Arnold Thomas Eucken (; 3 July 1884 – 16 June 1950) was a German

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a graduated scientist trained in the study of chemistry, or an officially enrolled student in the field. Chemists study the composition of ...

and

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 ...

. He is known for his contribution to thermodynamics and molecular physics, in particular, for the discovery of Eucken's law of thermal conductivity, the measurement of the

heat capacity Heat capacity or thermal capacity is a physical property of matter, defined as the amount of heat to be supplied to an object to produce a unit change in its temperature. The SI unit of heat capacity is joule per kelvin (J/K). Heat capacity is a ...

hydrogen Hydrogen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol H and atomic number 1. It is the lightest and abundance of the chemical elements, most abundant chemical element in the universe, constituting about 75% of all baryon, normal matter ...

at low temperatures, and the development of the Eucken–Polanyi potential theory of adsorption.

Life

Arnold Thomas Eucken was born in Jena, son of the philosopher and later

Nobel Prize in Literature The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning ''for'' Literature (), is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in ...

laureate

Rudolf Christoph Eucken Rudolf Christoph Eucken (; ; 5 January 184614 September 1926) was a German philosopher. He received the 1908 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his earnest search for truth, his penetrating power of thought, his wide range of vision, a ...

, in

Jena Jena (; ) is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in Germany and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 in ...

. A maternal great grandfather was the physicist Thomas Johann Seebeck. His brother Walter became an economist. Arnold Eucken went to the humanist high school in Jena and studied Physics and Mathematics at the Kiel University,

University of Jena The University of Jena, officially the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (, abbreviated FSU, shortened form ''Uni Jena''), is a public research university located in Jena, Thuringia, Germany. The university was established in 1558 and is cou ...

and

University of Berlin The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humbol ...

. In 1905 he began to work in Berlin under

Walther Nernst Walther Hermann Nernst (; 25 June 1864 – 18 November 1941) was a German physical chemist known for his work in thermodynamics, physical chemistry, electrochemistry, and solid-state physics. His formulation of the Nernst heat theorem helped ...

on the energy states of hydrogen and received a doctorate in 1906. He habilitated in 1911 and after the

Italo-Turkish War The Italo-Turkish (, "Tripolitanian War", , "War of Libya"), also known as the Turco-Italian War, was fought between the Kingdom of Italy and the Ottoman Empire from 29 September 1911 to 18 October 1912. As a result of this conflict, Italy captur ...

he joined back in 1915 Eucken at the Technische Hochschule Breslau, and from 1930 at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 ...

as a successor of Gustav Tammann. After "the seizure of power" of the National Socialists, Eucken became a member of the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...

in 1933. A major contribution was a "Textbook of Chemical Physics" first published in 1930. One of his last PhD students, Manfred Eigen won the

Nobel Prize in Chemistry The Nobel Prize in Chemistry () is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outst ...

in 1967. Eucken killed himself in Seebruck on 16 June 1950.

Ernst Klee Ernst Klee (15 March 1942, Frankfurt – 18 May 2013, Frankfurt) was a German journalist and author. As a writer on Germany's history, he was best known for his exposure and documentation of medical crimes in Nazi Germany, much of which was conce ...

: ''Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945''. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Zweite aktualisierte Auflage, Frankfurt am Main 2005, S. 140.

Work

In 1908, while working with Nernst, Eucken developed a vacuum calorimeter to study heat capacity hydrogen molecules. His measurements published in 1912, confirmed that the heat capacity of hydrogen drops by a factor of a

gas constant The molar gas constant (also known as the gas constant, universal gas constant, or ideal gas constant) is denoted by the symbol or . It is the molar equivalent to the Boltzmann constant, expressed in units of energy per temperature increment p ...

at low temperatures (about 40 K). Diatomic gas starts to behave as a monotoatomic gas because of the suppression of rotational modes at low temperatures. This confirmed Nernst's theory that the heat capacity of diatomic molecules would behave according to

quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is the fundamental physical Scientific theory, theory that describes the behavior of matter and of light; its unusual characteristics typically occur at and below the scale of atoms. Reprinted, Addison-Wesley, 1989, It is ...

. Eucken's 1911 work on

thermal conduction Thermal conduction is the diffusion of thermal energy (heat) within one material or between materials in contact. The higher temperature object has molecules with more kinetic energy; collisions between molecules distributes this kinetic energy ...

, demonstrated that in dielectric systems, the

thermal conductivity The thermal conductivity of a material is a measure of its ability to heat conduction, conduct heat. It is commonly denoted by k, \lambda, or \kappa and is measured in W·m−1·K−1. Heat transfer occurs at a lower rate in materials of low ...

of the crystal in inversely proportional to the temperature of the crystal. This relation is sometimes known as Eucken's law. Eucken was also coined the term adsorption potential and was the first to publish a theory of potential theory of adsorption in 1914.

References

1884 births 1950 deaths Scientists from Jena People from Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach 20th-century German chemists 20th-century German physicists Academic staff of the University of Göttingen Suicides in Germany 1950 suicides {{Germany-scientist-stub

Life

Work

See also

References