Wolfgang Weidlich (physicist)

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Wolfgang Weidlich (born April 14, 1931 in Dresden ; † September 21, 2015 in Stuttgart ) was a German theoretical physicist and a pioneer in sociophysics .

Weidlich attended the Kreuz-Gymnasium in Dresden (Abitur 1949) and was a member of the Kreuzchor . He then studied physics and mathematics at the TU Berlin and the FU Berlin with a diploma in 1955 and a doctorate with Günther Ludwig in 1957. He then worked as an assistant at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the FU Berlin and in Erlangen and completed his habilitation in 1963 at the FU Berlin on relativistic quantum field theory. In 1963 he became a lecturer and in 1966 a full professor of theoretical physics at the University of Stuttgart. He retired in 1999, but continued to give lectures (for example, from 2002 to 2015, the lecture Physics for humanities and social scientists). He was director of the II. Institute for Theoretical Physics in Stuttgart and from 1979 to 1981 prorector for teaching at the university. He was dean of the physics department three times.

At the end of the 1960s, Weidlich dealt with the physics of lasers as quantum-mechanical non-equilibrium systems, something which Hermann Haken also dealt with around the same time in Stuttgart, which became a center of synergetics . At that time he also dealt with the quantum mechanical measurement process, partly with his doctoral student Fritz Haake , and with nuclear reactions. Weidlich applied the methods used in the physics of non-equilibrium systems and statistical physics to sociology as early as 1971 and then systematically expanded them, so that he became one of the main representatives of sociophysics.

In 1985 he received an honorary doctorate from Umeå University in Sweden.

Weidlich died without an heir.

Fonts

  • Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics , Wiesbaden, Academic Publishing Institute 1976
  • with G. Haag: Concepts and Models of Quantitative Sociology , Springer Verlag 1983
  • Physics and Social Science - the approach of Synergetics , Physics Reports, Volume 204, 1991, pp. 1-163
  • Sociodynamics - a systematic approach to mathematical modeling in the social sciences , Gordon and Breach 2000, Taylor and Francis 2002, Reprint Dover 2006 (also translated into Russian and Japanese)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Weidlich: The field-theoretical formulation of the non-relativistic multi-channel scattering theory. In: Journal of Nature Research A . 18, 1963, pp. 1266–1276 ( PDF , free full text).
  2. ↑ Weidlich, H. Risken, Hermann Haken Quantum mechanical solutions of the laser master equation , part 1-3, Zeitschrift für Physik, Volume 201, 1967, pp 396-410, Volume 204, 1967, pp 223-239, volume 206, 1967, pp. 355-368, Weidlich, Haake Master Equation for the Statistical Operator in a Laser , Zeitschrift für Physik, Volume 185, 1965, pp. 203-221, Weidlich, Haake Coherence properties of the statistical operator in a laser model , Zeitschrift für Physik, Volume 185, 1965, pp. 30–47
  3. ↑ Weidlich Problems of the quantum theory of measurement , Zeitschrift für Physik, Volume 205, 1967, pp. 199-220
  4. ↑ Weidlich, Haake A Model for the Measuring Process in Quantum Theory , Zeitschrift für Physik, Volume 213, 1968, pp. 451-465
  5. ↑ Federal Gazette
personal data
SURNAME Weidlich, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 14, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH September 21, 2015
Place of death Stuttgart