1.
Heidelberg
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Heidelberg is a college town situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. At the 2015 census, its population was 156,257, located about 78 km south of Frankfurt, Heidelberg is the fifth-largest city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. Heidelberg is part of the densely populated Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region, founded in 1386, Heidelberg University is Germanys oldest and one of Europes most reputable universities. A scientific hub in Germany, the city of Heidelberg is home to internationally renowned research facilities adjacent to its university. Heidelberg is in the Rhine Rift Valley, on the bank of the lower part of the Neckar in a steep valley in the Odenwald. It is bordered by the Königsstuhl and the Gaisberg mountains, the Neckar here flows in an east-west direction. On the right bank of the river, the Heiligenberg mountain rises to a height of 445 meters, the Neckar flows into the Rhine approximately 22 kilometres north-west in Mannheim. Villages incorporated during the 20th century stretch from the Neckar Valley along the Bergstraße, Heidelberg is on European walking route E1. Alongside the Philosophenweg on the side of the Old Town. There is a population of African rose-ringed parakeets, and a wild population of Siberian swan geese. Heidelberg is an authority within the Regierungsbezirk Karlsruhe. The Rhein-Neckar-Kreis rural district surrounds it and has its seat in the town, Heidelberg is a part of the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region, often referred to as the Rhein-Neckar Triangle. The Rhein-Neckar Triangle became a European metropolitan area in 2005, Heidelberg consists of 15 districts distributed in six sectors of the town. The new district will have approximately 5, 000–6,000 residents, Heidelberg has an oceanic climate, defined by the protected valley between the Pfälzerwald and the Odenwald. Year-round, the temperatures are determined by maritime air masses coming from the west. In contrast to the nearby Upper Rhine Plain, Heidelbergs position in the leads to more frequent easterly winds than average. The hillsides of the Odenwald favour clouding and precipitation, the warmest month is July, the coldest is January. Temperatures often rise beyond 30 °C in midsummer, according to the German Meteorological Service, Heidelberg was the warmest place in Germany in 2009
2.
Grand Duchy of Baden
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The Grand Duchy of Baden was a state in the southwest of Germany on the east bank of the Rhine. It existed between 1806 and 1918 and it came into existence in the 12th century as the Margraviate of Baden and subsequently split into different lines, which were unified in 1771. After World War II, the French military government in 1945 created the state of Baden out of the half of the former Baden. This portion of the former Baden was declared in its 1947 constitution to be the successor of the old Baden. The northern half of the old Baden was combined with northern Württemberg, becoming part of the American military zone, both Baden and Württemberg-Baden became states of West Germany upon its formation in 1949. In 1952 Baden merged with Württemberg-Baden and Württemberg-Hohenzollern to form Baden-Württemberg and this is the only merger of states that has taken place in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. The unofficial anthem of Baden is called Badnerlied and consists of four or five traditional verses, however, over the years, many more verses have been added – there are collections with up to 591 verses of the anthem. Baden came into existence in the 12th century as the Margraviate of Baden, in 1803 Baden was raised to Electoral dignity within the Holy Roman Empire. Upon the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, Baden became the much-enlarged Grand Duchy of Baden, in 1815 it joined the German Confederation. During the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states, Baden was a centre of revolutionist activities, in 1849, in the course of the Baden Revolution, it was the only German state that became a republic for a short while, under the leadership of Lorenzo Brentano. The revolution in Baden was suppressed mainly by Prussian troops, the Grand Duchy of Baden remained a sovereign country until it joined the German Empire in 1871. After the revolution of 1918, Baden became part of the Weimar Republic as the Republic of Baden, when the French Revolution threatened to overflow into the rest of Europe in 1792, Baden joined forces against France, and its countryside was devastated once more. In 1796, the margrave Charles Frederick, Grand Duke of Baden, was compelled to pay an indemnity, fortune, however, soon returned to his side. Changing sides in 1805, he fought for Napoleon, with the result that, by the peace of Pressburg in that year, he obtained the Breisgau and other territories at the expense of the Habsburgs. In 1806, he joined the Confederation of the Rhine, declared himself a prince, became a grand duke. The Baden contingent continued to assist France, and by the Peace of Vienna in 1809, Charles fought for his father-in-law until after the Battle of Leipzig in 1813, when he joined the Allies. In 1815 Baden became a member of the German Confederation established by the Act of 8 June, however, in the haste of winding up the Congress, the question of the succession to the grand duchy did not get settled, a matter that would soon become acute. A controversy between Bavaria and Baden ensued, which was decided in favour of the Höchberg claims by a treaty signed by Baden
3.
German Empire
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The German Empire was the historical German nation state that existed from the unification of Germany in 1871 to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918, when Germany became a federal republic. The German Empire consisted of 26 constituent territories, with most being ruled by royal families and this included four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. Although Prussia became one of kingdoms in the new realm, it contained most of its population and territory. Its influence also helped define modern German culture, after 1850, the states of Germany had rapidly become industrialized, with particular strengths in coal, iron, chemicals, and railways. In 1871, it had a population of 41 million people, and by 1913, a heavily rural collection of states in 1815, now united Germany became predominantly urban. During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire operated as an industrial, technological, Germany became a great power, boasting a rapidly growing rail network, the worlds strongest army, and a fast-growing industrial base. In less than a decade, its navy became second only to Britains Royal Navy, after the removal of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck by Wilhelm II, the Empire embarked on a bellicose new course that ultimately led to World War I. When the great crisis of 1914 arrived, the German Empire had two allies, Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy, however, left the once the First World War started in August 1914. In the First World War, German plans to capture Paris quickly in autumn 1914 failed, the Allied naval blockade caused severe shortages of food. Germany was repeatedly forced to send troops to bolster Austria and Turkey on other fronts, however, Germany had great success on the Eastern Front, it occupied large Eastern territories following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. German declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 was designed to strangle the British, it failed, but the declaration—along with the Zimmermann Telegram—did bring the United States into the war. Meanwhile, German civilians and soldiers had become war-weary and radicalised by the Russian Revolution and this failed, and by October the armies were in retreat, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, Bulgaria had surrendered and the German people had lost faith in their political system. The Empire collapsed in the November 1918 Revolution as the Emperor and all the ruling monarchs abdicated, and a republic took over. The German Confederation had been created by an act of the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815 as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, German nationalism rapidly shifted from its liberal and democratic character in 1848, called Pan-Germanism, to Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarcks pragmatic Realpolitik. He envisioned a conservative, Prussian-dominated Germany, the war resulted in the Confederation being partially replaced by a North German Confederation in 1867, comprising the 22 states north of the Main. The new constitution and the title Emperor came into effect on 1 January 1871, during the Siege of Paris on 18 January 1871, William accepted to be proclaimed Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. The second German Constitution was adopted by the Reichstag on 14 April 1871 and proclaimed by the Emperor on 16 April, the political system remained the same. The empire had a parliament called the Reichstag, which was elected by universal male suffrage, however, the original constituencies drawn in 1871 were never redrawn to reflect the growth of urban areas
4.
West Berlin
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West Berlin was an enclave which comprised the western part of the city of Berlin during the Cold War. It was formally controlled by the Western Allies and formed a de facto part of West Germany, and was entirely surrounded by the Soviet-controlled East Berlin and East Germany. West Berlin had great significance during the Cold War, as it was widely considered by westerners as an island of freedom. A wealthy city, West Berlin was noted for its liberal and cosmopolitan character. With about two million inhabitants, West Berlin had the biggest population of any city in Cold War Germany and it was 100 miles east of the Inner German border and only accessible by land from West Germany by narrow rail and highway corridors. It consisted of the American, British, and French occupation sectors established in 1945 and was de facto part of West Germany and it had a special and unique legal status because its administration was formally conducted by the Western Allies. East Berlin, de jure occupied and administered by the Soviet Union, was the de facto capital of East Germany, the Berlin Wall, built in 1961, physically divided West Berlin from its East German surroundings until it fell in 1989. The Potsdam Agreement established the framework for the occupation of Germany in the wake of World War II. The territory of Germany, as it existed in 1937, would be reduced by most of Eastern Germany thus creating the former territories of Germany. The remaining territory would be divided into four zones, each administered by one of the allied countries, according to the agreement, the occupation of Berlin would end only as a result of a quadripartite agreement. The Western Allies were guaranteed three air corridors to their sectors of Berlin, and the Soviets also informally allowed road, at first, this arrangement was intended to be only a temporary administrative structure, with all parties declaring that Germany and Berlin would soon be reunited. However, as the relations between the allies and the Soviet Union soured and the Cold War began, the joint administration of Germany. Soon, Soviet-occupied Berlin and western-occupied Berlin had separate city administrations, in 1948, the Soviets tried to force the Western Allies out of Berlin by imposing a land blockade on the western sectors—the Berlin Blockade. The West responded by using its air corridors for supplying their part of the city with food, in May 1949, the Soviets lifted the blockade, and West Berlin as a separate city with its own jurisdiction was maintained. Following the Berlin Blockade, normal contacts between East and West Berlin resumed, however, in cases this proved only temporary. In 1952, the East German government began sealing its borders, as a direct result the electrical grids were separated and phone lines were cut. However, the culmination of the schism did not occur until 1961 with the construction of the Berlin Wall. From the legal theory followed by the Western Allies, the occupation of most of Germany ended in 1949 with the declaration of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic
5.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
6.
