Paul Harteck

Paul Harteck as Rector of the University of Hamburg (1948)

Paul Karl Josef Maria Harteck (born July 20, 1902 in Vienna , † January 22, 1985 in Santa Barbara , California) was an Austrian physical chemist .

Life

Harteck attended the Schottengymnasium in Vienna and then studied chemistry in Vienna and Berlin . After receiving his doctorate in 1926 with Max Bodenstein on the photokinetics of carbon oxychloride ( phosgene ), he worked with Arnold Eucken in Breslau . From 1928 to 1933 he was assistant to Fritz Haber at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry in Berlin-Dahlem . He then spent a year doing research with Ernest Rutherford in Cambridge . In 1934 he became director of the Institute for Physical Chemistry at the University of Hamburg .

Because of his participation in the German uranium project , he was interned from July 3, 1945 to January 3, 1946 as part of Operation Epsilon in the British Farm Hall . From 1948 to 1950 he was rector of the University of Hamburg . In 1951 he emigrated to the USA, where he worked at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy / New York.

In 1956 he was appointed External Scientific Member at the Fritz Haber Institute by the Max Planck Society . In 1937 and 1952 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry .

Discoveries

In 1929, together with Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer , he discovered the hydrogen modifications ortho and parahydrogen . In 1934, together with Rutherford and Mark Oliphant , he discovered the hydrogen isotope tritium . In the same article, the three reported on the first targeted nuclear fusion reaction (deuterium-deuterium).

Awards

• 1978: Great Gold Medal for Services to the Republic of Austria

literature

• KF Bonhoeffer, P. Harteck: Experiments on para and orthohydrogen. Berlin 1929. In: Meeting reports of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Phys.-Math. Class 1929, pp. 103-108.
• KF Bonhoeffer, P. Harteck: The properties of parahydrogen. In: Journal of Electrochemistry and Applied Physical Chemistry. 35, pp. 621-623 (1929).
• KF Bonhoeffer, P. Harteck: Further experiments with parahydrogen. In: The natural sciences. 17 (1929), pp. 321-322.
• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
• M. Oliphant, P. Harteck, E. Rutherford: Transmutation Effects observed with Heavy Hydrogen. In: Proc Roy Soc. A144 (1934), pp. 692-703.
• Michael Schaaf: The physical chemist Paul Harteck (1902–1985). Stuttgart 1999, DNB 957287119 .
• Michael Schaaf: Heisenberg, Hitler and the bomb. Conversations with contemporary witnesses. GNT-Verlag, Diepholz 2018, ISBN 978-3-86225-115-5 (therein: "Heisenberg and Weizsäcker overestimated each other." A conversation with Paul Harteck )
• Annalena Stegmann, Achim Habekost: Paul Harteck and the uranium machine . In: News from chemistry. 62 (2014), pp. 137-141.

Movies

In the television film End of Innocence , the figure of Paul Harteck is portrayed by Hanns Zischler .

Web links

• Michael Schaaf: Heavy water and centrifuges - Paul Harteck in Hamburg (1934-1951) (PDF file; 1.39 MB)
• Literature by and about Paul Harteck in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Paul Harteck in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Entry about Paul Harteck in the database of the Wilhelm Exner Medal Foundation .
• Short biography and list of publications at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Hamburg

Individual evidence

1. ^ Michael Schaaf: The physical chemist Paul Harteck (1902-1985) , Stuttgart 1999.
2. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB).