Wolfgang Kroll

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Kroll teaching in Taipei
First page of Kroll's dissertation
Language lessons at the Imperial University of Taihoku (ca.1943)
The Physics Building (now Taiwan National University) built in 1931

Wolfgang Kroll (born March 21, 1906 in Greifswald ; † February 28, 1992 in Taipei ) was a German physicist who emigrated to East Asia after the NSDAP came to power, taught in Japan and finally in Taiwan.

Life

Kroll's father, Wilhelm Kroll , was a classical philologist who worked as a professor at the Universities of Greifswald (1899–1906), Münster (1906–1913) and Breslau (1913–1935). His son Wolfgang began studying physics with Fritz Reiche at the University of Breslau and received his doctorate in 1930 with a dissertation on dispersion phenomena in the one-electron problem. The work built on the then highly topical research by Werner Heisenberg on dispersion (1925) and the famous equation by Paul Dirac (1928). Then Kroll went to Heisenberg, who had made Leipzig a center of theoretical physics since 1927 together with the likewise renowned Friedrich Hund . Together with Ramesh Majumdar, Umeda Kai, Ariyama Kanetaka, Șerban Țițeica , Heimo Dolch and Alfred Recknagel , Kroll belonged to the circle around Heisenberg who dedicated a congratulation in verse to the honored master on the Nobel Prize.

With the seizure of power of the NSDAP the situation of Jewish scientists before long was unbearable. After the “Reich Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” was passed (April 7, 1933), unpleasant professors, private lecturers and assistants, especially those of Jewish origin, had to submit their application for emeritus status, others were dismissed. Between 1933 and 1935 a total of 68 people left the university, including Kroll's academic teacher Reiche.

Kroll, who was critical of this policy and the regime, remained at Heisenberg's institute until 1936. After the German-Japanese Anti-Comintern Pact concluded that year, efforts to establish closer cultural and scientific exchange were also intensified. Even before the “cultural agreement” was concluded (November 25, 1938), an exchange program began between the quantum physicists at the University of Leipzig and the “Physikalisch-Chemischen Institut” (RIKEN) founded in Tokyo in 1917. Its director, the physicist Nishina Yoshio , recommended his student and later Nobel Prize winner Tomonaga Shinichirō . Heisenberg, in turn, suggested Kroll, who was friends with Ariyama Kanetaka. The "Academic Exchange Service" (AAD, newly founded as DAAD in 1950), which was founded in 1925 and has been harmonized since 1933, rejected Kroll as a representative of German science because of his comments critical of the regime.

Kroll realized that he would have no future in Germany. In addition to his political views, the fact that he had a Jewish grandfather may also play a role. He asked Heisenberg, who was on good terms with a number of Japanese physicists, to find a job in Japan. However, the institutions Heisenberg addressed shied away from being hired because of their previous rejection by the AAD. Eventually he was given a small position with one of his Leipzig companions, Professor Umeda Kai at the Imperial University of Hokkaidō (now Hokkaidō University ). Kroll left in great haste. Even before the official invitation from Japan reached Leipzig, he was already on his way to the Far East. Other young physicists such as Arnold Siegert also left Leipzig in the same year.

Sapporo

Kroll arrived in Sapporo in May 1937 . He received 50 yen a month from Umeda's seminar. In addition, there was about the same amount for German lessons at a "higher commercial college" in nearby Otaru (today Otaru commercial college ) and now and then a fee for the correction of German-language scientific manuscripts. In the same year he published a paper on the theory of the pressure dependence of conductivity and thermal power of monovalent metals. New attempts by the Japanese side to help him get a position at the Physikalisch-Chemisches Institut RIKEN for the following year were again blocked in Berlin.

In the second year Umeda increased his wages to 100 yen a month, in the third to 120 yen, with 20 yen being used for correction work. In 1939 he was paid 120 yen at the Otaru Business School for his language lessons. In April 1941 Kroll received a letter from Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker in which Weizsäcker invited him and his Japanese colleagues to contribute articles for a special issue of the Zeitschrift für Physik on Heisenberg's 40th birthday.

In the same year, Kroll left Sapporo, located in the far north of Japan, for unexplained reasons, and moved to subtropical Taiwan , which had been under Japanese rule since 1895.

Taipei

In Taipei , he made his way through teaching German to medical students at the Imperial University of Taihoku, founded in 1928 . In October 1945, just a few months after the surrender of Japan, the island of the Republic of China and thus the Kuomintang under General Chiang Kai-shek was subordinated. After the establishment of a provincial administration for the now Chinese province of Taiwan, the Imperial University of Taihoku was transferred to the National University of Taiwan . In 1946 a physics department was set up there, and Kroll was offered a permanent faculty position. Until 1970 he was the only physics professor with a PhD.

Kroll made no effort to learn Chinese, but had acquired a good command of Japanese over the years, which is why his circle of friends was limited to colleagues who spoke Japanese. After 1946, the students who grew up during the colonial period were very familiar with the Japanese language. This was followed by a phase in which Japanese disappeared, but English skills were still poor. Since the 1960s, Chinese physicists have been returning to America after studying, affordable textbooks in English have also appeared, and students' language skills have improved considerably.

