Walter Greiner

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Walter Greiner (born October 29, 1935 in Neuenbau near Sonneberg ; † October 5, 2016 ) was a German theoretical physicist who was internationally recognized as a theoretical nuclear physicist and pioneer of heavy ion physics. He became known to many students through his series of textbooks on theoretical physics.

biography

The son of a shoemaker moved from the Thuringian Forest to his grandparents in the west when he was eleven. His first attempt to do the Abitur failed in Frankfurt-Höchst . He then completed an apprenticeship as a locksmith at Hoechst AG in Frankfurt am Main and made up for his Abitur at the evening grammar school. He then studied physics in Frankfurt and Darmstadt until he graduated in 1960. After completing his doctorate in 1961 at the University of Freiburg with Hans Marschall with a thesis on nuclear polarization in μ-meson atoms , he was an assistant professor at the University of Maryland from 1962 to 1964 .

In 1965 he became a full professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main , whose director he was until 1995. His areas of work are nuclear physics , elementary particle physics (e.g. quantum electrodynamics in strong fields), heavy ion physics and atomic physics . His textbook series on theoretical physics is well known .

Greiner was visiting professor at Florida State University , the University of Virginia , the University of California, Berkeley , the University of Melbourne , Vanderbilt University and Yale University , among others . He was also a visiting scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory .

Greiner was the recipient of numerous scientific awards, eight honorary doctorates and several honorary professors . Many of his students hold chairs at home and abroad or work at renowned scientific institutes. Since the 1960s, he was significantly involved in establishing heavy ion research in Germany ( Society for Heavy Ion Research , GSI, Darmstadt). His predictions on the spontaneous vacuum decay in supercritical fields ( formation of positron-electron pairs ), for example with heavy ion collisions and with very heavy nuclei, and the possible formation of strange matter and other aspects of the quark-gluon plasma formed by heavy ion collisions are well known . Greiner also looked at the stability of heavy nuclei, exotic nuclei and cluster radioactivity.

He worked closely with experimenters and attached great importance to the experimental verifiability of his theoretical work.

In the last decade of his life he worked with Peter O. Hess on gravitational collapse, rejecting the existence of singularities in the real world, both in the Big Bang and within black holes. As an alternative to general relativity, both developed the pseudo-complex general relativity theory , which uses pseudo-complex numbers that form an algebra with zero divisors. According to Greiner, if the matter exceeds a critical density, there are anti-gravitational effects and thus deviations from the general theory of relativity. He was a proponent of the theory of a cyclical universe , according to which the Big Bang emerged from a previous collapse. Greiner predicted the existence of radiation within the Schwarzschild horizon at black holes and suggested investigating this possibility by observing with telescopes at the supermassive black hole in Sagittarius A * in our galaxy. Together with Hess and colleagues, he predicted various effects according to which the pseudo-complex general relativity theory differs from the predictions of general relativity in the observation of stars near the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. The precise observation of these stars (especially S2 ) is the subject of the observation program GRAVITY and deviations from the predictions of general relativity are a goal of the program (they should be observable as long as the black hole is not too active). These include that the companion stars have a lower velocity near the black hole than according to general relativity, that accretion disks shine brighter because particles come closer to the black hole than according to general relativity, and that the gravitational lensing effect is stronger, so that the environment should appear brighter than according to general relativity.

After his retirement in 2003, he founded the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) together with Wolf Singer in 2004 and held lectures and seminars on elementary particle physics.

His son Carsten Greiner is a professor of theoretical physics at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. Another son, Martin Greiner, is Professor of System Engineering / Sustainable Energy Systems at Aarhus University and is involved in wind energy research.

Greiner had around 150 doctoral students, around 50 of whom became professors. His doctoral students included Hartmuth Arenhövel , Dieter Drechsel (Mainz), Ulrich Mosel , Berndt Mueller , Michael Soffel, Horst Stöcker (founder of FAIR at GSI), Johann Rafelski , Gerhard Soff , Joachim Maruhn , ED Mshelia, Andreas Schäfer (Regensburg), Burkhard Fricke (Kassel), Paul-Gerhard Reinhard (Erlangen) and Joachim Reinhardt .

Awards

He has received multiple honorary doctorates ( Witwatersrand University , Beijing University, Tel Aviv University , Bucharest, Strasbourg, Nantes, Debrecen, Mexico City , JINR Dubna, Bogoliubov Institute Kiev, Saint Petersburg).

