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 ''
'' (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.[
]
See also
* 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 ...
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