Technical University of Berlin
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The Technische Universität Berlin, known as TU Berlin and unofficially as the Technical University of Berlin, is a research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in 1879 and became one of the most prestigious institutions in Europe. It has one of the highest proportions of students in Germany. It belongs to the Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education, the TU Berlin is home of two innovation centers designated by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. The university is known for its highly ranked engineering programmes, especially in engineering and engineering management. The university alumni and professor list include US National Academies members, the TH Charlottenburg was named after the borough of its location in Charlottenburg just outside Berlin. Beforehand, the college had been, however, for several decades under the auspices of the Frederick William University. After Charlottenburgs absorption into Greater Berlin in 1920 and Germany being turned into Weimar Republic, in 1927, the Department of Geodesy of the Agricultural College of Berlin was incorporated into the TH Berlin. The shell construction remained unfinished after the outbreak of World War II and after Beckers suicide in 1940, the north section of the main building of the university was destroyed during a bombing raid in November 1943. Due to the fighting at the end of the Second World War. Planning for the re-opening of the school began on June, 2nd 1945, once the acting rectorship led by Gustav Ludwig Hertz and Max Volmer was appointed. As both Hertz and Volmer remained in exile in the Soviet Union for some time to come, since 2009 the TU Berlin houses two Knowledge and Innovation Communities designated by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. The TU Berlin covers 604,000 m², distributed over various locations in Berlin, the main campus is located in the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. The seven schools of the university have some 33,933 students enrolled in 90 subjects, El Gouna campus, Technische Universität Berlin has established a satellite campus in Egypt to act as a scientific and academic field office. The nonprofit public-private partnership aims to offer services provided by Technische Universität Berlin at the campus in El Gouna on the Red Sea, in addition there are 2,651 student assistants and 126 trainees. International student mobility is applicable through ERASMUS programme or through Top Industrial Managers for Europe network, the new common main library of Technische Universität Berlin and of the Berlin University of the Arts was opened in 2004 and holds about 2.9 million volumes. The library building was sponsored partially by Volkswagen and is named officially University Library of the TU Berlin, a source of confusion to many, the letters above the main entrance only state Volkswagen Bibliothek – without any mentioning of the universities. Bruno Ahrends, architect Steffen Ahrends, architect Stancho Belkovski, Bulgarian architect, head of Higher Technical School in Sofia, wilhelm Cauer, mathematician, essential contributions to the design of filters
7.
Technical University of Munich
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The Technical University of Munich is a research university with campuses in Munich, Garching and Freising-Weihenstephan. It is a member of TU9, a society of the largest and most notable German institutes of technology. TUMs alumni include 13 Nobel laureates,18 Leibniz Prizewinners and 10 IEEE Fellow Members, timeline 1868 University founded by King Ludwig II. 1877 Awarded the designation Königlich Bayerische Technische Hochschule München,1901 Granted the right to award doctorates. 1902 Approval of the election of the Principal by the teaching staff,1930 Integration of the College of Agriculture and Brewing in Weihenstephan. 1949–1954, Reconstruction of the building of the Technische Universität by Robert Vorhoelzer after WWII. Construction of a new building and library. 1957 Given the status of a ‘public legal body’,1958 Research Reactor Munich, Garching officially assigned to the TH München. 1967 Establishment of a faculty of medicine 1970 Renamed to ‘Technische Universität München’,2004 Official opening of Forschungsreaktor München II, a leading neutron source, on March 2. Even to the present day, it is still the state university dedicated to technology. Numerous excellent TUM professors have secured their place in the history of technology, many important scientists, architects, the prerequisites for an academic training in engineering were created at the start of the 19th century when the advancement of technology on the basis of exact sciences commenced. There were also calls for a university for all studies in Bavaria. The polytechnic schools set up in Augsburg, Munich and Nuremberg, instead, an advanced engineering course was established at the Polytechnic School Munich in 1840, which was the forerunner of what was later to become the Technische Hochschule München. In 1868, King Ludwig II founded the newly structured Polytechnische Schule München and it was allowed to call itself Königlich Bayerische Technische Hochschule München as from the academic year 1877–78. The first Principal was the former Head of the Engineering Course, in the year of its foundation, the college took up residence in the new building in Arcisstrasse, which was designed by Gottfried v. Neureuther. In those days, more than 350 students were taught by 24 professors and 21 lecturers, the college was divided into five sections, I. Department VI. was added in 1872, with an average of about 2,600 to 2,800 students, the TH München ranked ahead of the TH Berlin as the largest German technical college for a while. The first female undergraduate matriculated in architecture in 1905, after the Bavarian government officially allowed women to study at a college in the German Reich
8.
Electron microscope
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An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of accelerated electrons as a source of illumination. Transmission electron microscopes use electrostatic and electromagnetic lenses to control the electron beam and these electron optical lenses are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope. Industrially, electron microscopes are used for quality control and failure analysis. Modern electron microscopes produce electron micrographs using specialized digital cameras and frame grabbers to capture the image, the first electromagnetic lens was developed in 1926 by Hans Busch. According to Dennis Gabor, the physicist Leó Szilárd tried in 1928 to convince Busch to build an electron microscope, two years later, in 1933, Ruska built an electron microscope that exceeded the resolution attainable with an optical microscope. Moreover, Reinhold Rudenberg, the director of Siemens-Schuckertwerke, obtained the patent for the electron microscope in May 1931. In 1932, Ernst Lubcke of Siemens & Halske built and obtained images from an electron microscope. Five years later, the firm financed the work of Ernst Ruska and Bodo von Borries, also in 1937, Manfred von Ardenne pioneered the scanning electron microscope. The first commercial electron microscope was produced in 1938 by Siemens, although contemporary transmission electron microscopes are capable of two million-power magnification, as scientific instruments, they remain based upon Ruska’s prototype. The original form of electron microscope, the electron microscope uses a high voltage electron beam to illuminate the specimen. The electron beam is produced by a gun, commonly fitted with a tungsten filament cathode as the electron source. When it emerges from the specimen, the electron beam carries information about the structure of the specimen that is magnified by the lens system of the microscope. The image detected by the camera may be displayed on a monitor or computer. The resolution of TEMs is limited primarily by spherical aberration, but a new generation of aberration correctors have been able to partially overcome spherical aberration to increase resolution. The ability to determine the positions of atoms within materials has made the HRTEM an important tool for nano-technologies research, transmission electron microscopes are often used in electron diffraction mode. The major disadvantage of the electron microscope is the need for extremely thin sections of the specimens. Biological specimens are required to be chemically fixed, dehydrated and embedded in a polymer resin to stabilize them sufficiently to allow ultrathin sectioning. Sections of biological specimens, organic polymers and similar materials may require treatment with heavy atom labels in order to achieve the required image contrast
9.
Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research
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The award frequently precedes a Nobel Prize in Medicine, almost 50% of the winners have gone on to win one. Crick, James D. Watson, James V. Neel, gallo 1983 Eric R. Kandel, Vernon B. Lewis, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard 1993 Günter Blobel 1994 Stanley B, doherty, Jack L. Strominger, Emil R. Unanue, Don C. Südhof 2014 Kazutoshi Mori, Peter Walter 2015 Stephen J. Elledge, Evelyn M. Witkin 2016 William Kaelin, Jr. Peter J. Ratcliffe, Gregg L. Semenza
10.
Nobel Prize in Physics
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The Nobel Prize in Physics is a yearly award given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for those who conferred the most outstanding contributions for mankind in the field of physics. The first Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to German/Dutch physicist Wilhelm Röntgen in recognition of the services he has rendered by the discovery of the remarkable rays. This award is administered by the Nobel Foundation and widely regarded as the most prestigious award that a scientist can receive in physics and it is presented in Stockholm at an annual ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Nobels death. Through 2016, a total of 203 individuals have been awarded the prize, only two women have won the Nobel Prize in Physics, Marie Curie in 1903, and Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963. Though Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last one was written a year before he died and was signed at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895. Nobel bequeathed 94% of his assets,31 million Swedish kronor, to establish. Due to the level of surrounding the will, it was not until April 26,1897 that it was approved by the Storting. The executors of his will were Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, the members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee who were to award the Peace Prize were appointed shortly after the will was approved. The prize-awarding organisations followed, the Karolinska Institutet on June 7, the Swedish Academy on June 9, the Nobel Foundation then reached an agreement on guidelines for how the Nobel Prize should be awarded. In 1900, the Nobel Foundations newly created statutes were promulgated by King Oscar II, according to Nobels will, The Royal Swedish Academy of sciences were to award the Prize in Physics. A maximum of three Nobel laureates and two different works may be selected for the Nobel Prize in Physics, compared with other Nobel Prizes, the nomination and selection process for the prize in Physics is long and rigorous. This is a key reason why it has grown in importance over the years to become the most important prize in Physics, the Nobel laureates are selected by the Nobel Committee for Physics, a Nobel Committee that consists of five members elected by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In the first stage begins in September, around 3,000 people – selected university professors, Nobel Laureates in Physics and Chemistry. The completed nomination forms arrive at the Nobel Committee no later than 31 January of the following year and these nominees are scrutinized and discussed by experts who narrow it to approximately fifteen names. The committee submits a report with recommendations on the candidates into the Academy. The Academy then makes the selection of the Laureates in Physics through a majority vote. The names of the nominees are never announced, and neither are they told that they have been considered for the prize. Nomination records are sealed for fifty years, while posthumous nominations are not permitted, awards can be made if the individual died in the months between the decision of the prize committee and the ceremony in December
11.
Physics
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Physics is the natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion and behavior through space and time, along with related concepts such as energy and force. One of the most fundamental disciplines, the main goal of physics is to understand how the universe behaves. Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines, perhaps the oldest through its inclusion of astronomy, Physics intersects with many interdisciplinary areas of research, such as biophysics and quantum chemistry, and the boundaries of physics are not rigidly defined. New ideas in physics often explain the mechanisms of other sciences while opening new avenues of research in areas such as mathematics. Physics also makes significant contributions through advances in new technologies that arise from theoretical breakthroughs, the United Nations named 2005 the World Year of Physics. Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences, the stars and planets were often a target of worship, believed to represent their gods. While the explanations for these phenomena were often unscientific and lacking in evidence, according to Asger Aaboe, the origins of Western astronomy can be found in Mesopotamia, and all Western efforts in the exact sciences are descended from late Babylonian astronomy. The most notable innovations were in the field of optics and vision, which came from the works of many scientists like Ibn Sahl, Al-Kindi, Ibn al-Haytham, Al-Farisi and Avicenna. The most notable work was The Book of Optics, written by Ibn Al-Haitham, in which he was not only the first to disprove the ancient Greek idea about vision, but also came up with a new theory. In the book, he was also the first to study the phenomenon of the pinhole camera, many later European scholars and fellow polymaths, from Robert Grosseteste and Leonardo da Vinci to René Descartes, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton, were in his debt. Indeed, the influence of Ibn al-Haythams Optics ranks alongside that of Newtons work of the same title, the translation of The Book of Optics had a huge impact on Europe. From it, later European scholars were able to build the devices as what Ibn al-Haytham did. From this, such important things as eyeglasses, magnifying glasses, telescopes, Physics became a separate science when early modern Europeans used experimental and quantitative methods to discover what are now considered to be the laws of physics. Newton also developed calculus, the study of change, which provided new mathematical methods for solving physical problems. The discovery of new laws in thermodynamics, chemistry, and electromagnetics resulted from greater research efforts during the Industrial Revolution as energy needs increased, however, inaccuracies in classical mechanics for very small objects and very high velocities led to the development of modern physics in the 20th century. Modern physics began in the early 20th century with the work of Max Planck in quantum theory, both of these theories came about due to inaccuracies in classical mechanics in certain situations. Quantum mechanics would come to be pioneered by Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, from this early work, and work in related fields, the Standard Model of particle physics was derived. Areas of mathematics in general are important to this field, such as the study of probabilities, in many ways, physics stems from ancient Greek philosophy
12.
