Thomas Schönfeld

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Thomas Schönfeld (born June 27, 1923 in Vienna ; † May 22, 2008 ibid) was an Austrian chemist . He was a full professor for radiation chemistry at the University of Vienna . He was a member of the KPÖ and active in the Pugwash peace movement.

Life

Thomas Schönfeld, who came from a Jewish family, had to leave Austria in 1938 as a racially persecuted person after the Anschluss and subsequent Nazi rule . He and his family went into exile in Great Britain . A year later he traveled on to the USA . He continued his chemistry studies, which he had started in exile in the US, at the University of Vienna in 1947. After receiving his doctorate in 1950 and his habilitation in 1963, he was appointed full professor at the University of Vienna in 1972. In addition to numerous scientific studies that have been partially translated into several languages, he was also active in the field of radiation protection, he was Advisor to the Research Center Seibersdorf and long-standing member of the Austrian Commission on Radiological Protection .

With his academic teacher and colleague Engelbert Broda , he not only wrote joint scientific publications, the two were also linked by their joint commitment to the Pugwash movement. As an activist in the peace movement, Schönfeld campaigned for nuclear disarmament as well as for the international outlawing and banning of nuclear weapons . Thomas Schönfeld was also chairman of the international NGO Committee on Peace.

Thomas Schönfeld was a member of the college and group of proponents of the KPÖ's internal pamphlet Neue Politik . Schönfeld also worked as the author of several articles in the New Politics. Schönfeld published numerous scientific articles in various journals. He was co-editor of the journal progressive science , which appeared periodically between 1976 and 1991 in Vienna. He also published numerous political articles in the monthly magazine Weg und Ziel , the theoretical organ of the KPÖ.

Schönfeld was a member of the board of the Alfred Klahr Society, an Austrian association closely related to the KPÖ for research into the history of the labor movement ( ZVR number 783846542).

In 2004, Schönfeld brought in a petition calling for a referendum on the ratification of the EU Constitutional Treaty in parliament , but this was rejected.

Thomas Schönfeld was married to Mia Schönfeld nee Förster (1922–2012) and had a son and a daughter. He lived in Vienna-Wieden . After a long and serious illness, he died on May 22, 2008 in a hospice in Vienna.

Awards

In 1959, Thomas Schönfeld received the Theodor-Körner-Fund's science award for his scientific achievements . In 1997 he received the Erwin Schrödinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences for his life's work in science .

literature

  • Gerhard Oberkofler: Thomas Schönfeld. Austrian scientist and peace fighter . StudienVerlag, Innsbruck 2008, ISBN 978-3706548687

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