Wilhelm Lenz (physicist)

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Wilhelm Lenz (born February 8, 1888 in Frankfurt am Main , † April 30, 1957 in Hamburg ) was a German physicist and taught at the University of Hamburg .

Life

After attending secondary school, Wilhelm Lenz studied physics and mathematics at the Universities of Göttingen (1906-08) and Munich (1908-11). He received his doctorate from Arnold Sommerfeld in Munich in 1911 ( on the electromagnetic alternating field of the coils and their alternating current resistance, self-induction and capacitance ) and was then his assistant until 1920. During the First World War he served as a radio operator at the front in northern France. The reputation as ao. Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Rostock 1920 followed a year later the full professorship at the new University of Hamburg until 1956. Together with Otto Stern , Lenz built a center for atomic physics in Hamburg in close scientific contact with Munich (Sommerfeld), Göttingen ( Max Born and James Franck ) and Copenhagen ( Niels Bohr ). His assistants were Wolfgang Pauli in 1922 , later Walter Gordon (1927), Pascual Jordan (1927) and Albrecht Unsöld (1930). He was succeeded by Harry Lehmann (1956).

In November 1933 Lenz signed the professors' declaration of Adolf Hitler at German universities and colleges .

During his studies he became a member of the Landsmannschaft Cimbria Göttingen .

His doctoral students include Johannes Hans Daniel Jensen , Ernst Ising , Hans-Jürgen Borchers and Lucie Mensing .

Services

In 1920 he introduced folding processes to explain the paramagnetic properties of solid bodies . Considerations about the pressure broadening of the spectral lines occupied him in the context of quantum mechanics . He researched the balance between radiation and matter in Einstein's “static”, closed, matter- filled cosmological model (1926), questions of gas degeneration (1929, 1938), the theory of ion lattices (1932) and water waves generated by ships (1947). He succeeded in solving the problem of the hydrogen atom in crossed fields by introducing the Runge-Lenz vector .

He is also a co-inventor of the Ising model , whose doctoral thesis (1924) on the model he inspired. He published about it in 1920.

literature

  • Helmut Rechenberg :  Lenz, Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 236 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Karin Reich : The first professor of theoretical physics in Hamburg: Wilhelm Lenz , in Karl-Heinz Schlote, Martina Schneider (Ed.) Mathematics meets physics: a contribution to their interaction in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century , Frankfurt am Main 2011, pp. 89-143
  • Wilhelm Lenz: Introductory Mathematics for Physicists , Wolfenbüttel Publishing House 1947
  • Helge Kragh , entry in Thomas Hockey (Ed.) The biographical encyclopedia of astronomers , Online

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mathematics Genealogy Project
  2. ^ Old gentlemen of the CC in Hamburg and Harburg. VACC Hamburg and VACC Harburg membership directory. Hamburg 1952, p. 36.
  3. ↑ Lenz The balance of matter and radiation in Einstein's closed world , Physikalische Zeitschrift, Volume 27, 1926, pp. 642-645. Analyzed in Kragh Preludes to dark energy: zero point energy and vacuum fluctuations , 2011
  4. ^ Lenz On the course of motion and the quantum states of the disturbed Kepler movement , Zeitschrift für Physik A 24 (1924) 197-207
  5. ^ Lenz contributions to the understanding of the magnetic properties in solid bodies , Physikalische Zeitschrift, Volume 21, 1920, pp. 613–615
personal data
SURNAME Lenz, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH February 8, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH April 30, 1957
Place of death Hamburg