Max Knoll
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Max Knoll was a German electrical engineer. Knoll was born in Wiesbaden and studied in Munich and at the Technical University of Berlin, in 1927 he became the leader of the electron research group there, where he and his co-worker, Ernst Ruska, invented the electron microscope in 1931. In April 1932, Knoll joined Telefunken in Berlin to do work in the field of television design. He was also a lecturer in Berlin. After World War II, Knoll joined the University of Munich as extraordinary professor and director of the Institute for Electromedicine and he moved to the USA in 1948, to work at the Department of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. Knoll, Max & Kügler, J. Nature 184, 1823-1824, subjective Light Pattern Spectroscopy in the Electroencephalic Range
13.
Microscope
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A microscope is an instrument used to see objects that are too small for the naked eye. The science of investigating small objects using such an instrument is called microscopy, microscopic means invisible to the eye unless aided by a microscope. There are many types of microscopes, the most common is the optical microscope, which uses light to image the sample. Other major types of microscopes are the microscope, the ultramicroscope. The earliest microscopes were single lens magnifying glasses with limited magnification which date at least as far back as the wide use of lenses in eyeglasses in the 13th century. Compound microscopes, which combine an objective lens with an eyepiece to view a real image, the actual inventor of the compound microscope is unknown although many claims have been made over the years. These include what may be a claim by the son of Zacharias Janssen that his father invented the microscope and telescope as early as 1590. Historians note the compound microscope did not appear in the Netherlands until the 1620s, giovanni Faber coined the name microscope for the compound microscope Galileo submitted to the Accademia dei Lincei in 1625. The first detailed account of the construction of living tissue based on the use of a microscope did not appear until 1644, in Giambattista Odiernas Locchio della mosca. It was not until the 1660s and 1670s that the microscope was used extensively for research in Italy, marcello Malpighi in Italy began the analysis of biological structures, beginning with the lungs. Robert Hookes Micrographia had an impact, largely because of its impressive illustrations. A significant contribution came from Antonie van Leeuwenhoek who achieved up to 300 times magnification using a single lens microscope. He sandwiched a very small glass ball lens between the holes in two metal plates riveted together, and with a needle attached to mount the specimen. Then, Van Leeuwenhoek re-discovered red blood cells and spermatozoa, on 9 October 1676, he reported the discovery of micro-organisms. The performance of light microscopy depends as much on how the sample is illuminated as on how it is observed, early instruments were limited until this principle was fully appreciated and developed, and until electric lamps were available as light sources. In 1893 August Köhler developed a key principle of sample illumination, Köhler illumination and this method of sample illumination produces even lighting and overcomes the limited contrast and resolution imposed by early techniques of sample illumination. In the early 20th century a significant alternative to light microscopy was developed, ernst Ruska started development of the first electron microscope in 1931 which was the transmission electron microscope. The transmission electron microscope works on the principle as an optical microscope but uses electrons in the place of light
14.
Electron
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The electron is a subatomic particle, symbol e− or β−, with a negative elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, the electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton. Quantum mechanical properties of the include a intrinsic angular momentum of a half-integer value, expressed in units of the reduced Planck constant. As it is a fermion, no two electrons can occupy the same state, in accordance with the Pauli exclusion principle. Like all elementary particles, electrons exhibit properties of particles and waves, they can collide with other particles and can be diffracted like light. Since an electron has charge, it has an electric field. Electromagnetic fields produced from other sources will affect the motion of an electron according to the Lorentz force law, electrons radiate or absorb energy in the form of photons when they are accelerated. Laboratory instruments are capable of trapping individual electrons as well as electron plasma by the use of electromagnetic fields, special telescopes can detect electron plasma in outer space. Electrons are involved in applications such as electronics, welding, cathode ray tubes, electron microscopes, radiation therapy, lasers, gaseous ionization detectors. Interactions involving electrons with other particles are of interest in fields such as chemistry. The Coulomb force interaction between the positive protons within atomic nuclei and the negative electrons without, allows the composition of the two known as atoms, ionization or differences in the proportions of negative electrons versus positive nuclei changes the binding energy of an atomic system. The exchange or sharing of the electrons between two or more atoms is the cause of chemical bonding. In 1838, British natural philosopher Richard Laming first hypothesized the concept of a quantity of electric charge to explain the chemical properties of atoms. Irish physicist George Johnstone Stoney named this charge electron in 1891, electrons can also participate in nuclear reactions, such as nucleosynthesis in stars, where they are known as beta particles. Electrons can be created through beta decay of isotopes and in high-energy collisions. The antiparticle of the electron is called the positron, it is identical to the electron except that it carries electrical, when an electron collides with a positron, both particles can be totally annihilated, producing gamma ray photons. The ancient Greeks noticed that amber attracted small objects when rubbed with fur, along with lightning, this phenomenon is one of humanitys earliest recorded experiences with electricity. In his 1600 treatise De Magnete, the English scientist William Gilbert coined the New Latin term electricus, both electric and electricity are derived from the Latin ēlectrum, which came from the Greek word for amber, ἤλεκτρον
15.
Siemens
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Siemens AG is a German conglomerate company headquartered in Berlin and Munich and the largest manufacturing and electronics company in Europe with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the company are Industry, Energy, Healthcare, and Infrastructure & Cities, the company is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. Siemens and its subsidiaries employ approximately 362,000 people worldwide, the von Siemens family remain the largest shareholder with a stake of 6. 9% percent. Siemens & Halske was founded by Werner von Siemens and Johann Georg Halske on 12 October 1847, based on the telegraph, their invention used a needle to point to the sequence of letters, instead of using Morse code. The company, then called Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske, opened its first workshop on 12 October, in 1848, the company built the first long-distance telegraph line in Europe,500 km from Berlin to Frankfurt am Main. In 1850, the younger brother, Carl Wilhelm Siemens, later Sir William Siemens. The London agency became an office in 1858. In the 1850s, the company was involved in building long distance telegraph networks in Russia, in 1855, a company branch headed by another brother, Carl Heinrich von Siemens, opened in St Petersburg, Russia. In 1867, Siemens completed the monumental Indo-European telegraph line, in 1867, Werner von Siemens described a dynamo without permanent magnets. A similar system was independently invented by Charles Wheatstone. In 1881, a Siemens AC Alternator driven by a watermill was used to power the worlds first electric lighting in the town of Godalming. The company continued to grow and diversified into electric trains and light bulbs, in 1890, the founder retired and left running the company to his brother Carl and sons Arnold and Wilhelm. In 1887, it opened its first office in Japan, Siemens & Halske was incorporated in 1897, and then merged parts of its activities with Schuckert & Co. Nuremberg in 1903 to become Siemens-Schuckert, in 1907, Siemens had 34,324 employees and was the seventh-largest company in the German empire by number of employees. In 1919, S & H and two companies jointly formed the Osram lightbulb company. During the 1920s and 1930s, S & H started to manufacture radios, television sets, in the 1920s, Siemens constructed the Ardnacrusha Hydro Power station on the River Shannon in the then Irish Free State, and it was a world first for its design. The company is remembered for its desire to raise the wages of its workers only to be overruled by the Cumann na nGaedheal government. Siemens exploited the forced labour of deported people in extermination camps, the company owned a plant in Auschwitz concentration camp
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Gerd Binnig
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Gerd Binnig is a German physicist, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986 for the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope. He was born in Frankfurt am Main and played in the ruins of the city during his childhood and his family lived partly in Frankfurt and partly in Offenbach am Main, and he attended school in both cities. At the age of 10, he decided to become a physicist and he concentrated more on music, playing in a band. He also started playing the violin at 15 and played in his school orchestra, Binnig studied physics at the J. W. Goethe University in Frankfurt, gaining a degree in 1973 and remaining there do a PhD with in Werner Martienssens group. In 1969, he married Lore Wagler, a psychologist, and they have a daughter born in Switzerland and his hobbies are reading, swimming and golf. In 1978, he accepted an offer from IBM to join their Zürich research group, there they developed the scanning tunneling microscope, an instrument for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. The Nobel committee described the effect that the invention of the STM had on science, the IBM Zürich team were soon recognized with a number of prizes, the German Physics Prize, the Otto Klung Prize, the Hewlett Packard Prize and the King Faisal Prize. In 1986, Binnig and Rohrer shared half of the Nobel Prize in Physics, in 1985, Binnig invented the atomic force microscope and Binnig, Christoph Gerber and Calvin Quate went on to develop a working version of this new microscope for insulating surfaces. In 1987 Binnig was appointed IBM Fellow, the company developed Cognition Network Technology to analyze images just like the human eye and brain are capable of doing. In 2016, Binnig won the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience, the Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center, an IBM-owned research facility in Rüschlikon, Zurich is named after Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer. Pioneers in Electricity and Magnetism - Gerd Binnig National High Magnetic Field Laboratory Autobiography of Gerd Binnig Astra Zeneca acquires Definiens
17.
