Walter Glaser (physicist)

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Walter Glaser (born July 31, 1906 in Oberbaumgarten (Bohemia) , † February 3, 1960 in Vienna ) was an Austrian - Bohemian theoretical physicist and internationally recognized expert in the field of electron optics and electron microscopy .

Life

Walter Glaser studied mathematics and physics at the German Charles University in Prague and, after spending several semesters at the University of Vienna , obtained his doctorate in 1930 with a dissertation on the principle of correspondence and Schrödinger's wave function. He soon turned to the theory of electron optics and completed his habilitation in 1933 on the theory of the electron microscope.

From 1929 he was Philipp Frank's assistant at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the German Charles University and on October 1, 1938, he was to take over the professorship for physics. However, due to the Munich Agreement of September 30, 1938, the appointment decree that had already been signed by the President of the Czechoslovak Republic was no longer handed over to Glaser. In 1940, after Philipp Frank left, he became an associate professor and head of the Institute for Theoretical Physics. In addition, he was appointed head of the Physics Institute at the German Technical University in Prague . Finally, in 1944, Glaser was appointed full professor for theoretical physics at the University of Wroclaw and the Technical University of Wroclaw , but was no longer able to take up this position because of the sudden events of the war .

After the war, he and his family were excluded from the forced resettlement of the Sudeten Germans as an "indispensable specialist" by the Czechoslovak authorities , but on the night of Pentecost Sunday and Whit Monday 1946 he secretly crossed the green border to see relatives in Austria. The family he left behind was relocated to East Germany in the autumn of 1946, losing their entire fortune in the process, and was finally brought from Glaser to Austria via West Germany.

From 1948 to 1949 Glaser initially worked at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Vienna with the benefits of a research assistant. In 1949 he became associate professor and in 1953 full professor and head of the Institute for General Physics at the Vienna University of Technology . 1954–1956 he was chief physicist at Farrand Optical Co. in New York, USA. In 1956 he returned to the Technical University of Vienna as a full professor of theoretical physics and successor to Ludwig Flamm , but died a few years later at the beginning of 1960 of cancer.

meaning

Walter Glaser was a recognized specialist in electron optics . From 1937 he worked as a theorist with the later Nobel Prize winner Ernst Ruska for Siemens & Halske AG on the development of the first commercial electron microscope. As a quantum physicist, under the influence of Einstein, he tried to refute the indeterministic Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics .

Fonts

  • Fundamentals of electron optics , Springer-Verlag 1952.

literature

swell

  1. ^ L. Flamm, obituary for Walter Glaser in: Almanach for 1960, Austrian Academy of Sciences.
  2. ^ E. Ruska, obituary to Walter Glaser, Optik 17 (1960) 591-592
  3. ^ Ernst Ruska: Nobel Lecture: The Development of the Electron Microscope and of Electron Microscopy
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Kummer : Autobiography, in: Stephan Moskaliuk: Wolfgang Kummer , Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, ISBN 3-7001-2971-8
personal data
SURNAME Glaser, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian physicist
DATE OF BIRTH July 31, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Oberbaumgarten (Bohemia)
DATE OF DEATH 3rd February 1960
Place of death Vienna