Richard Wachsmuth (physicist)

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Richard Wachsmuth (born March 21, 1868 in Marburg , † January 1, 1941 in Icking ) was a German physicist .

life and work

Richard Wachsmuth came from a family of scholars. His father, Curt Wachsmuth , was Professor of Classical Philology and Ancient History at the Philipps University of Marburg and the University of Leipzig . His mother, Marie Luise Henriette geb. Ritschl, was the daughter of the philologist Friedrich Ritschl . Richard Wachsmuth passed his Abitur at the Thomasschule in Leipzig in 1887 and then studied physics at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg , the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin - there he became the last assistant of his later friend Hermann von Helmholtz - and the University of Leipzig . In November 1892 he received his doctorate with a thesis on investigations in the field of internal heat conduction .

In 1893 he started his first job at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt . In 1896 he became an assistant at the Georg August University of Göttingen and completed his habilitation there in 1898. From 1898 to 1905 he taught as an associate professor for physics at the University of Rostock .

In September 1896, Wachsmuth married in Berlin. In 1897 a daughter, Anna Sabine, was born to the couple Wachsmuth in Göttingen , on March 29, 1900 their son, the later surgeon Werner Wachsmuth , was born in Rostock and three years later Ernst Wachsmuth.

After an interlude at the Prussian War Academy in Berlin, Wachsmuth became a lecturer at the Physikalischer Verein in Frankfurt am Main in 1907 . He also took on a lectureship at the Academy for Social and Commercial Sciences , one of the predecessor organizations of the University of Frankfurt . In 1908 he took over a professorship for experimental physics at the academy and became its last rector in 1913/14 . In 1914 he also worked as a physics teacher at the Lessing Gymnasium in Frankfurt . The Frankfurt home of the Wachsmuth family was at Grillparzerstraße 83.

From 1911, along with the mayor of Frankfurt, Franz Adickes , Wachsmuth played a key role in founding the University of Frankfurt. This is probably one of the reasons why he was appointed founding rector of the Royal University of Frankfurt am Main on August 16, 1914 by the Prussian minister of culture .

From 1914 until his retirement in 1932, Wachsmuth was a full professor of experimental physics and director of the Physics Institute . He no longer took an active part in the paradigm shift in physics that was triggered by relativity and quantum theory . However, in November 1921, Otto Stern and Wachsmuth's senior assistant Walther Gerlach started the Stern-Gerlach experiment at his institute , one of the experimental milestones in the development of quantum theory.

In Frankfurt, Wachsmuth was a board member from 1915 and honorary president of the Polytechnic Society from 1932 to 1936 . According to his son, he resigned from this office because of the regime’s harmonization. In 1939 he became honorary senator of the university, which had been named after Johann Wolfgang Goethe since 1932 .

Wachsmuth died on January 1, 1941 in Icking, his retirement home near Munich , where his wife lived , and received a cremation, whereby the cremation took place in the Munich crematorium.

literature

  • Walther G. Saltzer: Richard Wachsmuth . In: K. Bethge, H. Klein (ed.): History of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main: Physicists and astronomers in Frankfurt / ed. in the order d. Department of Physics . Metzner, Neuwied 1989, ISBN 3-472-00031-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wachsmuth, Curt. Hessian biography (as of February 23, 2015). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies (HLGL), accessed on March 16, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Werner Wachsmuth: A life with the century. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York / Tokyo 1985. ISBN 3-540-15036-6 , pp. 7-14.
  3. ^ Werner Wachsmuth: Progress as a medical problem. (Lecture given on December 11, 1979 for the Polytechnische Gesellschaft e.V.), Polytechnische Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main 1979, p. 5
personal data
SURNAME Wachsmuth, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German experimental physicist
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Marburg
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 1941
Place of death Icking