Heinrich Rohrer
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Heinrich Rohrer was a Swiss physicist who shared half of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics with Gerd Binnig for the design of the scanning tunneling microscope. The other half of the Prize was awarded to Ernst Ruska, Rohrer was born in Buchs, St. Gallen half an hour after his twin sister. He enjoyed a carefree country childhood until the family moved to Zürich in 1949 and he enrolled in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1951, where he was student of Wolfgang Pauli and Paul Scherrer. His PhD thesis was supervised by Prof P. Grassmann who worked on cryogenic engineering, Rohrer measured the length changes of superconductors at the magnetic-field-induced superconducting transition, a project begun by Jörgen Lykke Olsen. In the course of his research, he found that he had to do most of his research at night after the city was asleep because his measurements were so sensitive to vibration and his studies were interrupted by his military service in the Swiss mountain infantry. In 1961, he married Rose-Marie Egger and their honeymoon trip to the United States included a stint doing research on thermal conductivity of type-II superconductors and metals with Bernie Serin at Rutgers University in New Jersey. In 1963, he joined the IBM Research Laboratory in Rüschlikon under the direction of Ambros Speiser, the first couple of years at IBM, he studied Kondo systems with magnetoresistance in pulsed magnetic fields. He then began studying magnetic phase diagrams, which brought him into the field of critical phenomena. In 1974, he spent a year at the University of California in Santa Barbara, California studying nuclear magnetic resonance with Vince Jaccarino. Until 1982 he worked on the scanning tunneling microscope and he was appointed IBM Fellow in 1986, and led the physics department of the research lab from 1986 until 1988. Rohrer died of natural causes on 16 May 2013 at his home in Wollerau and he was aged 79 and is survived by his wife, daughters Doris and Ellen, and two grandchildren
18.
Scanning tunneling microscope
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A scanning tunneling microscope is an instrument for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, for a STM, good resolution is considered to be 0.1 nm lateral resolution and 0.01 nm depth resolution. With this resolution, individual atoms within materials are routinely imaged and manipulated, the STM can be used not only in ultra-high vacuum but also in air, water, and various other liquid or gas ambients, and at temperatures ranging from near zero kelvin to over 1000°C. STM is based on the concept of quantum tunneling, when a conducting tip is brought very near to the surface to be examined, a bias applied between the two can allow electrons to tunnel through the vacuum between them. The resulting tunneling current is a function of tip position, applied voltage, information is acquired by monitoring the current as the tips position scans across the surface, and is usually displayed in image form. First, a bias is applied and the tip is brought close to the sample by coarse sample-to-tip control. In this situation, the bias will cause electrons to tunnel between the tip and sample, creating a current that can be measured. Once tunneling is established, the bias and position with respect to the sample can be varied. If the tip is moved across the sample in the x-y plane and these changes are mapped in images. This change in current with respect to position can be measured itself, or the height, z and these two modes are called constant height mode and constant current mode, respectively. In constant current mode, feedback electronics adjust the height by a voltage to the piezoelectric height control mechanism, all images produced by STM are grayscale, with color optionally added in post-processing in order to visually emphasize important features. In addition to scanning across the sample, information on the structure at a given location in the sample can be obtained by sweeping voltage. This type of measurement is called scanning tunneling spectroscopy and typically results in a plot of the density of states as a function of energy within the sample. Framerates of at least 25 Hz enable so called video-rate STM, framerates up to 80 Hz are possible with fully working feedback that adjusts the height of the tip. Video-rate STM can be used to surface diffusion. The components of an STM include scanning tip, piezoelectric controlled height and x, y scanner, coarse sample-to-tip control, vibration isolation system, the resolution of an image is limited by the radius of curvature of the scanning tip of the STM. Additionally, image artifacts can occur if the tip has two tips at the end rather than an atom, this leads to “double-tip imaging. Therefore, it has been essential to develop processes for consistently obtaining sharp, recently, carbon nanotubes have been used in this instance
19.
Malcolm Browne
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Malcolm Wilde Browne was an American journalist and photographer. His best known work was the photograph of the self-immolation of Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức in 1963. Browne was born and raised in New York City and his mother was a Quaker with fervently anti-war opinions, his father a Roman Catholic and an architect. Browne attended Friends Seminary, a Quaker school in Manhattan from kindergarten through to twelfth grade and he attended Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and studied chemistry. Brownes career in journalism began when he was drafted during the Korean War and he worked for the Middletown Times Herald-Record, then joined the Associated Press, working in Baltimore from 1959 to 1961, at which point he was made chief correspondent for Indochina. On June 11,1963 he took his famous photographs of the death of Thích Quảng Đức, after having won a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting and receiving many job offers, he eventually left the AP in 1965. He worked for ABC TV for about a year but became dissatisfied with television journalism and he worked freelance for several years, and did a years fellowship at Columbia University with the Council on Foreign Relations. In 1968, he joined The New York Times, and in 1972 became its correspondent for South America, before becoming a journalist Browne worked as a chemist, and in 1977, he became a science writer, serving as a senior editor for Discover. He returned to the Times in 1985 and he covered the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Browne died on Monday August 27,2012, of complications from Parkinsons disease
20.
Hendrik Lorentz
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Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect. He also derived the equations which formed the basis of the special relativity theory of Albert Einstein. For this he received honours and distinctions during his life. Hendrik Lorentz was born in Arnhem, Gelderland, the son of Gerrit Frederik Lorentz, a well-off nurseryman, in 1862, after his mothers death, his father married Luberta Hupkes. Despite being raised as a Protestant, he was a freethinker in religious matters, from 1866 to 1869 he attended the Hogere Burger School in Arnhem, a new type of public high school recently established by Johan Rudolph Thorbecke. His results in school were exemplary, not only did he excel in the sciences and mathematics, but also in English, French. In 1870 he passed the exams in languages which were then required for admission to University. After earning a degree, he returned to Arnhem in 1871 to teach night school classes in mathematics. On 17 November 1877, only 24 years of age, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was appointed to the established chair in theoretical physics at the University of Leiden. The position had initially offered to Johan van der Waals. On 25 January 1878 Lorentz delivered his lecture on De moleculaire theoriën in de natuurkunde. In 1881 he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts, during the first twenty years in Leiden, Lorentz was primarily interested in the theory of electromagnetism to explain the relationship of electricity, magnetism, and light. After that, he extended his research to a wider area while still focusing on theoretical physics. Lorentz made significant contributions to fields ranging from hydrodynamics to general relativity and his most important contributions were in the area of electromagnetism, the electron theory, and relativity. Lorentz theorized that atoms might consist of charged particles and suggested that the oscillations of charged particles were the source of light. When a colleague and former student of Lorentzs, Pieter Zeeman, discovered the Zeeman effect in 1896, the experimental and theoretical work was honored with the Nobel prize in physics in 1902. Lorentz name is now associated with the Lorentz-Lorenz formula, the Lorentz force, the Lorentzian distribution, in 1892 and 1895 Lorentz worked on describing electromagnetic phenomena in reference frames that move relative to the luminiferous aether. He discovered that the transition from one to another reference frame could be simplified by using a new variable which he called local time
21.
Pieter Zeeman
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Pieter Zeeman was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Hendrik Lorentz for his discovery of the Zeeman effect. Pieter Zeeman was born in Zonnemaire, a town on the island of Schouwen-Duiveland, Netherlands, to Catharinus Forandinus Zeeman, a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. He became interested in physics at an early age, in 1883 the Aurora borealis happened to be visible in the Netherlands. Zeeman, then a student at the school in Zierikzee, made a drawing and description of the phenomenon and submitted it to Nature. The editor praised the careful observations of Professor Zeeman from his observatory in Zonnemaire, after finishing high school in 1883 he went to Delft for supplementary education in classical languages, then a requirement for admission to University. He stayed at the home of Dr J. W. Lely, co-principal of the gymnasium and brother of Cornelis Lely, while in Delft, he first met Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, who was to become his thesis adviser. After Zeeman passed the exams in 1885, he studied physics at the University of Leiden under Kamerlingh Onnes. In 1890, even finishing his thesis, he became Lorentzs assistant. This allowed him to participate in a programme on the Kerr effect. In 1893 he submitted his thesis on the Kerr effect. After obtaining his doctorate he went for half a year to Friedrich Kohlrauschs institute in Strasbourg, in 1895, after returning from Strasbourg, Zeeman became Privatdozent in mathematics and physics in Leiden. The same year he married Johanna Elisabeth Lebret, they had three daughters and one son and he was fired for his efforts, but he was later vindicated, he won the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of what has now become known as the Zeeman effect. As an extension of his thesis research, he began investigating the effect of magnetic fields on a light source and he discovered that a spectral line is split into several components in the presence of a magnetic field. The next Monday, Lorentz called Zeeman into his office and presented him with an explanation of his observations, the importance of Zeemans discovery soon became apparent. It confirmed Lorentzs prediction about the polarization of light emitted in the presence of a magnetic field and this conclusion was reached well before Thomsons discovery of the electron. The Zeeman effect thus became an important tool for elucidating the structure of the atom, because of his discovery, Zeeman was offered a position as lecturer in Amsterdam in 1897. In 1900 this was followed by his promotion to professor of physics at the University of Amsterdam, in 1902, together with his former mentor Lorentz, he received the Nobel Prize for Physics for the discovery of the Zeeman effect. Five years later, in 1908, he succeeded Van der Waals as full professor and Director of the Physics Institute in Amsterdam, a new laboratory built in Amsterdam in 1923 was renamed the Zeeman Laboratory in 1940
22.
