Guido Beck (29 August 1903 in Liberec – 21 October 1988 in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...

) was an Argentinian

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

German Bohemian German Bohemians (german: Deutschböhmen und Deutschmährer, i.e. German Bohemians and German Moravians), later known as Sudeten Germans, were ethnic Germans living in the Czech lands of the Bohemian Crown, which later became an integral part ...

origin.

Biography

Beck studied physics in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

and received his doctorate in 1925, under

Hans Thirring Hans Thirring (March 23, 1888 – March 22, 1976) was an Austrian theoretical physicist, professor, and father of the physicist Walter Thirring. He won the Haitinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1920. Together with the mathemat ...

. He worked in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

in 1928 as an assistant to

Werner Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg () (5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a breakthrough paper. In the subsequent serie ...

. A combination of the troubled political climate of Europe in the 1930s, his own restlessness, and the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

persecutions in Germany, made the Jewish-born Beck a traveler in those years. Until 1935 he worked in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

with Ernest Rutherford,

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...

, United States and Japan. In 1935, Beck was invited to work in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

by Head of the Institute of Physics, Odessa University Yelpidifor Anempodistovich Kirillov. At the

Odessa University Odesa I. I. Mechnykov National University ( uk, Одеський національний університет Iмені І. І. Мечникова, translit=Odeskyi natsionalnyi universytet imeni I. I. Mechnykova), located in Odesa, Ukraine, i ...

Beck was head of the Department of Theoretical Physics and gave a course of theoretical physics in German; his lectures were simultaneously translated into Ukrainian by his assistant Yu.G. Vekshtein. In 1936–1937 Beck was head of the department of theoretical mechanics at the Institute of Water Transport Engineers in Odessa. Four of his Odessa students – VV Malyarov, MM Alperin, GV Skrotskii and PE Nemirovsky – became professors in Odessa and

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

. In 1937, Guido Beck moved to

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

, where he was imprisoned when World War II broke out. In 1941, he fled to

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

. From 1942 to 1943 he was a guest professor at the

University of Coimbra The University of Coimbra (UC; pt, Universidade de Coimbra, ) is a public research university in Coimbra, Portugal. First established in Lisbon in 1290, it went through a number of relocations until moving permanently to Coimbra in 1537. The u ...

and the University of Oporto. In 1943 he emigrated to

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. In Argentina, he was instrumental in training several Argentinian physicists, including José Antonio Balseiro, and had a profound impact in developing physics in Argentina. He moved once more, this time to

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, in 1951, where his influence in developing physics was also great. He was called back to Argentina in 1962, after the death of Balseiro, and continued his work at the

Instituto Balseiro Balseiro Institute ( es, Instituto Balseiro) is an academic institution that belongs partially to the National University of Cuyo and partially to Argentina's National Atomic Energy Commission. It is located in Bariloche, Río Negro province, Ar ...

. In 1975, he returned to Brazil, and worked in the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas (CBPF). Apart from his influence as a teacher in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...

he contributed to a theory of beta-decay,abstract
/ref> which was later superseded by a more complete theory by Fermi. He was a friend of the famous writer

Ernesto Sabato Ernesto Sabato (June 24, 1911 – April 30, 2011) was an Argentine novelist, essayist, painter and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary w ...

. He died in a car accident in

in 1988.

Honours

*In 1977, he was given the doctoral degree of honour by the

Darmstadt University of Technology Darmstadt () is a city in the state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the fourth largest city in the state of Hesse a ...

, Germany ''for his exemplary activity as an academic teacher and his relentless efforts in establishing research institutions in physics''.

References

External links

Oral History interview transcript with Guido Beck on 22 April 1967, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
- interview by John L. Heilbron * 1903 births 1988 deaths 20th-century German physicists Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to Argentina 20th-century Argentine physicists Scientists from Liberec People from the Kingdom of Bohemia Austro-Hungarian Jews 20th-century Brazilian physicists Jewish physicists German Bohemian people German people of Czech-Jewish descent Road incident deaths in Brazil {{Germany-physicist-stub