In 1963 the "Chinese Journal of Physics" was founded, in which Kroll published a series of papers that made a great impression on his colleagues and students, but did not attract much international attention. His last publication appeared in 1973. Three years later, after thirty years in the service of his university, he retired.

After that, Kroll led a modest life. When he became seriously ill around 1990 and the rising cost of living was draining his financial reserves, donations were received from former students now living all over the world. Five years after his death, in August 1997, a symposium was organized to commemorate Kroll. He had made lasting merits in building the academic foundations of physics in Taiwan during the difficult early post-war period.

Kroll's Japanese-style house, in which he had lived for half a century, became the property of the university after his death in 1992 and is now used as a gallery and café.

Works

  • Contributions to the quantum mechanics of dispersion and magnetorotation in Dirac's theory of the electron. In: Journal of Physics. 66 (1/2), 1930, pp. 69-108.
  • On the theory of the pressure dependence of conductivity and thermal force of monovalent metals. In: Journal of the Faculty of Science. Hokkaido Imperial University, Ser. 2, Physics 1 (10), 1937, pp. 289-293 ( digitized version ).
  • with Tomiyuki Toya, Kwai Umeda: For the heat conduction of monovalent metals. In: Scientific Papers of the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research. 39, 1941, pp. 41-43.
  • Electronic Contribution to the Specific Heat of Metals in a Magnetic Field. In: Chinese Journal of Physics. 1, No. 1, 1963, pp. 21-23.
  • with Kai-Yuan Chung: The van Alphan-de Haas Effect for Bound Electrons. In: Chinese Journal of Physics. 1, No. 2, 1963, pp. 49-58.
  • The Iris-Loaded Wave Guide as a Boundary Value problem. In: Chinese Journal of Physics. 2, No. 2, 1964, pp. 63-67.
  • The Iris-Loaded Wave Guide as a Boundary Value Problem II. In: Chinese Journal of Physics. 3, No. 1, 1965, pp. 10-15.
  • The Iris-Loaded Wave Guide as a Boundary Value Problem III. In: Chinese Journal of Physics. 3, No. 2, 1965, pp. 98-102.
  • Supplement to the Iris-Loaded Wave Guide as a Boundary Value Problem III. In: Chinese Journal of Physics. 4, No. 1, 1966, pp. 32-34.
  • Series-Expansions for Functions Satisfying Some Integral-Equations. In: Chinese Journal of Physics. 5, No. 2, 1967, pp. 86-99.
  • Solution of A Dual Integral Equation. In: Chinese Journal of Physics. 11, No. 1, 1973, pp. 49-56.

literature

  • Jong-Ping Hsu: Professor Wolfgang Kroll (1906-1992). In: JP Hsu, G. Leung (Eds.): Jing Shin Physics Symposium in Memory of Professor Wolfgang Kroll Symposium. University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Singapore 1997, ISBN 981-4529-80-X , pp. 13-22.
  • Konrad Krause: Alma mater Lipsiensis - History of the University of Leipzig from 1409 to the present. Leipzig University Press, 2003.
  • Ryu Sasaki: Short Stay in Japan: Glimpse of Wolfgang Kroll's Life between 1937-42. In: The Universe. 3, No. 3, 2015, pp. 5-8.

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Kai wrote his name as Kwai, which represents an older pronunciation. He taught physics at the Imperial University of Hokkaidō.
  2. ↑ On his return Ariyama taught at Nagoya Imperial University.
  3. ↑ I lost my head at Heisenberg's, / When in the quantum dark night / I was sunk up to my ears. / I almost killed myself. / A quantum of light came to me / And made everything clear to me. / I heard the news: / You have now received the Nobel Prize. (Cafe Felsche, November 10, 1933)
  4. ↑ Krause (2003), pp. 285-287
  5. ↑ RIKEN is the short form of Rikagaku Kenkyūsho ( Japanese 理 化学 研究所 ), literally Physico-Chemical Institute , which is still used today . It was founded on the proposal of the chemist and businessman Takamine Jōkichi by the entrepreneur Shibusawa Eiichi and other representatives from research and industry based on the model of the German Kaiser Wilhelm Institute .
  6. ↑ Tomonaga then conducted research from 1937 to 1939 in Heisenberg's institute.
  7. ^ Ryu Sasaki: Short Stay in Japan: Glimpse of Wolfgang Kroll's Life between 1937-42. 2015, pp. 5–6.
  8. ↑ Siegert was one of the last Jewish students who was still able to do his doctorate with Felix Bloch . He emigrated to the USA in 1936.
  9. ^ Ryu Sasaki: Short Stay in Japan: Glimpse of Wolfgang Kroll's Life between 1937-42. 2015, pp. 6-7.
  10. ↑ a b Jong-Ping Hsu: Professor Wolfgang Kroll (1906-1992). 1997, p. 16.
  11. ↑ The early editions of the Chinese Journal of Physics are available in digital form .
  12. ^ Jong-Ping Hsu: Professor Wolfgang Kroll (1906–1992). 1997, p. 13.
personal data
SURNAME Kroll, Wolfgang
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 沃爾夫岡 · 克洛爾 (Chinese name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Greifswald
DATE OF DEATH February 28, 1992
Place of death Taipei