Henri Becquerel
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Antoine Henri Becquerel was a French physicist, Nobel laureate, and the first person to discover evidence of radioactivity. For work in this field he, along with Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie, the SI unit for radioactivity, the becquerel, is named after him. Roentgen discovered X-rays on November 8,1895, the press reported this on January 5,1896, shortly before Becquerel did his famous experiment. Thus radioactivity was discovered the year but within a year of the discovery of X-rays. Becquerel was born in Paris into a family which produced four generations of scientists, Becquerels grandfather, father. He studied engineering at the École Polytechnique and the École des Ponts et Chaussées, in 1890 he married Louise Désirée Lorieux. In 1892, he became the third in his family to occupy the chair at the Muséum National dHistoire Naturelle. In 1894, he became chief engineer in the Department of Bridges, Becquerels earliest works centered on the subject of his doctoral thesis, the plane polarization of light, with the phenomenon of phosphorescence and absorption of light by crystals. Becquerels discovery of radioactivity is a famous example of serendipity. Becquerel had long interested in phosphorescence, the emission of light of one color following a bodys exposure to light of another color. His first experiments appeared to show this, one places on the sheet of paper, on the outside, a slab of the phosphorescent substance, and one exposes the whole to the sun for several hours. When one then develops the photographic plate, one recognizes that the silhouette of the phosphorescent substance appears in black on the negative. If one places between the phosphorescent substance and the paper a piece of money or a metal screen pierced with a cut-out design, one must conclude from these experiments that the phosphorescent substance in question emits rays which pass through the opaque paper and reduce silver salts. But further experiments led him to doubt and then abandon this hypothesis, since the sun did not come out in the following days, I developed the photographic plates on the 1st of March, expecting to find the images very weak. Instead the silhouettes appeared with great intensity, however, the present experiments, without being contrary to this hypothesis, do not warrant this conclusion. I hope that the experiments which I am pursuing at the moment will be able to bring some clarification to this new class of phenomena. In 1903, Becquerel shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre, by 1861, Niepce de Saint-Victor realized that uranium salts produce a radiation that is invisible to our eyes. Niepce de Saint-Victor knew Edmond Becquerel, Henri Becquerels father, in 1868, Edmond Becquerel published a book, La lumière, ses causes et ses effets
23.
Pierre Curie
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Pierre Curie was a French physicist, a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism, piezoelectricity and radioactivity. Born in Paris on 15 May 1859, Pierre was the son of Eugène Curie and he was educated by his father, a doctor, and in his early teens showed a strong aptitude for mathematics and geometry. When he was 16, he earned his math degree, by the age of 18 he had completed the equivalent of a higher degree, but did not proceed immediately to a doctorate due to lack of money. Instead he worked as a laboratory instructor, in 1880, Pierre and his older brother Jacques demonstrated that an electric potential was generated when crystals were compressed, i. e. piezoelectricity. To provide accurate measurements needed for their work, Pierre created a highly sensitive instrument called the Curie Scale and he used weights, microscopic meter readers, and pneumatic dampeners to create the scale. Also, to aid their work, they invented the Piezoelectric Quartz Electrometer, shortly afterwards, in 1881, they demonstrated the reverse effect, that crystals could be made to deform when subject to an electric field. Almost all digital electronic circuits now rely on this in the form of crystal oscillators, Pierre Curie was introduced to Maria Skłodowska by their friend, physicist Józef Wierusz-Kowalski. Pierre took Maria into his laboratory as his student and his admiration for her grew when he realized that she would not inhibit his research. He began to regard her as his muse and she refused his initial proposal, but finally agreed to marry him on 26 July 1895. It would be a thing, a thing I dare not hope, if we could spend our life near each other hypnotized by our dreams, your patriotic dream, our humanitarian dream. Pierre Curie to Marie Skłodowska Prior to his famous studies on magnetism. Variations on this equipment were used by future workers in that area. Pierre Curie studied ferromagnetism, paramagnetism, and diamagnetism for his doctoral thesis, the material constant in Curies law is known as the Curie constant. He also discovered that ferromagnetic substances exhibited a critical temperature transition and this is now known as the Curie temperature. The Curie temperature is used to plate tectonics, treat hypothermia, measure caffeine. Pierre formulated what is now known as the Curie Dissymmetry Principle, for example, a random mixture of sand in zero gravity has no dissymmetry. Introduce a gravitational field, and there is a dissymmetry because of the direction of the field, then the sand grains can self-sort with the density increasing with depth. But this new arrangement, with the arrangement of sand grains
24.
Marie Curie
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Marie Skłodowska Curie, born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris and she was born in Warsaw, in what was then the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire. She studied at Warsaws clandestine Floating University and began her scientific training in Warsaw. In 1891, aged 24, she followed her older sister Bronisława to study in Paris and she shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and with physicist Henri Becquerel. She won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and her achievements included the development of the theory of radioactivity, techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two elements, polonium and radium. Under her direction, the worlds first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms and she founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw, which remain major centres of medical research today. During World War I, she developed mobile radiography units to provide X-ray services to field hospitals, while a French citizen, Marie Skłodowska Curie never lost her sense of Polish identity. She taught her daughters the Polish language and took them on visits to Poland and she named the first chemical element that she discovered—polonium, which she isolated in 1898—after her native country. Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, in the Russian partition of Poland, on 7 November 1867, the fifth and youngest child of well-known teachers Bronisława, née Boguska, the elder siblings of Maria were Zofia, Józef, Bronisława and Helena. On both the paternal and maternal sides, the family had lost their property and fortunes through patriotic involvements in Polish national uprisings aimed at restoring Polands independence. This condemned the subsequent generation, including Maria, her sisters and her brother. Marias paternal grandfather, Józef Skłodowski, had been a teacher in Lublin, where he taught the young Bolesław Prus. Her father, Władysław Skłodowski, taught mathematics and physics, subjects that Maria was to pursue, after Russian authorities eliminated laboratory instruction from the Polish schools, he brought much of the laboratory equipment home, and instructed his children in its use. Marias mother Bronisława operated a prestigious Warsaw boarding school for girls and she died of tuberculosis in May 1878, when Maria was ten years old. Less than three years earlier, Marias oldest sibling, Zofia, had died of typhus contracted from a boarder, Marias father was an atheist, her mother a devout Catholic. The deaths of Marias mother and sister caused her to give up Catholicism and become agnostic. When she was ten years old, Maria began attending the school of J. Sikorska, next she attended a gymnasium for girls. After a collapse, possibly due to depression, she spent the year in the countryside with relatives of her father, and the next year with her father in Warsaw
25.
John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh
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John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh OM PC PRS was a physicist who, with William Ramsay, discovered argon, an achievement for which he earned the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904. He also discovered the now called Rayleigh scattering, which can be used to explain why the sky is blue. Rayleighs textbook, The Theory of Sound, is referred to by acoustic engineers today. John William Strutt, of Terling Place Essex, suffered from frailty and he attended Harrow School, before going on to the University of Cambridge in 1861 where he studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1865, and a Master of Arts in 1868 and he was subsequently elected to a Fellowship of Trinity. He held the post until his marriage to Evelyn Balfour, daughter of James Maitland Balfour and he had three sons with her. In 1873, on the death of his father, John Strutt, 2nd Baron Rayleigh and he was the second Cavendish Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge, from 1879 to 1884. He first described dynamic soaring by seabirds in 1883, in the British journal Nature, from 1887 to 1905 he was Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution. Around the year 1900 Lord Rayleigh developed the theory of human sound localisation using two binaural cues, interaural phase difference and interaural level difference. The theory posits that we use two primary cues for sound lateralisation, using the difference in the phases of sinusoidal components of the sound, in 1919, Rayleigh served as President of the Society for Psychical Research. The rayl unit of acoustic impedance is named after him, as an advocate that simplicity and theory be part of the scientific method, Lord Rayleigh argued for the principle of similitude. Lord Rayleigh was elected Fellow of the Royal Society on 12 June 1873, from time to time Lord Rayleigh participated in the House of Lords, however, he spoke up only if politics attempted to become involved in science. He died on 30 June 1919, in Witham, Essex and he was succeeded, as the 4th Lord Rayleigh, by his son Robert John Strutt, another well-known physicist. Lord Rayleigh was buried in the graveyard of All Saints Church in Terling in Essex, though he did not write about the relationship of science and religion, he retained a personal interest in spiritual matters. The Secretary to the Press suggested with many apologies that the reader might suppose that I was the Lord, still, he kept his wish and the quotation was printed in the five-volume collection of scientific papers. What is more, I think that Christ and indeed other spiritually gifted men see further and truer than I do, Lord Rayleigh was the president of the SPR in 1919. He gave an address the year of his death but did not come to any definite conclusions. Craters on Mars and the Moon are named in his honour as well as a type of surface wave known as a Rayleigh wave, the asteroid 22740 Rayleigh was named in his honour on 1 June 2007
26.
Philipp Lenard
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Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard was a German physicist and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1905 for his research on cathode rays and the discovery of many of their properties. Notably, he had labeled Albert Einsteins contributions to science as constituting Jewish physics, Philipp Lenard was born in Pressburg, on 7 June 1862. The Lenard family had come from Tyrol in the 17th century. His father, Philipp von Lenardis, was a wine-merchant in Pressburg, the young Lenard studied at the Pozsonyi Királyi Katolikus Főgymnasium and as he writes it in his autobiography, this made a big impression on him. In 1880 he studied physics and chemistry in Vienna and in Budapest, in 1882 Lenard left Budapest and returned to Pressburg, but in 1883 moved to Heidelberg after his tender for an assistants position in the University of Budapest was refused. In Heidelberg he studied under the illustrious Robert Bunsen, interrupted by one semester in Berlin with Hermann von Helmholtz, in 1887 he worked again in Budapest under Loránd Eötvös as a demonstrator. After posts at Aachen, Bonn, Breslau, Heidelberg, and Kiel, in 1905 Lenard became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 1907 of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His early work included studies of phosphorescence and luminescence and the conductivity of flames, as a physicist, Lenards major contributions were in the study of cathode rays, which he began in 1888. Prior to his work, cathode rays were produced in primitive, partially evacuated tubes that had metallic electrodes in them. Cathode rays were difficult to study using this arrangement, because they were inside sealed glass tubes, difficult to access, having made a window for the rays, he could pass them out into the laboratory, or, alternatively, into another chamber that was completely evacuated. These windows have come to be known as Lenard windows and he was able to conveniently detect the rays and measure their intensity by means of paper sheets coated with phosphorescent materials. Lenard observed that the absorption of the rays was, to first order and this appeared to contradict the idea that they were some sort of electromagnetic radiation. Thomsons work, which arrived at the understanding that cathode rays were streams of negatively charged energetic particles. He called them quanta of electricity or for short quanta, after Helmholtz, thomson proposed the name corpuscles, but eventually electrons became the everyday term. He proposed that every atom consists of empty space and electrically neutral corpuscules called dynamids, each consisting of an electron and an equal positive charge. As a result of his Crookes tube investigations, he showed that the produced by irradiating metals in a vacuum with ultraviolet light were similar in many respects to cathode rays. His most important observations were that the energy of the rays was independent of the light intensity and these latter observations were explained by Albert Einstein as a quantum effect. This theory predicted that the plot of the cathode ray energy versus the frequency would be a line with a slope equal to Plancks constant
27.
