Walter Franz (physicist)

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Walter Franz (born April 8, 1911 in Munich , † February 16, 1992 in Münster ) was a German physicist.

Professional background

Franz was in 1932 at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich with Sommerfeld with a thesis on the Compton scattering on the bound electron doctorate . He completed his habilitation at the University of Königsberg and in 1939 received a diet lecturer at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster before he was appointed adjunct professor at the same location in 1949. In 1959 Walter Franz accepted the chair for theoretical physics at the University of Hamburg . The Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität was able to win him back to the chair for theoretical physics in Münster in 1962 as the successor to Sommerfeld's student Adolf Kratzer .

Walter Franz had close ties to British and US universities. This also led to visiting professorships and research stays at the University of Birmingham (1947/48) and the University of Delaware (1967/68), among others . He turned down an offer to stay permanently in the USA because his wife preferred to live in Europe.

research

In his scientific research Franz dealt with questions about creeping waves in diffraction theory , the multipole radiation of atomic nuclei and the quantum theory of solids. His work, known as the Franz Keldysh Effect , on changing the fundamental absorption of a semiconductor in the presence of an electric field , has become particularly well known .

Franz was probably the first to predict the Aharonov-Bohm effect as early as 1939 in a congress lecture in Danzig in 1939 .

Family and personal life

His connection to the Steinheil family played a major role in his scientific interests and his career choice. The Steinheils ran a company for optical devices, CA Steinheil & Sons , founded in Munich in 1855 , whose technical director was Walter Franz's father. After his mother's accidental death, one of the owner's daughters, qualified engineer Elsbeth Steinheil (1893–1955), became his stepmother. Her sisters had doctorates in physics and chemistry - a rarity for women before the First World War .

Fonts

  • Walter Franz: Theory of the diffraction of electromagnetic waves , Berlin 1957.
  • Max Lagally, Walter Franz: Lectures on vector calculation , Leipzig 1959.
  • Adolf Kratzer, Walter Franz: Transcendent Functions , Leipzig 1960.
  • Walter Franz: Quantum Theory , Berlin 1971.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ BJ Hiley (2013): The Early History of the Aharonov-Bohm Effect. arxiv : 1304.4736v1 .
  2. ↑ See: Margot Fuchs: Like fathers like daughters: Women's studies at the Technical University of Munich 1899–1970. Central Institute for the History of Technology at the Technical University of Munich, 1994. There, details on the Steinheil daughters. See also Süddeutsche Zeitung of April 26, 1994.
personal data
SURNAME Franz, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 8, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH February 16, 1992
Place of death Muenster