Gerda Laski (4 June 1893, Vienna – 24 November 1928, Berlin) was an Austrian/German

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 ...

known for her

research Research is creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge. It involves the collection, organization, and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness to ...

infrared radiation Infrared (IR; sometimes called infrared light) is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than that of visible light but shorter than microwaves. The infrared spectral band begins with the waves that are just longer than those ...

. She went to a private girls secondary

grammar school A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a Latin school, school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented Se ...

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

and graduated in 1913. She earned her

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''doctor'', meaning "teacher") or doctoral degree is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism '' licentia docendi'' ("licence to teach ...

in physics from the University of Vienna in 1917 on "Size Determination of Submicroscopic Particles Based on Optical and Mechanical Effects". From 1918 to 1919, she worked as an assistant at the University of Göttingen and, in 1920, as an assistant at the Physical Institute of the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg (now Technische Universität Berlin), where she was introduced to the experimental technique that became her major interest. Her early

concerned extensions of the Bohr model of Hydrogen atom, hydrogen atoms to Hydrogen molecule, hydrogen molecules. Laski was a student of Peter Debye, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1936. Debye studied the dispersion of light using Bohr's hydrogen model and found that the theoretical curve corresponded satisfactorily to the curve observed. Laski later showed agreement between theory and experiment, however based on an erroneous interpretation of data. Laski's main research focus later on was infrared research. This included the examination of selected chemical substances by means of infrared radiation—a field of application. Beginning in 1924, Laski was the director of the Infrared Department at the Institute for Fibre Chemistry of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. This department was closed due to lack of financing. She then became a voluntary assistant at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (Imperial Physical-Technical Institute) in 1927, in order to establish an infrared laboratory. After serious illness, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics provided Laski with a monthly stipend until her death in 1928. Her final work was on special methods for infrared measurement and thermoelectricity. Her research also included studying natural infrared frequencies of diatomic Bohr gas molecules and their specific heat at high temperatures.

Literature

Laski wrote her thesis on "Size Determination of Submicroscopic Particles Based on Optical and Mechanical Effects", which was published in 1917 and is 48 pages long. The book is written in German and is part of the holdings of the German National Library.

References

1893 births 1928 deaths 20th-century Austrian physicists 20th-century Austrian women scientists 20th-century German physicists German women physicists University of Vienna alumni 20th-century German women scientists Austrian emigrants to Germany Max Planck Institute directors {{physicist-stub