J. J. Thomson
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He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of London and appointed to the Cavendish Professorship of Experimental Physics at the Cambridge Universitys Cavendish Laboratory in 1884. Thomson is also credited with finding the first evidence for isotopes of an element in 1913. His experiments to determine the nature of positively charged particles, with Francis William Aston, were the first use of mass spectrometry, Thomson was awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the conduction of electricity in gases. Seven of his students, including his son George Paget Thomson and his record is comparable only to that of the German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld. Joseph John Thomson was born 18 December 1856 in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, Lancashire and his mother, Emma Swindells, came from a local textile family. His father, Joseph James Thomson, ran a bookshop founded by a great-grandfather. He had a two years younger than he was, Frederick Vernon Thomson. J. J. Thomson was a devout Anglican and his early education was in small private schools where he demonstrated outstanding talent and interest in science. In 1870 he was admitted to Owens College at the young age of 14. His parents planned to enroll him as an engineer to Sharp-Stewart & Co, a locomotive manufacturer. He moved on to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1876, in 1880 he obtained his BA in mathematics. He applied for and became a Fellow of Trinity College in 1881, Thomson received his MA in 1883. Thomson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 12 June 1884, on 22 December 1884 Thomson was chosen to become Cavendish Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge. The appointment caused considerable surprise, given that such as Richard Glazebrook were older. Thomson was known for his work as a mathematician, where he was recognized as an exceptional talent. In 1890, Thomson married Rose Elisabeth Paget, daughter of Sir George Edward Paget, KCB and they had one son, George Paget Thomson, and one daughter, Joan Paget Thomson. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1906, in recognition of the merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases. He was knighted in 1908 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1912, in 1914 he gave the Romanes Lecture in Oxford on The atomic theory
28.
Albert A. Michelson
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Albert Abraham Michelson was an American physicist known for his work on the measurement of the speed of light and especially for the Michelson–Morley experiment. In 1907 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics and he became the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in sciences. Michelson was born in Strzelno, Province of Posen in Prussia into a Jewish family and he moved to the US with his parents in 1855, at the age of two. He grew up in the towns of Murphys Camp, California and Virginia City, Nevada. His family was Jewish by birth but non-religious, and Michelson himself was a lifelong agnostic and he spent his high school years in San Francisco in the home of his aunt, Henriette Levy, who was the mother of author Harriet Lane Levy. President Ulysses S. Grant awarded Michelson a special appointment to the U. S. Naval Academy in 1869, during his four years as a midshipman at the Academy, Michelson excelled in optics, heat, climatology and drawing. After graduating in 1873 and two years at sea, he returned to the Naval Academy in 1875 to become an instructor in physics, in 1879, he was posted to the Nautical Almanac Office, Washington, to work with Simon Newcomb. In the following year he obtained leave of absence to continue his studies in Europe and he visited the Universities of Berlin and Heidelberg, and the Collège de France and École Polytechnique in Paris. In 1877, he married Margaret Hemingway, daughter of a wealthy New York stockbroker and lawyer and they had two sons and a daughter. Michelson was fascinated with the sciences, and the problem of measuring the speed of light in particular, while at Annapolis, he conducted his first experiments of the speed of light, as part of a class demonstration in 1877. After two years of studies in Europe, he resigned from the Navy in 1881, in 1883 he accepted a position as professor of physics at the Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, Ohio and concentrated on developing an improved interferometer. In 1887 he and Edward Morley carried out the famous Michelson–Morley experiment which failed to detect evidence of the existence of the luminiferous ether and he later moved on to use astronomical interferometers in the measurement of stellar diameters and in measuring the separations of binary stars. In 1899, he married Edna Stanton and they raised one son and three daughters. He also won the Copley Medal in 1907, the Henry Draper Medal in 1916, a crater on the Moon is named after him. Michelson died in Pasadena, California at the age of 78, the University of Chicago Residence Halls remembered Michelson and his achievements by dedicating Michelson House in his honor. Case Western Reserve has dedicated a Michelson House to him, clark University named a theatre after him. Michelson Laboratory at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in Ridgecrest, there is a display in the publicly accessible area of the Lab which includes facsimiles of Michelsons Nobel Prize medal, the prize document, and examples of his diffraction gratings. Michelson published his result of 299,910 ±50 km/s in 1879 before joining Newcomb in Washington DC to assist with his measurements there, thus began a long professional collaboration and friendship between the two
29.
Gabriel Lippmann
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Gabriel Lippmann was born in Bonnevoie, Luxembourg, on 16 August 1845. At the time, Bonnevoie was part of the commune of Hollerich which is given as his place of birth. His father, Isaïe, a French Jew born in Ennery near Metz, in 1848, the family moved to Paris where Lippmann was initially tutored by his mother, Miriam Rose, before attending the Lycée Napoléon. He was said to have been a rather inattentive but thoughtful pupil with a special interest in mathematics, Lippmann then returned to Paris in 1875, where he continued to study until 1878, when he became professor of physics at the Sorbonne. Lippmann made several important contributions to various branches of physics over the years, in a paper delivered to the Philosophical Society of Glasgow on 17 January 1883, John G. The lower end is drawn into a point, until the diameter of the capillary is.005 of a millimetre. The tube is filled with mercury, and the point is immersed in dilute sulphuric acid. A platinum wire is put into connection with the mercury in each tube, such an instrument is very sensitive, and Lippmann states that it is possible to determine a difference of potential so small as that of one 10, 080th of a Daniell. It is thus a very delicate means of observing and of measuring minute electromotive forces, Lippmanns PhD thesis, presented to the Sorbonne on 24 July 1875, was on electrocapillarity. In 1881, Lippmann predicted the converse piezoelectric effect, above all, Lippmann is remembered as the inventor of a method for reproducing colours by photography, based on the interference phenomenon, which earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1908. In 1886, Lippmanns interest turned to a method of fixing the colours of the spectrum on a photographic plate. By April 1892, he was able to report that he had succeeded in producing colour images of a glass window, a group of flags, a bowl of oranges topped by a red poppy. He presented his theory of photography using the interference method in two papers to the Academy, one in 1894, the other in 1906. The interference phenomenon in optics occurs as a result of the propagation of light. In the case of ordinary incoherent light, the waves are distinct only within a microscopically thin volume of space next to the reflecting surface. Lippmann made use of this phenomenon by projecting an image onto a photographic plate capable of recording detail smaller than the wavelengths of visible light. The light passed through the glass sheet into a very thin. After development, the result was a structure of laminae, distinct parallel layers composed of metallic silver grains
30.
Guglielmo Marconi
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He is often credited as the inventor of radio, and he shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy. Marconi was an entrepreneur, businessman, and founder of The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company in the United Kingdom in 1897 and he succeeded in making a commercial success of radio by innovating and building on the work of previous experimenters and physicists. In 1929, the King of Italy ennobled Marconi as a Marchese, Marconi was born into the Italian nobility as Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi in Bologna on 25 April 1874, the second son of Giuseppe Marconi and his Irish/Scots wife Annie Jameson. Between the ages of two and six, Marconi and his elder brother Alfonso were brought up by his mother in the English town of Bedford, Marconi received further education in Florence at the Istituto Cavallero and, later, in Livorno. Marconi did not do well in school, according to Robert McHenry and he was baptized as a Catholic but had been brought up as a member of the Anglican Church, being married into it. Marconi was confirmed in the Catholic faith and became a member of the Church before his marriage to Maria Christina in 1927. During his early years, Marconi had an interest in science and electricity, the transmission of telegraph messages without connecting wires as used by the electric telegraph. There was a deal of interest in radio waves in the physics community. Righis article renewed Marconis interest in developing a wireless telegraphy based on radio waves. In the summer of 1894, he built a storm alarm made up of a battery, a coherer, and an electric bell, soon after he was able to make a bell ring on the other side of the room by pushing a telegraphic button on a bench. One night in December 1894, Guglielmo woke his mother and invited her into his secret workshop and showed her the experiment that he had created. The next day, he showed his work to his father. In the summer of 1895, Marconi moved his experimentation outdoors, with these improvements the system was capable of transmitting signals up to 2 miles and over hills. The monopole antenna reduced the frequency of the waves compared to the dipole antennas used by Hertz, by this point, he concluded that a device could become capable of spanning greater distances, with additional funding and research, and would prove valuable both commercially and militarily. Marconis experimental apparatus proved to be the first engineering-complete, commercially successful radio transmission system, Marconi wrote to the Ministry of Post and Telegraphs, then under the direction of the honorable Pietro Lacava, explaining his wireless telegraph machine and asking for funding. He never received a response to his letter which was dismissed by the Minister who wrote to the Longara on the document. In 1896, Marconi spoke with his family friend Carlo Gardini, Honorary Consul at the United States Consulate in Bologna, Gardini wrote a letter of introduction to the Ambassador of Italy in London, Annibale Ferrero, explaining who Marconi was and about these extraordinary discoveries. In his response, Ambassador Ferrero advised them not to reveal the results until after they had obtained the copyrights
31.
