Wang Foh-san

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Wang Foh-San (also Wang Fu-shan ; born 1907 or October 6, 1908 in Shanghai ; died on December 10, 1993 there ) was a Chinese physicist and university professor who studied with Werner Heisenberg in Leipzig and did his doctorate.

life and work

Wang came from a wealthy family and was well educated. First he studied at the Guanghua University in Shanghai, where a mathematics teacher returning from Germany encouraged him to study in Germany. Due to the global economic crisis and hyperinflation in Germany , the Chinese dollar was so strong that Wang was able to travel to Germany in 1929 with the support of his family. First he went to Göttingen to study physics with Max Born . However, he found that the Theoretical-Physical Institute under Werner Heisenberg in Leipzig was better suited to Wang's studies and therefore recommended him there. Wang studied there from 1929 to 1940 , with interruptions due to pulmonary tuberculosis . In the later years he also began teaching.

Jing Cheng Qu, who studied with Wang at Fudan University from 1980 to 1983, writes that Wang, 6 years his junior, treated Heisenberg like a brother in the family environment. At the Heisenberg wedding party, Wang gave the tea server because he came from China, the land of tea.

In 1939 Wang completed his doctoral research with Heisenberg and published his dissertation in 1940 with the title On the braking of very high-energy protons and neutrons through the emission of mesotrons. His work on the particles known today as mesons stands between Hideki Yukawa's theoretical prediction and naming of mesotrons in 1935 (Nobel Prize 1949) and Cecil Powell's discovery (together with others) of the first meson, the Pion in 1947 (Nobel Prize 1950). Wang's work supported Yukawa's theory experimentally, even if 7 years before the particle was detected, he overestimated the energy of the meson with 10 9 to 10 11 electron volts instead of 1.39 * 10 8 electron volts (for the pion) by a factor of 10 to 1,000.

In 1940, Wang left Germany and returned to China, where he first took the chair at the Physics Institute at Guanghua University and later the chair at the Physics Institute at Tongji University . After the Second World War , Wang was very concerned about the supplies for Heisenberg and his wife and therefore sent them food parcels from Shanghai. When China reorganized its university system in 1952, Wang received the chair of the Physics Institute at Fudan University . He taught there until his retirement in 1985. Even if he has not pursued his physical research since his return, he is ascribed a very large contribution to physics education in China. Even after the end of the Cultural Revolution in China in 1979, he continued to teach physics. In the 1980s, Wang was engaged in research into the history of physics with Heisenberg as the main topic.

Publications

  • Named collaboration on "§ 3. Numerical Evaluation" by: CF von Weizsäcker: On the theory of nuclear masses. In: Journal of Physics. 96: 431-458 (1935). [1]
  • About the expanded Thomas-Fermi method for atomic nuclei. In: Zeitschrift für Physik , Ed. 100, Springer Verlag, November 1936, pp. 734–741.
  • About the braking of very energetic protons and neutrons by emitting mesotrons. [Diss.], University of Braunschweig , 1940.
  • Studies in the History of Modern Physics. Commercial Press, Beijing 1987.
  • Some memories of my time as a student in Germany. In: Christian Kleint; Gerald Wiemers : Werner Heisenberg in Leipzig, 1927–1942. Akademie Verlag, 1993, p. 110 ff.

literature

  • Jing Cheng Qu: Chinese Physicists Educated in Germany and America: Their Scientific Contributions and Their Impact on China's Higher Education (1900-1949) Ohio State University, 1998, pp. 98ff

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chinese Physicists Educated in Germany and America: Their Scientific Contributions and Their Impact on China's Higher Education (1900-1949) Jing Cheng Qu, Ohio State University, 1998, p. 99
  2. ↑ Doctoral and habilitation reports supervised by Werner Heisenberg in Leipzig (1929-1943) ; Werner Heisenberg. An exhibition for the 100th birthday. Text archive. All exhibition texts at a glance. , accessed February 24, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Wang, Foh-san
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wang, Fu-shan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chinese physicist
DATE OF BIRTH 1907 or October 6, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Shanghai
DATE OF DEATH December 10, 1993
Place of death Shanghai