Gustav Hertz
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Gustav Ludwig Hertz (; 22 July 1887 – 30 October 1975) was a German atomic physicist who shared the 1925
Nobel Prize in Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics () is an annual award given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for those who have made the most outstanding contributions to mankind in the field of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the ...
with James Franck "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an
electron The electron (, or in nuclear reactions) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary charge, elementary electric charge. It is a fundamental particle that comprises the ordinary matter that makes up the universe, along with up qua ...
upon an
atom Atoms are the basic particles of the chemical elements. An atom consists of a atomic nucleus, nucleus of protons and generally neutrons, surrounded by an electromagnetically bound swarm of electrons. The chemical elements are distinguished fr ...
".


Biography

Hertz was born in
Hamburg Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...
, the son of Auguste (née Arning) and a lawyer, Gustav Theodor Hertz (1858–1904),
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (; ; 22 February 1857 – 1 January 1894) was a German physicist who first conclusively proved the existence of the electromagnetic waves predicted by James Clerk Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism. Biography Heinric ...
's brother. He attended the
Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums The ''Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums'' ( ''Academic School of the Johanneum'', short: Johanneum) is a '' Gymnasium'', or grammar school, in Hamburg, Germany. It is Hamburg's oldest school and was founded in 1529 by Johannes Bugenhagen. The sch ...
before studying at the Georg-August University of Göttingen (1906–1907), the
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich, LMU or LMU Munich; ) is a public university, public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke ...
(1907–1908), and the
Humboldt 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 ...
(1908–1911). He received his doctorate in 1911 under Heinrich Rubens.Mehra and Rechenberg, 2001, 197. From 1911 to 1914, Hertz was an assistant to Rubens at the University of Berlin. It was during this time that Hertz and James Franck performed experiments on inelastic electron collisions in gases, known as the Franck–Hertz experiments, and for which they received the
Nobel Prize in Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics () is an annual award given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for those who have made the most outstanding contributions to mankind in the field of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the ...
in 1925.Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see entry for Hertz. During World War I, Hertz served in the military from 1914. In 1915 he joined
Fritz Haber Fritz Jakob Haber (; 9 December 1868 – 29 January 1934) was a German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his invention of the Haber process, a method used in industry to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen gas and hydrog ...
's unit that would introduce poisonous chlorine gas as a weapon. He was seriously wounded in 1915. In 1917, he returned to the University of Berlin as a
Privatdozent ''Privatdozent'' (for men) or ''Privatdozentin'' (for women), abbreviated PD, P.D. or Priv.-Doz., is an academic title conferred at some European universities, especially in German-speaking countries, to someone who holds certain formal qualifi ...
. In 1920, he took a job as a research physicist at the Philips Incandescent Lamp Factory in
Eindhoven Eindhoven ( ; ) is a city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality of the Netherlands, located in the southern Provinces of the Netherlands, province of North Brabant, of which it is the largest municipality, and is also locat ...
, which he held until 1925.Hertz
– Nobel Biography.


