Paul Hertz (physicist)

Paul Hertz (born July 29, 1881 in Hamburg , † March 24, 1940 in Philadelphia ) was a German physicist .

Life

Paul Hertz was born in Hamburg as the son of the lawyer Eduard Hertz and his wife Elisabeth. He graduated from high school in Hamburg in 1900 and moved to Heidelberg to study . He first studied mathematics , physics and philosophy at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg before moving to the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen . He also spent a few semesters at the University of Leipzig . He completed his studies in 1904 with a doctorate under Max Abraham in Göttingen ( investigations into the discontinuous movements of an electron ). During his studies u. a. Lectures with David Hilbert , Felix Klein , Ludwig Boltzmann , Hermann Minkowski and Felix Hausdorff .

After completing his doctorate, he spent research stays in various places, including a. Berlin , Paris and Tübingen . In 1908, Hertz completed his habilitation in theoretical physics (theory of the side galvanometer) at the University of Heidelberg.

Hertz gave lectures on theoretical and mathematical physics, but never reached more than 8 students. In July 1912 he moved to the University of Göttingen, where he completed his habilitation and was appointed associate professor in 1921. Hertz's research activities focused on statistical mechanics . In the 1920s and early 1930s he was also close to the Vienna Circle and devoted himself to fundamental questions in mathematics and philosophy.

After the National Socialists came to power, his Venia Legendi was withdrawn as a Jew in September 1933 . He received a US research grant and went to the University of Geneva in 1934/35 , but also gave lectures at the German University in Prague . In 1938 he went to Yale University , where he had been invited to the commemorative year of Josiah Willard Gibbs for 1939 to give a lecture he was unable to give due to illness. The lecture was published posthumously.

There he succumbed to his illness on March 24, 1940. His son Rudolf donated a collection of manuscripts and correspondence to the Pittsburgh University Library.

Fonts

• Statistical Mechanics , in Gans, Weber Repetitorium der Physik , Volume 1, Part 2, Leipzig 1916
• Statistical Mechanics , Results of Exact Natural Sciences, Volume 1, 1922, pp. 60–91
• Magnetic fields of currents and magnetostatics , Handbuch der Physik, Volume 15, Springer Verlag 1927
• Gibbs' Theory. Its foundations and applications . In: Dialectica . tape 10 , 1956, pp. 366-385 , doi : 10.1111 / j.1746-8361.1956.tb01430.x .

literature

• Paul Bernays:  Paul Hertz. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 8, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1969, ISBN 3-428-00189-3 , p. 711 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Max Pinl Colleagues in a Dark Time , DMV Annual Report, Volume 72, pp. 173–176
• Günter Kern: The development of mathematics at the University of Heidelberg 1835-1914 . 1992. pp. 112-115 et al. 158 ( digital p. 46–47 and 135)

Web links

• Paul Hertz in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Published in Z. Math. Phys., Volume 58, 1911, pp. 1-7
2. ^ The Paul Hertz Collection. In: Archives of Scientific Philosophy ASP. Special collection of the University of Pittsburgh , archived from the original on June 12, 2002 (English, short biography and description of the material collection).