Walter Heitler

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Walter Heitler, 1937

Walter Heinrich Heitler (born January 2, 1904 in Karlsruhe , † November 15, 1981 in Zurich ) was a German physicist .

Walter Heitler studied theoretical physics from 1922 at the Technical University of Karlsruhe , the Humboldt University in Berlin and from 1924 at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . Arnold Sommerfeld was one of his teachers in Munich. In 1926 he received his doctorate under Karl Ferdinand Herzfeld in Munich . The dissertation was published under the title Two Contributions to the Theory of Concentrated Solutions in the Annals of Physics . From 1926 to 1927 he was a Rockefeller Foundation fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen with Niels Bohr and then with Erwin Schrödinger at the University of Zurich . Together with Fritz London in 1927 in Zurich, he presented a model for the covalent bond in the hydrogen molecule , which laid the basis for the valence structure theory of quantum chemistry . This work also influenced the young Linus Pauling , who at the time was working at Schrödinger as a Guggenheim scholar . The quantum mechanical description of chemical bonds became one of Heitler's main areas of research.

After the National Socialists came to power, Heitler, who was considered a Jew according to the Nazi criteria, emigrated to Great Britain in 1933. In Great Britain, Heitler initially worked as a research assistant at the University of Bristol with Nevill Francis Mott . In 1934 he was involved with Hans Bethe , who had also emigrated, in the development of the theory of braking of electrons ( bremsstrahlung , Bethe-Heitler formula ) by matter. In the 1930s he published works on the quantum theory of radiation and cosmic radiation. After France's military defeat in the western campaign in 1940, Heitler was interned on the Isle of Man for a few months as a supposed "enemy alien" .

In 1941 he became a professor at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies . The position had been arranged for him by Erwin Schrödinger, who meanwhile worked there. In 1949 he was appointed professor at the University of Zurich .

Heitler was accepted as a member (" Fellow ") in the Royal Society in 1948 . In 1968 he was awarded the Max Planck Medal of the German Physical Society , and in the same year he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . In 1977 he received the Humboldt Society's Gold Medal .

Since 1960 he has increasingly worked on philosophical and ethical problems in scientific research. In his publications he tried to use examples from mathematics, physics, biology and psychology to make the sensual world of experience transparent for the supersensible, spiritual or transcendent world. In particular, in his work The Nature and the Divine , he addressed a broad readership. In his Christian conviction, it was a central concern of his to uncover relationships between the physical world of experience and the metaphysical world of revelation using texts from the Old and New Testament.

Fonts

  • The quantum theory of radiation . Oxford University Press, London 1949.
  • Elementary wave mechanics. With applications to quantum chemistry . 2nd Edition. Vieweg, Braunschweig 1961.
  • Man and scientific knowledge . Vieweg, Braunschweig 1970, ISBN 3-528-07116-8 .
  • Forays into natural philosophy . Vieweg, Braunschweig 1970, ISBN 3-528-08284-4 .
  • Natural science is humanities . The scales, Zurich 1972.
  • Truth and Correctness in the Exact Sciences Steiner, Wiesbaden 1972.
  • The nature and the divine . Klett and Balmer, Zug 1974, ISBN 3-7206-9001-6 .
  • Proof of God? and other lectures . Klett and Balmer, Zug 1977, ISBN 3-264-90100-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Walter Heitler: Two contributions to the theory of concentrated solutions. Annalen der Physik, Volume 385, Issue 15, pp. 629-671 (1926), doi : 10.1002 / andp.19263851502
  2. ↑ entry on Heitler; Walter Heinrich (1904-1981) in the Archives of the Royal Society , London
personal data
SURNAME Heitler, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heitler, Walter Heinrich; Heitler, Walter H.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH January 2, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlsruhe
DATE OF DEATH November 15, 1981
Place of death Zurich