Career

In 1925, Hertz became ordinarius professor and director of the Physics Institute of the
Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (), also referred to as MLU, is a public university, public research university in the cities of Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, Halle and Wittenberg. It is the largest and oldest university in the German State o ...
. In 1928 he became ordinarius professor of experimental physics and director of the Physics Institute of the ''
Technische Hochschule A ''Technische Hochschule'' (, plural: ''Technische Hochschulen'', abbreviated ''TH'') is a type of university focusing on engineering sciences in Germany. Previously, it also existed in Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands (), and Finland (, ) ...
Berlin'' ("THB"), now
Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin; also known as Berlin Institute of Technology and Technical University of Berlin, although officially the name should not be translated) is a public university, public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was the first ...
. While there, he developed an isotope separation technique via gaseous diffusion. Since Hertz was an officer during World War I, he was temporarily protected from National Socialist policies and the
Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (, shortened to ''Berufsbeamtengesetz''), also known as Civil Service Law, Civil Service Restoration Act, and Law to Re-establish the Civil Service, was enacted by the Nazi Party, Na ...
, but eventually the policies and laws became more stringent, and at the end of 1934, he was forced to resign his position at THB, as he was classified as a "second degree part-Jew" (his paternal grandfather
Gustav Ferdinand Hertz Gustav Ferdinand Hertz (born August 2, 1827, as David Gustav Hertz in Hamburg, died September 8, 1914) was a German lawyer and senator of the Free Imperial City of Hamburg. He was the father of the pioneering physicist Heinrich Hertz Heinric ...
(originally named David Gustav Hertz) (1827–1914) had been Jewish as a child, before his whole family had converted to Lutheranism in 1834). He then took a position at
Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational technology conglomerate. It is focused on industrial automation, building automation, rail transport and health technology. Siemens is the largest engineering company in Europe, and holds the positi ...
, as director of Research Laboratory II. While there, he continued his work on
atomic physics Atomic physics is the field of physics that studies atoms as an isolated system of electrons and an atomic nucleus. Atomic physics typically refers to the study of atomic structure and the interaction between atoms. It is primarily concerned wit ...
and
ultrasound Ultrasound is sound with frequency, frequencies greater than 20 Hertz, kilohertz. This frequency is the approximate upper audible hearing range, limit of human hearing in healthy young adults. The physical principles of acoustic waves apply ...
, but he eventually discontinued his work on isotope separation. He held this position until he departed for the Soviet Union in 1945.


In the Soviet Union


"Pact to defect"

Hertz was concerned for his safety and, like his fellow Nobel laureate James Franck, was looking to move to the US or any other place outside Germany. So he made a pact with three colleagues:
Manfred von Ardenne Manfred baron von Ardenne (; 20 January 190726 May 1997) was a German researcher, autodidact in applied physics, and an inventor. He took out approximately 600 patents in fields including electron microscopy, medical technology, nuclear techn ...
, director of his private laboratory ''Forschungslaboratorium für Elektronenphysik'', Peter Adolf Thiessen, ordinarius professor at the
Humboldt 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 ...
and director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie (KWIPC) in Berlin-Dahlem, and Max Volmer, ordinarius professor and director of the Physical Chemistry Institute at the THB. The pact was a pledge that whoever first made contact with the Soviets would speak for the rest. The objectives of their pact were threefold: (1) prevent plunder of their institutes, (2) continue their work with minimal interruption, and (3) protect themselves from prosecution for any political acts of the past. Before the end of World War II, Thiessen, 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 ...
, had Communist contacts.


Participation in Soviet program of nuclear weapons

On 27 April 1945, Thiessen arrived at von Ardenne's institute in an armored vehicle with a major of the Soviet Army, who was also a leading Soviet chemist.Oleynikov, 2000, pp 5, 10–13, 18, 21 All four of the pact members were taken to the Soviet Union. Hertz was made head of Institute G, in Agudseri (Agudzery), about 10 km southeast of
Sukhumi Sukhumi or Sokhumi is a city in a wide bay on the Black Sea's eastern coast. It is both the Capital city, capital and largest city of Abkhazia, a partially recognised state that most countries consider a part of Georgia (country), Georgia. The ...
and a suburb of Gul'rips (Gulrip'shi).Naimark, 1995, 213. Topics assigned to Gustav Hertz's Institute G included: (1) Separation of isotopes by diffusion in a flow of inert gases, for which Gustav Hertz was the leader, (2) Development of a condensation pump, for which Justus Mühlenpfordt was the leader, (3) Design and build a mass spectrometer for determining the isotopic composition of uranium, for which Werner Schütze was the leader, (4) Development of frameless (ceramic) diffusion partitions for filters, for which Reinhold Reichmann was the leader, and (5) Development of a theory of stability and control of a diffusion cascade, for which Heinz Barwich was the leader; Barwich had been deputy to Hertz at Siemens. Other members of Institute G were Werner Hartmann and Karl-Franz Zühlke. Manfred von Ardenne was made head of Institute A. Goals of von Ardenne's Institute A included: (1) Electromagnetic separation of isotopes, for which von Ardenne was the leader, (2) Techniques for manufacturing porous barriers for isotope separation, for which Peter Adolf Thiessen was the leader, and (3) Molecular techniques for separation of uranium isotopes, for which Max Steenbeck was the leader. In his first meeting with Lavrentij Beria, von Ardenne was asked to participate in building the bomb, but von Ardenne quickly realized that participation would prohibit his repatriation to Germany, so he suggested isotope enrichment as an objective, which was agreed to.


