldürn ; † June 13, 2019 in Munich ) was a German physicist , university professor and priest in the order of the Jesuits .

Life and research

Schärpf attended the Matthias-Grünewald-Gymnasium in Tauberbischofsheim . After graduating from high school in 1948, he completed a philosophical-theological training from 1951 to 1954 in the Jesuit order in Pullach and from 1955 to 1959 in Innsbruck . After being ordained a priest in 1958, he studied mathematics and physics at the Technical University of Munich from 1960 to 1967 . After his habilitation in 1977 at the Technical University of Braunschweig on the subject of "Behavior of neutrons when passing through the Blochwand", he first worked as a lecturer and then as an adjunct professor of physics at the Technical University of Braunschweig and at the Karlsruhe Research Center . In 1979 he moved to the European center for research with neutrons, the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble , France .

Schärpf realized a completely new type of instrument for the analysis of cold polarized neutrons. The prerequisite for this was the development of so-called super mirrors, metallic multiple layers on a glass substrate, which reflect cold neutrons of great divergence and only one direction of polarization. He perfected the manufacture of these super mirrors and used them to build so-called benders as polarizers and polarization analyzers for cold neutrons, the essential elements of his new neutron scattering instrument. With numerous carefully planned experiments, he then developed the so-called xyz method of polarization analysis, which allows the various contributions to the scattering cross-section to be separated in a multi-detector instrument and thus access to correlation functions that can be directly compared with the theory. Completely new insights into such diverse questions as the importance of magnetic fluctuations in high-temperature superconductors, the mechanisms of diffusion in condensed matter, two-dimensional quantum magnets, short-range order in soft matter, magnetic short-range order and spin-spin correlations in frustrated magnetic materials were thus accessible. His experience with polarized neutrons and his super mirror analyzers were also in demand in nuclear physics and are crucial for precision measurements of the beta decay of neutrons.

In 1991 Schärpf became a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts . He has worked at the TUM Physics Faculty in Garching since 1996 and lived at the Berchmanskolleg in Munich.

Publications (selection)

Behavior of neutrons when passing through the Blochwand, 1976
Measurement of stray fields over walls of ferromagnetic areas, Munich, 1968

literature

Obituary for Otto Schärpf, In: Physik Journal 10, 2019, p. 59

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Schärpf, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German physicist, university professor and priest in the order of the Jesuits
DATE OF BIRTH	August 8, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH	Walldürn
DATE OF DEATH	June 13, 2019
Place of death	Munich