Rudolf Ladenburg
Walter Rudolf Ladenburg (born June 6, 1882 in Kiel , † April 3, 1952 in Princeton , New Jersey , USA ) was a German physicist , after emigrating American .
family
Ladenburg came from the well-known Jewish Ladenburg family from Mannheim and was the son of chemist Albert Ladenburg and Margarethe Pringsheim (1855–1909).
Life
He was a student of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen , did his doctorate and qualified as a professor .
During the First World War he was in charge of the sound measurement department of the artillery testing commission in Berlin, which he founded . The scientific staff of the department initially included Max Born , then an associate professor in Berlin, and then Born's former pupil Alfred Landé as well as Fritz Reiche , Erwin Madelung and Erich Waetzmann . The task of this department was to examine the possible applications of various methods of "scientific measurement" - optical , acoustic , seismometric , electromagnetic , etc. -. In order to determine the position of a firing gun, a sound measurement method was worked out and then introduced at the front.
In 1924 Ladenburg took over the department for atomic physics at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry (since 1948: Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society ) in Berlin-Dahlem . It was here in 1928 that he achieved the first experimental proof of the stimulated emission of radiation, which Albert Einstein had introduced into the quantum theory of radiation twelve years earlier.
In 1932 he followed a call to Princeton University , New Jersey (USA) and headed the Palmer Physical Laboratory . In 1931 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) .
In the USA Rudolf Ladenburg worked as an expert in the field of sea mines and torpedoes as well as defense measures against these weapons together with John von Neumann and probably also Albert Einstein on the development of a mirage effect (“ Fata Morgana ”). The National Defense Research Committee (" Manhattan Project ") wanted their physicists to do calculations in early 1940 to verify the strength of the field and the practical probability of bending the light in such a way that such an effect could be achieved.
On May 28, 1950, Ladenburg was retired in the presence of Einstein.
literature
- Leopold Ladenburg : Family tree of the Ladenburg family . Verlag J. Ph. Walther, Mannheim 1882.
- Florian Waldeck : Ladenburg . In: Florian Waldeck: Old Mannheim families . Self-published by Buchdruckerei Max Hahn & Co., Mannheim 1920, ( Writings of the Family History Association Mannheim 1, ZDB -ID 1447695-2 ), (Also reprinted: Gesellschaft der Freunde Mannheims, Mannheim 1987).
- Helmut Rechenberg : Ladenburg, Rudolf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 391 f. ( Digitized version ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Arne Schirrmacher: The Physics in the Great War , Physik Journal 13 (2014) No. 7, pp. 43–48.
- ^ FK Kneubühl, MW Sigrist: Laser . Teubner, 1991 3rd edition p. 4.
- ↑ APS Fellow Archive. Retrieved February 9, 2020 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ladenburg, Rudolf |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ladenburg, Walter Rudolf (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-American physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 6, 1882 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kiel |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 3, 1952 |
| Place of death | Princeton , New Jersey , USA |