Karl Ferdinand Braun
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Karl Ferdinand Braun was a German inventor, physicist and Nobel laureate in physics. Braun contributed significantly to the development of radio and television technology, Braun was born in Fulda, Germany, and educated at the University of Marburg and received a Ph. D. from the University of Berlin in 1872. In 1874 he discovered that a point-contact semiconductor rectifies alternating current and he became director of the Physical Institute and professor of physics at the University of Strassburg in 1895. In 1897 he built the first cathode-ray tube and cathode ray tube oscilloscope, CRT became the cornerstone in developing fully electronic television. In the early 21-st century the CRT technology started to be replaced by flat screen technologies on television sets, the CRT is still called the Braun tube in German-speaking countries and in Japan. During the development of radio, he worked on wireless telegraphy. In 1897 Braun joined the line of wireless pioneers, Wireless telegraphy claimed Dr. Brauns full attention in 1898, and for many years after that he applied himself almost exclusively to the task of solving its problems. Dr. Braun had written extensively on subjects and was well known through his many contributions to the Electrician. In 1899, he would apply for the patents, Electro telegraphy by means of condensers and induction coils, around 1898, he invented a crystal diode rectifier or cats whisker diode. Pioneers working on wireless devices eventually came to a limit of distance they could cover, connecting the antenna directly to the spark gap produced only a heavily damped pulse train. There were only a few cycles before oscillations ceased, Brauns circuit afforded a much longer sustained oscillation because the energy encountered less losses swinging between coil and Leyden Jars. And by means of inductive antenna coupling the radiator was matched to the generator. The resultant stronger and less bandwidth consuming signals bridged a much longer distance, Braun invented the phased array antenna in 1905. He described in his Nobel Prize lecture how he carefully arranged three antennas to transmit a directional signal and this invention led to the development of radar, smart antennas, and MIMO. Brauns British patent on tuning was used by Marconi in many of his tuning patents, Marconi would later admit to Braun himself that he had borrowed portions of Brauns work. In 1909 Braun shared the Nobel Prize for physics with Marconi for contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy, the prize awarded to Braun in 1909 depicts this design. Braun experimented at first at the University of Strasbourg, not before long he bridged a distance of 42 km to the city of Mutzig. In spring 1899 Braun, accompanied by his colleagues Cantor and Zenneck, on 24 September 1900 radio telegraphy signals were exchanged regularly with the island of Heligoland over a distance of 62 km
32.
Johannes Diderik van der Waals
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Johannes Diderik van der Waals was a Dutch theoretical physicist and thermodynamicist famous for his work on an equation of state for gases and liquids. His name is associated with the van der Waals equation of state that describes the behavior of gases. His name is associated with van der Waals forces, with van der Waals molecules. As James Clerk Maxwell said about Van der Waals, there can be no doubt that the name of Van der Waals will soon be among the foremost in molecular science. In his 1873 thesis, van der Waals noted the non-ideality of real gases, spearheaded by Ernst Mach and Wilhelm Ostwald, a strong philosophical current that denied the existence of molecules arose towards the end of the 19th century. The molecular existence was considered unproven and the molecular hypothesis unnecessary, at the time van der Waals thesis was written, the molecular structure of fluids had not been accepted by most physicists, and liquid and vapor were often considered as chemically distinct. But Van der Waalss work affirmed the reality of molecules and allowed an assessment of their size, by comparing his equation of state with experimental data, Van der Waals was able to obtain estimates for the actual size of molecules and the strength of their mutual attraction. The effect of Van der Waalss work on physics in the 20th century was direct. By introducing parameters characterizing molecular size and attraction in constructing his equation of state, with the help of the van der Waalss equation of state, the critical-point parameters of gases could be accurately predicted from thermodynamic measurements made at much higher temperatures. Nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and helium subsequently succumbed to liquefaction, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was significantly influenced by the pioneer work of van der Waals. In 1908, Onnes became the winner of the race to liquid helium and because of this. A largely self-taught man in mathematics and physics, van der Waals originally worked as a school teacher and he became the first physics professor of the University of Amsterdam when in 1877 the old Athenaeum was upgraded to Municipal University. Van der Waals won the 1910 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the equation of state for gases, Johannes Diderik van der Waals was born on 23 November 1837 in Leiden in the Netherlands. He was the eldest of ten born to Jacobus van der Waals. His father was a carpenter in Leiden, as was usual for working-class children in the 19th century, he did not go to the kind of secondary school that would have given him the right to enter university. Instead he went to a school of “advanced primary education”, which he finished at the age of fifteen and he then became a teachers apprentice in an elementary school. Between 1856 and 1861 he followed courses and gained the qualifications to become a primary school teacher. However, the University of Leiden had a provision that enabled students to take up to four courses a year
33.
Wilhelm Wien
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He also formulated an expression for the black-body radiation which is correct in the photon-gas limit. His arguments were based on the notion of adiabatic invariance, and were instrumental for the formulation of quantum mechanics, Wien received the 1911 Nobel Prize for his work on heat radiation. He was a cousin of Max Wien, inventor of the Wien bridge, Wien was born at Gaffken near Fischhausen, Province of Prussia as the son of landowner Carl Wien. In 1866, his family moved to Drachstein near Rastenburg, in 1879, Wien went to school in Rastenburg and from 1880-1882 he attended the city school of Heidelberg. In 1882 he attended the University of Göttingen and the University of Berlin, from 1896 to 1899, Wien lectured at RWTH Aachen University. In 1900 he went to the University of Würzburg and became successor of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, in 1896 Wien empirically determined a distribution law of blackbody radiation, later named after him, Wiens law. However, Wiens law was valid at high frequencies. Planck corrected the theory and proposed what is now called Plancks law, in 1900, he assumed that the entire mass of matter is of electromagnetic origin and proposed the formula m = E / c 2 for the relation between electromagnetic mass and electromagnetic energy. While studying streams of ionized gas, Wien, in 1898, Wien, with this work, laid the foundation of mass spectrometry. J. J. Thomson refined Wiens apparatus and conducted experiments in 1913 then, after work by Ernest Rutherford in 1919. During April 1913, Wien was a lecturer at Columbia University, in 1911, Wien was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discoveries regarding the laws governing the radiation of heat. Wiens distribution law History of special relativity Mass–energy equivalence ——, ueber die Fragen, welche die translatorische Bewegung des Lichtäthers betreffen. Über die Möglichkeit einer elektromagnetischen Begründung der Mechanik, Über die Differentialgleichungen der Elektrodynamik für bewegte Körper. Über die Differentialgleichungen der Elektrodynamik für bewegte Körper, erwiderung auf die Kritik des Hrn. Aus dem Leben und Wirken eines Physikers, rüchardt, E. Zur Entdeckung der Kanalstrahlen vor fünfzig Jahren. Rüchardt, E. Zur Erinnerung an Wilhelm Wien bei der 25, Wilhelm Wien OConnor, John J. Robertson, Edmund F. Wilhelm Wien, MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews
34.
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
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Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was a Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate. He exploited the Hampson-Linde cycle to investigate how materials behave when cooled to nearly absolute zero and his production of extreme cryogenic temperatures led to his discovery of superconductivity in 1911, for certain materials, electrical resistance abruptly vanishes at very low temperatures. Kamerlingh Onnes was born in Groningen, Netherlands and his father, Harm Kamerlingh Onnes, was a brickworks owner. His mother was Anna Gerdina Coers of Arnhem, in 1870, Kamerlingh Onnes attended the University of Groningen. He studied under Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff at the University of Heidelberg from 1871 to 1873, again at Groningen, he obtained his masters in 1878 and a doctorate in 1879. His thesis was Nieuwe bewijzen voor de aswenteling der aarde, from 1878 to 1882 he was assistant to Johannes Bosscha, the director of the Delft Polytechnic, for whom he substituted as lecturer in 1881 and 1882. He was married to Maria Adriana Wilhelmina Elisabeth Bijleveld and had one child and his brother Menso Kamerlingh Onnes was a fairly well known painter, while his sister Jenny married another famous painter, Floris Verster. From 1882 to 1923 Kamerlingh Onnes served as professor of physics at the University of Leiden. In 1904 he founded a very large cryogenics laboratory and invited other researchers to the location, the laboratory is known now as Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory. Only one year after his appointment as professor he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts, on 10 July 1908, he was the first to liquefy helium, using several precooling stages and the Hampson-Linde cycle based on the Joule-Thomson effect. This way he lowered the temperature to the point of helium. By reducing the pressure of the liquid helium he achieved a temperature near 1.5 K and these were the coldest temperatures achieved on earth at the time. The equipment employed is at the Boerhaave Museum in Leiden, in 1911 Kamerlingh Onnes measured the electrical conductivity of pure metals at very low temperatures. Others, including Kamerlingh Onnes, felt that an electrical resistance would steadily decrease. On 8 April 1911, Kamerlingh Onnes found that at 4.2 K the resistance in a solid mercury wire immersed in liquid helium suddenly vanished and he immediately realized the significance of the discovery. He reported that Mercury has passed into a new state, which on account of its electrical properties may be called the superconductive state. He published more articles about the phenomenon, initially referring to it as supraconductivity and, some of the instruments he devised for his experiments can be seen at the Boerhaave Museum in Leiden. The apparatus he used to first liquefy helium is on display in the lobby of the department at Leiden University
35.
Max von Laue
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Max Theodor Felix von Laue was a German physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals. A strong objector to National Socialism, he was instrumental in re-establishing and organizing German science after World War II, Laue was born in Pfaffendorf, now part of Koblenz, to Julius Laue and Minna Zerrenner. At Göttingen, he was influenced by the physicists Woldemar Voigt and Max Abraham. After only one semester at Munich, he went to the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University of Berlin in 1902, there, he studied under Max Planck, who gave birth to the quantum theory revolution on 14 December 1900, when he delivered his famous paper before the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. Thereafter, Laue spent 1903 to 1905 at Göttingen, Laue completed his Habilitation in 1906 under Arnold Sommerfeld at LMU. In 1906, Laue became a Privatdozent in Berlin and an assistant to Planck and he also met Albert Einstein for the first time, they became friends and Laue went on to contribute to the acceptance and development of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Laue continued as assistant to Planck until 1909, in Berlin, he worked on the application of entropy to radiation fields and on the thermodynamic significance of the coherence of light waves. From 1909 to 1912, Laue was a Privatdozent at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, under Arnold Sommerfeld, during the 1911 Christmas recess and in January 1912, Paul Peter Ewald was finishing the writing of his doctoral thesis under Sommerfeld. It was on a walk through the Englischer Garten in Munich in January, the wavelengths of concern to Ewald were in the visible region of the spectrum and hence much larger than the spacing between the resonators in Ewald’s crystal model. Laue seemed distracted and wanted to know what would be the effect if much smaller wavelengths were considered, while at Munich, he wrote the first volume of his book on relativity during the period 1910 to 1911. In 1912, Laue was called to the University of Zurich as a professor of physics. In 1913, his father was raised to the ranks of hereditary nobility, in 1914 a new professor extraordinarius chair of theoretical physics had been created at the University of Berlin. Laue was offered the position but turned it down, and it was offered to Max Born, but Born was in the army until WW I ended, and before he had occupied the chair, Laue changed his mind and accepted the position. From 1914 to 1919, Laue was at the University of Frankfurt as ordinarius professor of theoretical physics, from 1916, he was engaged in vacuum tube development, at the University of Würzburg, for use in military telephony and wireless communications. At the university in 1919, other notables were Walther Nernst, Fritz Haber, among Laue’s notable students at the university were Leó Szilárd, Fritz London, Max Kohler, and Erna Weber. In 1921, he published the volume of his book on relativity. As a consultant to the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt, Laue met Walther Meissner who was working there on superconductivity, Meissner had discovered that a weak magnetic field decays rapidly to zero in the interior of a superconductor, which is known as the Meissner effect. Laue showed in 1932 that the threshold of the magnetic field which destroys superconductivity varies with the shape of the body
36.
