Walter Grotrian

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Berlin physicist and chemist 1920. Standing from left to right: Walter Grotrian, Wilhelm Westphal , Otto von Baeyer , Peter Pringsheim , Gustav Hertz . Sitting from left to right: Hertha Sponer , Albert Einstein , Ingrid and James Franck , Lise Meitner , Fritz Haber , Otto Hahn .

Walter Robert Wilhelm Grotrian (born April 21, 1890 in Aachen , † March 3, 1954 in Potsdam ) was a German astronomer and astrophysicist .

Life

Grotrian was first a private lecturer at the University of Potsdam , where he completed his habilitation in 1921. In 1922 he was appointed as an observer at the Potsdam Astrophysical Observatory (Einstein Institute) and from then on belonged to the University of Berlin . In 1941 in the Third Reich he became managing director of the German Physical Society . During the Second World War he served as a major in the Wehrmacht . He worked with Peter Wellmann (1913–1999), Johannes Plendl and Karl-Otto Kiepenheuer to create a European network of stations to record the variable radiation from the sun. The radio communications company led by him provided not only the personnel for the ionosphere stations but also the personnel for these stations.

In 1940 he was on an official assignment in this context (he was with the Air Force at the time) in occupied Norway to establish contacts with Norwegian physicists, in particular with the observatory in Tromsø (for the purpose of ionospheric observation, which the Germans ultimately carried out there independently), and he was also Svein Visited Rosseland in Oslo. This was later compared to Heisenberg's role in Copenhagen in 1941 with Niels Bohr and was a point of conflict in the correspondence with Lise Meitner , with whom he wanted to renew the old friendship after the war in 1947.

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Grotrian mainly dealt with spectroscopy and its application to explain astrophysical phenomena. His most important work is the "Graphical representation of the spectra of atoms and molecules with 1, 2 and 3 valence electrons", published in 1928, with which he established today's representation of term schemes as Grotrian diagrams . He made a second important discovery with the help of data he had gained on an expedition to Sumatra under Erwin Freundlich in 1929 , namely a correct physical explanation of the spectrum of the solar corona and thus an estimate of its temperature at over a million degrees Celsius. He also discovered clouds of dust as an explanation of the zodiacal light .

The moon crater Grotrian is named after him.

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  1. ↑ Dieter Hoffmann: "Between autonomy and adaptation: The German Physical Society in the Third Reich". Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Preprint 192 (2001) (pdf; 69 kB).
  2. ↑ Michael P.Seiler: Command matter "sun god". History of German solar research in the Third Reich and under Allied occupation . Harri Deutsch, Frankfurt 2006.
  3. ↑ Dieter Hoffmann in Michael Frayn Copenhagen (Michael Dörries ed.), Wallstein 2003
  4. ↑ Hoffmann and z. B. Philip Ball Serving the Empire. The struggle for the soul of physics under Hitler , Bodley Head 2013

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Grotrian, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grotrian, Walter Robert Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German astronomer and astrophysicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 21, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Aachen
DATE OF DEATH March 3, 1954
Place of death Potsdam