Wilhelm Walcher

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Wilhelm Walcher (born July 7, 1910 in Kaufbeuren , Allgäu; † November 9, 2005 in Marburg an der Lahn) was a university professor of physics and, with his colleagues at the University of Marburg, author of the well-known textbook Praktikum der Physik , which has been published in many editions since 1966 appears.

Life

He studied at the Technical University of Munich and the Technical University of Charlottenburg and graduated in 1933 as a graduate engineer. Until 1937 he was a scientific assistant at the Technical University with Gustav Hertz , Wilhelm Westphal and Hans Geiger , among others , where he received his doctorate from Hans Kopfermann in 1937 with a thesis on a mass spectrograph for isotope separation of the rubidium isotopes (Dr.-Ing.) From 1937 to In 1942 he was assistant to Kopfermann at the University of Kiel. There he was able to do his habilitation in 1942 without becoming a member of the NSDAP . The habilitation thesis was originally rejected because of political unreliability , but because of Kopfermann's influence it was finally accepted. After Kopfermann left for Göttingen, who became director of the second physics institute there, he initially represented the vacant chair in Kiel, but then followed Kopfermann to Göttingen, where he was its senior assistant and lecturer from 1942 to 1947.

He turned down an offer at the University of Leipzig in 1946 and instead accepted a full professorship for experimental physics as the successor to Eduard Grüneisen at the University of Marburg. Here he immediately had to help rebuild the university after the dictatorship of National Socialism. He was elected dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences in 1949 and was its rector from 1952 to 1954. He was also director of the Physics Institute for many years from 1947 until the university reforms in the 1970s. In 1978 he retired.

Wilhelm Walcher dealt with atomic and nuclear physics (nuclear moments, hyperfine structure) on the basis of his physical-technical knowledge of electron and ion optics and the construction of mass spectrometers and isotope separators. This work could also be continued during the Second World War as part of the Uranium Association . In Marburg he continued to devote himself to the aforementioned areas and also to nuclear reactions at low energies, nuclear spectroscopy, optical pumping, the Mössbauer effect and surface physics.

Around 1980 Walcher “recycled” the electromagnet built for the work in the uranium association for the construction of the HELIOS separator for nuclear fission fragments at the TRIGA research reactor in Mainz .

He devoted particular energy to the training of physics beginners and teachers in a well-known experimental physics lecture and the beginner and advanced internship (see the quoted book on beginners internship). This lecture was in the tradition of Robert Wichard Pohl , which can be traced back to Georg Christoph Lichtenberg .

From 1959 to 1961 he was the chairman of the then Association of German Physical Societies and played a key role in the successful establishment of the DPG in 1963 ; the old Physical Society was dissolved by the Allies after the Second World War. Walcher was instrumental in founding DESY and the GSI . From 1961 to 1967 he was also Vice President of the German Research Foundation . In 1975 he received the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany . From 1962 to 1991 he was co-editor of the Annalen der Physik in Leipzig. In 1976 he received an honorary doctorate from the Ruhr University in Bochum . In 1989 he became an honorary member of the DPG.

Walcher was also very committed to society, in particular he was one of the Göttingen eighteen who opposed the planned nuclear armament of the Bundeswehr in 1957 .

He is the father of the physicist Thomas Walcher . His doctoral students include Peter Brix and Detlef Kamke .

Fonts

  • Practical course in physics 9th edition. Vieweg / Teubner, 9th edition 2006. ISBN 3-519-23038-0 (first 1966)
  • with Detlef Kamke : Physics for Doctors , Teubner 1994.
  • with Max Wutz, Hermann Adam: Handbuch der Vakuumtechnik , 6th edition, Vieweg 1997.
  • with Wolfgang Riezler (Ed.) Kerntechnik , Teubner 1958.
  • with J. Koch, RHVM Dawton and WL, Smith Electromagnetic Isotope Separators and Applications of Electromagnetically Enriched isotopes , North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam 1958.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Walcher: About a high intensity mass spectrograph and the separation of the rubidium isotopes. In: Zeitschrift für Physik , Volume 108, H. 5/6, 1938, p. 376.
  2. ^ A b Klaus Schlüpmann: Biography of Kopfermann
  3. ^ AK Mazumdar, H. Wagner, G. Kromer, W. Walcher, M. Brügger, E. Stender, N. Trautmann, T. Lund in: Nucl. Instr. and Meth. 174, 1980, p. 183.
  4. ↑ Peter Brix, honorary members of the DPG: Laudations for Heinz Maier-Leibnitz and Wilhelm Walcher, Physikalische Blätter, Volume 45, July 1989, online
  5. ↑ Text of the Göttingen Declaration 1957 at uni-goettingen.de

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Walcher, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH July 7, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Kaufbeuren , Allgäu
DATE OF DEATH November 9, 2005
Place of death Marburg