Lawrence Bragg
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He was joint winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1915, For their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-ray, an important step in the development of X-ray crystallography. As of 2016, he is the youngest ever Nobel laureate in physics, Bragg was the director of the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, when the discovery of the structure of DNA was reported by James D. Watson and Francis Crick in February 1953. Bragg was born in Adelaide, South Australia and he showed an early interest in science and mathematics. His father, William Henry Bragg, was Elder Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Adelaide, shortly after starting school, William Lawrence Bragg fell from his tricycle and broke his arm. His father, who had read about Röntgens experiments in Europe and was performing his own experiments, used the newly discovered X-rays and this is the first recorded surgical use of X-rays in Australia. After beginning his studies at St Peters College, Adelaide in 1905, Bragg went to the University of Adelaide at age 16 to study mathematics, chemistry and physics, graduating in 1908. In the same year his father accepted the Cavendish chair of physics at the University of Leeds, Bragg entered Trinity College, Cambridge in the autumn of 1909 and received a major scholarship in mathematics, despite taking the exam while in bed with pneumonia. After initially excelling in mathematics, he transferred to the course in the later years of his studies. In 1914 Bragg was elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College – a Fellowship at a Cambridge college involves the submission, among Braggs other interests was shell collecting, his personal collection amounted to specimens from some 500 species, all personally collected from South Australia. He discovered a new species of cuttlefish – Sepia braggi, named for him by Joseph Verco, Bragg is most famous for his law on the diffraction of X-rays by crystals. Braggs law makes it possible to calculate the positions of the atoms within a crystal from the way in which an X-ray beam is diffracted by the crystal lattice and he made this discovery in 1912, during his first year as a research student in Cambridge. He discussed his ideas with his father, who developed the X-ray spectrometer in Leeds and this tool allowed many different types of crystals to be analysed. Braggs research work was interrupted by both World War I and World War II, during both wars he worked on sound ranging methods for locating enemy guns. In this work he was aided by William Sansome Tucker, Harold Roper Robinson, for his work during WWI he was awarded the Military Cross and appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire. He was also Mentioned in Despatches on 16 June 1916,4 January 1917 and 7 July 1919, on 2 September 1915 his brother was killed during the Gallipoli Campaign. Shortly afterwards, William Lawrence Bragg received the news that he had awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. Between the wars, from 1919 to 1937, he worked at the Victoria University of Manchester as Langworthy Professor of Physics and he was director of the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington in 1937. After World War II, Bragg returned to Cambridge, splitting the Cavendish Laboratory into research groups and he believed that the ideal research unit is one of six to twelve scientists and a few assistants
37.
William Henry Bragg
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The mineral Braggite is named after him and his son. Bragg was born at Westward near Wigton, Cumberland, the son of Robert John Bragg, a merchant marine officer and farmer, and his wife Mary née Wood, a clergymans daughter. When Bragg was seven years old, his mother died, and he was raised by his uncle, also named William Bragg, at Market Harborough, Leicestershire. He was educated at the Grammar School there, at King Williams College on the Isle of Man and, having won an exhibition and he graduated in 1884 as third wrangler, and in 1885 was awarded a first class honours in the mathematical tripos. In 1885, at the age of 23, Bragg was appointed Elder Professor of Mathematics and Experimental Physics in the University of Adelaide, and started work there early in 1886. Being a skilled mathematician, at time he had limited knowledge of physics. Bragg was an able and popular lecturer, he encouraged the formation of the student union, and he met Gwendoline née Todd, a skilled water-colour painter, whom he married in 1889. Their first son, William Lawrence, was born in North Adelaide in 1890, Braggs interest in physics developed, particularly in the field of electromagnetism. In 1895 he was visited by Ernest Rutherford, en route from New Zealand to Cambridge, Bragg had a keen interest in the new discovery of Wilhelm Röntgen. On 29 May 1896 at Adelaide, Bragg demonstrated before a meeting of local doctors the application of “X-rays to reveal structures that were otherwise invisible”. Samuel Barbour, senior chemist of F. H. Faulding & Co. an Adelaide pharmaceutical manufacturer, supplied the necessary apparatus in the form of a Crookes tube, a glass discharge tube. The tube had been obtained at Leeds, England, where Barbour visited the firm of Reynolds and Branson, Barbour returned to Adelaide in April 1896. The tube was attached to a coil and a battery borrowed from Sir Charles Todd. The induction coil was utilized to produce the electric spark necessary for Bragg, Bragg availed himself as a test subject, in the manner of Röntgen and allowed an X-ray photograph to be taken of his hand. The image of the fingers in his hand revealed “an old injury to one of his fingers sustained when using the turnip chopping machine on his father’s farm in Cumbria” and he gave a public demonstration of Marconis wireless in 1897. This idea was followed up in a brilliant series of researches which and this paper was also the origin of his first book Studies in Radioactivity. Soon after the delivery of his 1904 address, some radium bromide was made available to Bragg for experimentation, at the end of 1908 Bragg returned to England. During his 23 years in Australia he had seen the number of students at the University of Adelaide almost quadruple, Bragg occupied the Cavendish chair of physics in the University of Leeds from 1909
38.
Charles Glover Barkla
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Charles Glover Barkla FRS FRSE was a British physicist, and the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1917 for his work in X-ray spectroscopy and related areas in the study of X-rays. Barkla was born in Widnes, England, to John Martin Barkla, a secretary for the Atlas Chemical Company, Barkla studied at the Liverpool Institute and proceeded by Liverpool University with a County Council Scholarship and a Bibby Scholarship. Barkla initially studied Mathematics but later specialised in Physics under Sir Oliver Lodge, during the absence of Oliver Lodge due to ill health, Barkla would replace him in lectures. During his first two years at Cambridge, Barkla would, under the directions of Thomson, study the velocity of electromagnetic waves along wires of different widths and materials. After a year and a half at Trinity College, Cambridge, his love of music led him to transfer to Kings College, Cambridge, Barklas baritone voice was of remarkable beauty and his solo performances would always be fully attended. He completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1903, and then his Master of Arts degree in 1907 and he married Mary Esther Cowell in the same year, with whom he would have two sons and one daughter. For his discovery of the characteristic X-rays of elements, Barkla was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1917 and he was also awarded the Hughes Medal of the British Royal Society that same year. A religious man, Barkla was a Methodist and considered his work to be part of the quest for God and he died in Edinburgh on 23 October 1944. The lunar crater Barkla was named in the honour of Charles Barkla, a commemorative plaque has been installed in the vicinity of the Canongate, near the Faculty of Education Buildings, at the University of Edinburgh. Additionally, a theatre at the University of Liverpools Physics department. In 2012 a gritter in Barklas home town of Widnes was named in his honour, Biography in Nobel website Obituary his discovery of the characteristic Röntgen radiation of the elements Biography at Encyclopedia. com
39.
Max Planck
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Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, FRS was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. However, his name is known on a broader academic basis, through the renaming in 1948 of the German scientific institution. The MPS now includes 83 institutions representing a range of scientific directions. Planck came from a traditional, intellectual family and his paternal great-grandfather and grandfather were both theology professors in Göttingen, his father was a law professor in Kiel and Munich. Planck was born in Kiel, Holstein, to Johann Julius Wilhelm Planck and his second wife and he was baptised with the name of Karl Ernst Ludwig Marx Planck, of his given names, Marx was indicated as the primary name. However, by the age of ten he signed with the name Max and he was the 6th child in the family, though two of his siblings were from his fathers first marriage. Among his earliest memories was the marching of Prussian and Austrian troops into Kiel during the Second Schleswig War in 1864 and it was from Müller that Planck first learned the principle of conservation of energy. Planck graduated early, at age 17 and this is how Planck first came in contact with the field of physics. Planck was gifted when it came to music and he took singing lessons and played piano, organ and cello, and composed songs and operas. However, instead of music he chose to study physics, the Munich physics professor Philipp von Jolly advised Planck against going into physics, saying, in this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few holes. Planck replied that he did not wish to discover new things, but only to understand the fundamentals of the field. Under Jollys supervision, Planck performed the experiments of his scientific career, studying the diffusion of hydrogen through heated platinum. In 1877 he went to the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin for a year of study with physicists Hermann von Helmholtz and Gustav Kirchhoff and mathematician Karl Weierstrass. He wrote that Helmholtz was never quite prepared, spoke slowly, miscalculated endlessly and he soon became close friends with Helmholtz. While there he undertook a program of mostly self-study of Clausiuss writings, in October 1878 Planck passed his qualifying exams and in February 1879 defended his dissertation, Über den zweiten Hauptsatz der mechanischen Wärmetheorie. He briefly taught mathematics and physics at his school in Munich. In June 1880, he presented his thesis, Gleichgewichtszustände isotroper Körper in verschiedenen Temperaturen. With the completion of his thesis, Planck became an unpaid private lecturer in Munich