Books

  • Series of textbooks on theoretical physics:
    • Volume 1: Classical Mechanics. Volume 1: Kinematics and Dynamics of Point Particles. Harri Deutsch, 1974; 3rd edition, 1981; 8th edition, 2008 (with relativity theory)
    • Volume 2: Classical Mechanics. Volume 2: Particle systems, Lagrange-Hamiltonian dynamics, nonlinear phenomena. Harri Deutsch, 1974; 8th edition, 2008; English: Springer 2003
    • Volume 2a: with Horst Stöcker : hydrodynamics. Harri Deutsch, 1978; 2nd edition, 1984; 3rd edition, 1987
    • Volume 3: Classical Electrodynamics. Harri Deutsch, 1975; 3rd edition, 1982; 7th edition, 2008
    • Volume 3a: with Johann Rafelski : Special Theory of Relativity. Harri Deutsch, 1984; 2nd edition, 1989
    • Volume 4: Quantum Mechanics I - An Introduction. Harri Deutsch, 1975; 6th edition 2005; English: 1989: 3rd edition, Springer, 1994
    • Volume 4a: Quantum Theory - Special Chapters. Harri Deutsch, 1980; English: Springer, 2001
    • Volume 5: with Berndt Mueller: Quantum Mechanics II - Symmetries. Harri Deutsch, 1979; 4th edition, 2005; English: Springer, 1989; 3rd edition, 2001
    • Volume 6: Relativistic Quantum Mechanics - Wave Equations. Harri Deutsch, 1981; English: 3rd edition, Springer, 2000
    • Volume 7: with Joachim Reinhardt : Quantum Electrodynamics. Harri Deutsch, 1984; 2nd edition, 1995; English: Quantum Electrodynamics. 4th edition, Springer, 2009
    • Volume 7a: with Joachim Reinhardt: Field quantization. Harri Deutsch, 1993
    • Volume 8: with Berndt Mueller : gauge theory of weak interaction. 1986; English: Gauge theory of weak interactions. Springer, 3rd edition, 2000
    • Volume 9: with Horst Stöcker , Ludwig Neise: Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics. Harri Deutsch, 1984; 2nd edition, 1993
    • Volume 10: with Andreas Schäfer: Quantum Chromodynamics. Harri Deutsch, 1989, ISBN 3-87144-710-2
    • Volume 11: with Joachim Maruhn: Core Models. Harri Deutsch, 1995
    • English translations of most of the volumes have been published by Springer Verlag (editor D. Allan Bromley ).
  • with Judah Moshe Eisenberg: Nuclear Theory. 3 volumes, North Holland, 1970, 1972; 2nd edition, 1975, 1976; 3rd edition of Volume 1: 1987 (Volume 1: Collective and single particle phenomena , Volume 2: Excitation mechanisms of the nucleus , Volume 3: Microscopic theory of the nucleus )
  • with Berndt Müller, Johann Rafelski: Quantum Electrodynamics of strong fields - with an introduction to modern relativistic quantum mechanics. Springer 1985
  • Editor: Heavy elements and related new phenomena. 2 volumes, World Scientific, 1999

items

  • with Gerhard Soff: Renaissance of X-ray Spectroscopy in Heavy Ion Physics. In: Physical sheets. No. 8, 1974, pp. 345-355, online .
  • with Jürgen Hofmann: Physics of nuclear matter at high densities. In: Physical sheets. Volume 32, 1976, pp. 620-632, online .
  • with Joachim Reinhardt: Overweight quasimolecules. In: Physics in Our Time . Volume 7, No. 6, 1976, pp. 171-180, doi : 10.1002 / piuz.19760070606 .
  • with Heinrich Peitz: Is the vacuum really empty? In: Physics in Our Time. Volume 9, 1978, pp. 165-183.
  • with Jürgen Hofmann: High-energy physics with heavy ions. In: Physics in Our Time. Volume 13, 1982, pp. 111-122.
  • with Joachim Reinhardt: The nature of the vacuum, supercritical fields and giant cores. In: Physical sheets. Volume 41, 1985, pp. 38-43, 93-99, part 1 , part 2 .
  • with Aurel Sandulescu: New types of radioactive decay. In: Spectrum of Science . No. 5, 1990, pp. 62-71.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Family obituary . In: Frankfurter Rundschau. 20th October 2016
  2. ↑ Reiner Dreizler, Dirk Rischke, Horst Stöcker : In memory of Walter Greiner . In: Physics Journal . tape 16 , no. 4 , 2017, p. 49 .
  3. ^ Peter O. Hess, Walter Greiner: Pseudo-complex general relativity. Arxiv 2008
  4. ^ Peter O. Hess, Mirko Schäfer, Walter Greiner: Pseudo-Complex General Relativity. Springer 2016
  5. ↑ T. Schönenbach, G. Caspar, PO Hess, T. Boller, A. Müller, M. Schäfer, W. Greiner: Ray-tracing in pseudo-complex General Relativity. In: Monthly Notices Roy. Astron. Soc. Volume 442, 2014, pp. 121-130, Arxiv
  6. ↑ Hans Riebsamen: The view into the cosmos. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine. June 3, 2012
  7. ^ Greiner PhD students
personal data
SURNAME Greiner, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH New building
DATE OF DEATH 5th October 2016