Wilhelm Anderson
Wilhelm Robert Karl Anderson (born October 28, 1880 in Minsk , Minsk Gouvernement , † March 26, 1940 in Meseritz ) was a German-Baltic astrophysicist who mainly dealt with the physical structure of stars .
Life
Wilhelm Anderson was born in Minsk into a family of German descent (his brothers were the statistician Oskar Anderson and the folklorist Walter Anderson ), and spent his youth in Kazan , where his father Nikolai Anderson was a professor of Finno-Ugric languages . Between 1910 and 1920 he worked as a physics teacher in Samara and Minsk. In 1920 he and his brother Walter Anderson moved to Tartu ( Estonia ). At the University of TartuHe obtained his master's degree in 1923 and his doctorate in 1927. In 1934 he applied for admission to the habilitation on the subject of "Is there an upper limit for the density of matter and energy?" And was hired as a lecturer in Tartu in 1936 after successfully completing the procedure.
Between 1937 and 1939 Anderson fell ill with a nervous condition that led to the inability to work. In October 1939, like many Baltic Germans , he was resettled to Germany , where he died in March 1940 in the Obrawalde sanatorium near Meseritz . Suspicions have been raised that Anderson was a victim of the Nazi "euthanasia" program .
One of the most important works of Anderson dealt with the calculation of the upper mass limit of white dwarfs (1929, Tartu ), which later became known as the Chandrasekhar limit .
Works (selection)
- About the possibility of existence of cosmic dust in the solar corona. In: Journal of Physics . No. 28, Berlin, 1924.
- About the boundary density of matter and energy. In: Zeitschrift für Physik 56, 1929, pp. 851-856, doi : 10.1007 / BF01340146 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Piret Kuusk, Indrek Martinson: Tartu astrofüüsik Wilhelm Anderson . In: Akadeemia . 2, 1997, pp. 358-375.
- ↑ a b Heino Eelsalu: William Anderson vs. Albert Einstein . In: Akadeemia . 9, 1997, pp. 1975-1977.
- ↑ additional note. In: Acta et commentationes Universitatis Tartuensis (Dorpatensis). A, Mathematica, Physica, Medica. XXXIII , Tartu, 1939, p. 237.
- ^ Eric Blackman: Giants of physics found white-dwarf mass limits . In: Nature . 440, March 2006, p. 148.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Anderson, Wilhelm |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Anderson, Wilhelm Robert Karl |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Astronomer and astrophysicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 28, 1880 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Minsk , Minsk Governorate |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 26, 1940 |
| Place of death | Meseritz |