Gerhard Borrmann (30 April 1908 – 12 April 2006) was a German physicist. He was born in

Diedenhofen Thionville (; ; german: Diedenhofen ) is a city in the northeastern French department of Moselle. The city is located on the left bank of the river Moselle, opposite its suburb Yutz. History Thionville was settled as early as the time of t ...

, then part of Germany, and received his early education there. He continued his secondary school at

Gießen Giessen, spelled Gießen in German (), is a town in the German state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of both the district of Giessen and the administrative region of Giessen. The population is approximately 90,000, with roughly 37,000 univer ...

, where he apprenticed at a steel mill. After studying at the

Technische Universität München The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; german: Technische Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences. Establis ...

and Technische Hochschule Danzig, he wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the Kossel effect while working at the laboratory of

Walther Kossel Walther Ludwig Julius Kossel (4 January 1888 – 22 May 1956) was a German physicist known for his theory of the chemical bond ( ionic bond/octet rule), Sommerfeld–Kossel displacement law of atomic spectra, the Kossel-Stranski model for crystal ...

in Danzig. Following his doctorate, he continued to work at the laboratory as an assistant to Kossel, where he studied X-ray transmission through thin crystal foils. Due to his refusal to join the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

, he was forced to leave the laboratory in 1938, upon which he went to work with

Max von Laue Max Theodor Felix von Laue (; 9 October 1879 – 24 April 1960) was a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals. In addition to his scientific endeavors with con ...

at the ''

Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie The Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science (German: ''Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften'') was a German scientific institution established in the German Empire in 1911. Its functions were taken over by ...

'' (KWI). There he discovered a phenomenon regarding the anomalous low absorption of X-rays that became known as the "

Borrmann effect The Borrmann effect (or Borrmann–Campbell effect after Gerhard Borrmann and Herbert N. Campbell) is the anomalous increase in the intensity of X-rays transmitted through a crystal when it is being set up for Bragg reflection. The Borrmann effect ...

" (or "Borrmann-Campbell effect", for Herbert N. Campbell.) Following the war, in 1951 Bormann was offered the ''Kristalloptik der Röntgenstrahlen'' department of the KWI. He became a Scientific Fellow in 1956. He was appointed Professor at the

Technische Universität Berlin The Technical University of Berlin (official name both in English and german: link=no, Technische Universität Berlin, also known as TU Berlin and Berlin Institute of Technology) is a public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was ...

, retiring in 1970. In 1996, the

German Crystallographic Society The German Crystallographic Society (''Deutsche Gesellschaft für Kristallographie'', or DGK in German) is a non-profit organization based in Berlin. As a voluntary association of scientists working in crystallography or interested in crystallograp ...

honored Gerhard Borrmann pioneering work in X-ray diffraction with the inaugural Carl Hermann Medal.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Borrmann, Gerhard 1908 births 2006 deaths 20th-century German physicists Max Planck Society people Technical University of Munich alumni Gdańsk University of Technology alumni People from Thionville People from Alsace-Lorraine Academic staff of the Technical University of Berlin Max Planck Institute directors

See also

References