Paul Kunze (physicist)

Paul Kunze (born November 2, 1897 in Chemnitz , † October 6, 1986 in Dresden ) was a German experimental physicist. He is one of the discoverers of the muon .

Life

Kunze studied physics in Munich . In 1920 he became a member of the Corps Vitruvia Munich. He did his doctorate in Munich under Wilhelm Wien and went to Rostock in 1925 . At the University of Rostock , he initially worked as an assistant, completed his habilitation and was appointed professor. On April 1, 1936, he became head of the university's physics institute and held this position until 1945 and from 1948 until he moved to the Technical University of Dresden in 1958. There he became head of the Institute for Experimental Nuclear Physics.

In Munich, in January 1932, Kunze was admitted to the Freemasons' lodge Friendship in the Highlands , a subsidiary of the national, Christian-oriented Great State Lodge of the Freemasons of Germany .

research

Kunze's main focus in Rostock was the research of cosmic rays in cloud chamber experiments . He developed a process with which disturbances caused by falling secondary droplets were reduced, making images much sharper than before. Because of the high power consumption, the system had to be installed in the Rostock-Bramow power station and operated during the low-load hours in the early morning.

In his experiments in 1932, Kunze discovered traces of an electron and an unknown positively charged particle with an ionizing effect that was too weak for a proton and too strong for the positron that Carl David Anderson had just discovered . A few years later, in 1937, Anderson and Seth Neddermeyer published their work on the discovery of the muon, in which they suspected they had discovered the pion proposed by Yukawa Hideki . It was not until 1947 that the muon could be identified as a separate elementary particle.

Web links

Individual evidence

^ Philisterverein Vitruvia eV Munich, list of members as of January 1937, No. 356
↑ Michael Buddrus, Sigrid Fritzlar: The professors of the University of Rostock in the Third Reich. de Gruyter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-598-11775-6 , p. 248f.
^ Walter Mehnert: Paul Kunze and the nuclear physics research at the Physikalisches Institut. (Contributions to the history of the University of Rostock, issue 17). 1991.
^ Paul Kunze: Investigation of the ultra radiation in the Wilson chamber. In: Journal of Physics. A, 83 (1933), pp. 1-18, doi : 10.1007 / BF01331088 .

personal data
SURNAME	Kunze, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH	November 2, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH	Chemnitz
DATE OF DEATH	October 6, 1986
Place of death	Dresden

[mvv-1] Philisterverein Vitruvia eV Munich, list of members as of January 1937, No. 356

[2] Michael Buddrus, Sigrid Fritzlar: The professors of the University of Rostock in the Third Reich. de Gruyter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-598-11775-6 , p. 248f.

[3] Walter Mehnert: Paul Kunze and the nuclear physics research at the Physikalisches Institut. (Contributions to the history of the University of Rostock, issue 17). 1991.

[4] Paul Kunze: Investigation of the ultra radiation in the Wilson chamber. In: Journal of Physics. A, 83 (1933), pp. 1-18, doi : 10.1007 / BF01331088 .