Wilhelm Macke

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Wilhelm Macke in Saxony in 1959

Wilhelm Macke (born September 14, 1920 in Hanover ; † February 20, 1994 in Linz ) was a German and Austrian theoretical physicist. He was Professor of Theoretical Physics at the TU Dresden and at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz on the Danube.

life and work

Macke completed his Abitur in Hanover in 1938 and then did labor and military service. From 1943 he studied physics in Leipzig, where he took his intermediate diploma and was Friedrich Hund's assistant . After the Second World War he continued his studies at the University of Göttingen , where he received his doctorate in 1949 under Werner Heisenberg . In 1951/52 he was an assistant there (Max Planck Institute for Physics). As a student, he was Max Planck's last personal scholarship holder . In 1953 he completed his habilitation at the TH Hannover (on the relativistic two-body problem of quantum mechanics), where he was a substitute professor for theoretical physics in 1950/51. From 1952 to 1954 he helped set up the Institute for Theoretical Physics in São Paulo .

In 1954 Macke became a professor at the TU Dresden , where he co-founded both the Institute for Theoretical Physics and in 1955 the Institute for General Nuclear Technology and the Faculty of Nuclear Technology, which he headed as dean (the department existed until 1962). In 1958 Macke married his student Friederike Seifert, who later became his assistant. From 1958 to 1963 he wrote a six-volume textbook on theoretical physics , the third edition of which was published in the 1960s. Four of these volumes deal with the basics of the entire theoretical physics using consistent nomenclature .

In 1963, at the age of 43, Macke had finished a life's work and wanted to throw himself into research, but after the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 there was no longer any possibility of traveling to congresses in western countries, although this was contractually given to him when he was appointed had promised. This fact and the emptiness that often arises after intensive work led to burnout ; Macke had to seek medical treatment. When he returned to the university cured and publicly expressed his opinion on the GDR government (e.g. in the lecture), the harassment began. For example, he had enabled two physics students (Frank Rieger, Georg Köhler), who had criticized SED cadres with other physics students in 1963, to graduate against official instructions (which first provided for "probation" in production). He has now been dismissed from one public office after another with friendly letters of thanks. When he had to share his position as director with two colleagues, the barrel broke. He had a doctor certify that he was unable to work and applied for retirement due to illness, which was granted.

The Macke couple then applied for an exit permit, as a friend had advised them to do. And in 1968, after two and a half years of waiting, she received a call: Passports and visas are ready for you, you have to leave the republic with all your movable belongings within six weeks! And of course they did - presumably the system was happy to get rid of an uncomfortable person. They drove to Hanover, where Macke received a kind of visiting professorship for theoretical physics at the Technical University.

Macke had founded a school of statistical physics in Dresden, which included Helmut Eschrig , Paul Ziesche and Gerd Röpke , among others . Other early representatives of statistical physics in the GDR were Klaus Fuchs , Macke's colleague at the TU Dresden, and Hans Falkenhagen in Rostock.

In 1969 Macke was appointed to the newly founded University of Social and Economic Sciences in Linz (later Johannes Kepler University Linz ), where he began to develop physics studies as the first professor of physics. His scientific work lay among other things in the field of many-body theory of electrons (but also in other areas such as quantum electrodynamics and nuclear physics), but his passion was the education of students; he was a gifted teacher (and a feared examiner). He conducted tests orally as individual tests without an audience at a small table in his office and often only dimmed his cigarette at the beginning of the test. His enthusiastic lectures were unforgettable to his listeners; some had the impression that he succeeded in deriving the Maxwell equations convincingly, although that is not really possible.

In his 6-volume textbook on theoretical physics, he managed to highlight a handful of key words and a few more in bold on every double page, so that when read as epitext, they result in a grammatically correct, summarizing memorandum. The title pages of the books are similarly designed with a bold core word. If at the beginning of the lecture he found a blackboard that had already been written on, he expected the student page to be deleted. In legible writing, with accentuated linguistic execution, he worked his way from the top left to the bottom right on the green sliding board, narrowly delimiting the described areas with a chalk line in order to make the next derivations. After 45 minutes twice (and a break), he left (in Linz in the 1970s) panels with extensive descriptions without much graphic overview.

Even when the commissioning of the Zwentendorf nuclear power plant became a public topic in 1978 , he quickly choked off a discussion that had been started by a representative at the beginning of a lecture for which he appeared a few minutes late. However, a little later his signature was emblazoned across Austria on billboards and newspaper advertisements as one of around 15 "scientists for (nuclear power)" to advertise a pro in the referendum in November.

At the University of Linz there is a Wilhelm Macke Foundation to support students and graduates of the university's physics. It was founded from Macke's estate and awards prizes and grants.

Honors

  • From 1958 to 1964 Macke was on the board of the Physical Society of the GDR.
  • In March 1991 a colloquium was held in his honor at the TU Dresden.

Fonts

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ His extraordinarily intensive way of studying describes a fellow student: Marie-Luise Exner: Letter to her fiancé. June 16, 1947, archived from the original on October 22, 2006 .
  2. ↑ Planck donated the proceeds of an evening lecture as a scholarship for gifted students, one of the two was Macke
  3. ↑ W. Macke: For relativistic two-body problem of quantum mechanics I . In: Journal Nature Research Part A . tape 8 , 1953, pp. 599–615 , bibcode : 1953ZNatA ... 8..599M . W. Macke: On the relativistic two-body problem of quantum mechanics II . In: Journal Nature Research Part A . tape
     8 , 1953, pp. 615 , bibcode : 1953ZNatA ... 8..615M .
  4. ^ History of physics at the TU Dresden. TU Dresden, June 1, 1994, archived from the original on April 22, 2001 .;
  5. ↑ a b c d e Interview with Friederike Brüggemann
  6. ^ S. Kobe Anti-party platform at the TU Dresden 1963 , pdf , lecture at a conference Politically motivated judgments and other forms of repression against students of the TH / TU Dresden in the GDR , TU Dresden November 30, 2009
  7. ↑ Memories of Macke
  8. ^ Co-editor of the German edition of the Landau / Lifschitz textbook classic of theoretical physics
  9. ↑ Werner Ebeling: Comments on the role of nonlinear dynamics and the theory of self-organization in the work of the physics class 1970-1989. (pdf) In: Leibniz Online 4/2007. 2007, archived from the original on February 3, 2014 .;
  10. ^ Wilhelm Macke Foundation. ITP JKU, accessed April 5, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Macke, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH September 14, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH February 20, 1994
Place of death Linz