Wolfgang Yourgrau

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Wolfgang Yourgrau (born November 14, 1908 in Kattowitz , German Reich ; died July 18, 1979 in Denver , Colorado ) was a German-American social psychologist, physicist and journalist.

Life

Wolfgang Yourgrau was born into a liberal Jewish family. The parents divorced when he was one year old and the mother worked as a traveler . At the age of six she sent him to Berlin , where he grew up first with his grandparents and then with an uncle in Berlin-Grunewald . In 1925 he graduated from the Werner Siemens Realgymnasium in Berlin-Schöneberg .

He studied chemistry , physics , philosophy and experimental psychology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin . On the recommendation of Albert Einstein , he received a grant from an American foundation. In 1932 he received his doctorate in physics, became a junior assistant to the director of the Psychological Institute, Wolfgang Köhler , and worked as an assistant director at the theater.

Politically, he was active in the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD). In April 1933 he was beaten up by the SA in his mother's shop during anti-Semitic riots . In the same year he fled to Poland, where he worked in an acting troupe. Expelled from Poland, he went to Riga , where he was also expelled. With the support of Robert Weltsch he emigrated to Palestine , where he and u. a. Boris Goldenberg and Jakob Moneta managed the local SAPD exile structures.

He worked in Tel Aviv as a lecturer and lecturer for the trade union confederation Histadrut . From 1942 to 1943 he edited the German-language weekly magazine Orient with Arnold Zweig . It represented positions critical of Zionism, became the target of militant Zionist organizations and had to be closed. From August 1944, Yourgrau worked for the newly opened British military channel Forces Broadcasting Service, Middle East (FBS) in Jerusalem and taught at the School of Higher Studies there.

In 1948 he moved to South Africa , where he was a lecturer at universities in Cape Town , Witwatersrand and Natal . In 1959 he was appointed professor of the history and philosophy of science at the University of Minnesota at Saint Paul . In 1963 he went to the University of Denver , doing research and writing on the theory of science , quantum physics and thermodynamics . In 1969 he became editor of the journal Foundations of Physics alongside Henry Margenau .

Yourgrau was married to an ophthalmologist from Berlin and had a daughter.

Awards

In 1970 Yourgrau was awarded the Albert Einstein Medal of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation.

Works

  • The Middle East: Gun at your feet! Matara, Tel Aviv 1939
  • Orient: independent weekly magazine. Time issues, culture, economy . Exile literature, Vol. 14–15, Gerstenberg, Hildesheim [u. a.] 1982, ISBN 3-8067-0828-2 (with Arnold Zweig)
  • History and Philosophy of Science Seminars . University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 1949
  • Variational Principles in Dynamics and Quantum Theory . Saunders, Philadelphia 1960 (with Stanley Mandelstam )
  • Treatise on Irreversible and Statistical Thermodynamics . Macmillan, New York 1966 (with Alwyn van der Merwe, Gough Raw)
  • Physics, Logic, and History . Plenum Press, New York 1970, ISBN 0-306-30360-4 (with Hermann Bondi, Allen duPont Breck)
  • Biology, History and Natural Philosophy: based on the second International Colloquium, held at the University of Denver . Plenum Press, New York 1972, ISBN 0-306-30573-9 (edited with Allen duPont Breck)
  • Cosmology, History and Theology . Plenum Press, New York [u. a.] 1977, ISBN 0-306-30940-8 (with Allen duPont Breck, Hannes Alfvén)
  • On general relativity: an analysis of the fundamentals of the theory of general relativity and gravitation . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1979 (with André Mercier, Hans-Jürgen Treder )
  • Perspectives in Quantum Theory . Dover Publications, New York 1980, ISBN 0-486-63778-6 (with Alwyn van der Merwe, Alfred Landré)

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Yourgrau, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American social psychologist, physicist, and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH November 14, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Katowice
DATE OF DEATH July 18, 1979
Place of death Denver , Colorado