Peter Mittelstaedt

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Peter Mittelstaedt (r.) And Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker (l.) During the International Symposium on Quantum Logic, Cologne 1984

Peter Mittelstaedt , pseudonym Karl Rottmann (born November 24, 1929 in Leipzig ; † November 21, 2014 in Erftstadt ), was a German physicist , philosopher and scientific theorist .

Life

After studying physics at the universities of Jena , Bonn and Göttingen , with a doctorate in theoretical physics in Göttingen in 1956 with Werner Heisenberg , Mittelstaedt had research stays at CERN in Geneva and at MIT in Cambridge, USA and at the then Max Planck Institute for physics and astrophysics in Munich, where he completed his habilitation in 1961 . Since 1965 Mittelstaedt was Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Cologne , his main areas of work were philosophy of natural science, philosophy of science and logic as well as the fundamentals of relativity and quantum theory . In 1968 and 1969 he was Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Rector of the University in 1970 and 1971, Vice-Rector from 1971 to 1973, and later Vice-Rector for Research in Cologne. Mittelstaedt retired in 1995. He was also chairman of the board of directors of the publishing house Bibliographisches Institut . Mittelstaedt died at the age of 84 and was buried in Erftstadt-Lechenich on November 29, 2014 after a memorial service .

He is known for monographs on physics philosophy, where he was influenced by Paul Lorenzen and his operationalism and pursued a justification of quantum mechanics via quantum logic , for which he tried to provide a physical interpretation in his later work.

His total of 30 students, who received their doctorate with him in Cologne from 1966 to 1997, included a. a. Julian Barbour , Hubertus von Grünberg , Wolfgang Hillebrandt , Heinz-Erich Wichmann , Ernst-Walther Stachow , Franz Josef Burghardt , Hans-Joachim Blome and Paul Busch.

His grandfather was the lawyer at the Imperial Court of Justice Johannes Mittelstaedt and his great-grandfather was the Imperial Court Counselor and journalist Otto Mittelstaedt (1834–1899).

Publications

Books

  • as Karl Rottmann: Mathematical Formula Collection , BI Wissenschaftsverlag 1960
  • Philosophical Problems of Modern Physics , BI 1963 (7th edition 1989)
  • Classical mechanics , BI 1970 (2nd edition 1995)
  • The Language of Physics: Articles and Lectures , BI 1972
  • The concept of time in physics - physical and philosophical investigations into the concept of time in classical and relativistic physics , BI Wissenschaftsverlag 1976 (3rd edition 1989)
  • Quantum Logic , Dordrecht, Reidel 1978
  • Language and Reality in Modern Physics , BI 1986
  • with Paul Busch, Pekka J. Lahti The Quantum Theory of Measurement , Springer, Lecturenotes in Physics, 1991, 2nd edition 1996
  • The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and the Measurement Process , Cambridge University Press 1998 (paperback 2004)
  • with Paul A. Weingartner Laws of Nature , Springer 2005
  • Rational Reconstructions of Modern Physics , Springer, Dordrecht 2011, ISBN 978-94-007-0076-5 .

Editor (excerpt)

  • Symposium on the Foundations of Modern Physics with Pekka J. Lahti, 1985, 1987, 1990
  • Symposium on the Foundations of Modern Physics with Paul Busch and Pekka J. Lahti, 1993

For scientific articles see homepage

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Peter Mittelstaedt obituary notice . Cologne city indicator . November 26, 2014. Retrieved December 18, 2015.
  2. ↑ Heisenberg had known the family before. During his time in Leipzig he played a lot in the house of von Mittelstaedt's grandfather, who was a lawyer at the Imperial Court. Mittelstaedt's great-grandfather was the imperial judge Otto Mittelstaedt .
  3. ^ For example, Mittelstaedt, Quantum Physics and Classical Physics - in the Light of Quantum Logic, Arxiv 2003 and Mittelstaedt, Rational Reconstructions of Modern Physics, Springer, 2nd edition 2013
  4. ↑ A complete list of the 30 doctoral theses that were completed by Peter Mittelstaedft can be found in: Foundations of Physics 40 (2010), pp. 1198–1199.
  5. ↑ Stachow was a professor for basic questions in physics at the University of Cologne and is the author of numerous papers on quantum logic .
  6. ↑ The astrophysicist Hans-Joachim Blome developed the Big Bounce model for the creation of the universe together with Wolfgang Priester .
  7. ↑ Paul Busch (1955-2018) has been a professor at the Department of Mathematics at York University since 2005 and has been President of the International Quantum Structures Association IQSA since 2016.
  8. ↑ Entry in the register of anonymous and pseudonymous works , published in the Federal Gazette on January 17, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Mittelstaedt, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rottmann, Karl (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist, philosopher and scientific theorist
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH November 21, 2014
Place of death Erftstadt