Research at Sukhumi

By the end of the 1940s, nearly 300 Germans were working at the institute, and they were not the total work force. Institute A was used as the basis for the Sukhumi Physical-Technical Institute in Sinop, a suburb of
Sukhumi Sukhumi or Sokhumi is a city in a wide bay on the Black Sea's eastern coast. It is both the Capital city, capital and largest city of Abkhazia, a partially recognised state that most countries consider a part of Georgia (country), Georgia. The ...
. Volmer went to the Scientific Research Institute No. 9 (NII-9) in Moscow; he was given a design bureau to work on the production of
heavy water Heavy water (deuterium oxide, , ) is a form of water (molecule), water in which hydrogen atoms are all deuterium ( or D, also known as ''heavy hydrogen'') rather than the common hydrogen-1 isotope (, also called ''protium'') that makes up most o ...
. In Institute A, Thiessen became leader for developing techniques for manufacturing porous barriers for isotope separation. In 1949, six German scientists, including Hertz, Thiessen, and Barwich were called in for consultation at Sverdlovsk-44, which was responsible for uranium enrichment. The plant, smaller than the American Oak Ridge gaseous diffusion plant, was getting only a little over half of the expected 90% or higher enrichment.Holloway, 1994, 191–192. After 1950, Hertz moved to Moscow. In 1951, Hertz was awarded a Stalin Prize, second class, with Barwich. In that year, James Franck and Hertz were jointly awarded the
Max Planck Medal The Max Planck Medal is the highest award of the German Physical Society , the world's largest organization of physicists, for extraordinary achievements in theoretical physics. The prize has been awarded annually since 1929, with few exceptions ...
by the
Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft The German Physical Society (German: , DPG) is the oldest organisation of physicists. As of 2022, the DPG's worldwide membership is cited as 52,220, making it one of the largest national physics societies in the world. The DPG's membership peaked ...
. Hertz remained in the Soviet Union until 1955.


Return to the GDR

Upon his return from the Soviet Union, Hertz became ordinarius professor at the
University of Leipzig Leipzig University (), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...
. From 1955 to 1967, he was also the chairman of the Physical Society of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (GDR); he was honorary chairman from 1967 to 1975.


Personal life

Gustav Hertz was a nephew of
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (; ; 22 February 1857 – 1 January 1894) was a German physicist who first conclusively proved the existence of the electromagnetic waves predicted by James Clerk Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism. Biography Heinric ...
and a cousin of Mathilde Carmen Hertz. In 1919, Hertz married Ellen née Dihlmann, who died in 1941. They had two sons, Carl Helmut Hertz and Johannes Heinrich Hertz; both became physicists. He died on 30 October 1975 in
East Berlin East Berlin (; ) was the partially recognised capital city, capital of East Germany (GDR) from 1949 to 1990. From 1945, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet occupation sector of Berlin. The American, British, and French se ...
at the age 88.


Scientific memberships

Hertz was a Member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, Corresponding Member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, an Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, a Member of the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences, and a Foreign Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.


Publications

* *Gustav Hertz ''Über das ultrarote Adsorptionsspektrum der Kohlensäure in seiner Abhängigkeit von Druck und Partialdruck. (Dissertation).'' (Vieweg Braunschweig, 1911) *Gustav Hertz (editor) ''Lehrbuch der Kernphysik I-III'' (Teubner, 1961–1966) *Gustav Hertz (editor) ''Grundlagen und Arbeitsmethoden der Kernphysik'' (Akademie Verlag, 1957) *Gustav Hertz ''Gustav Hertz in der Entwicklung der modernen Physik'' (Akademie Verlag, 1967)


See also

*
Electron diffraction Electron diffraction is a generic term for phenomena associated with changes in the direction of electron beams due to elastic interactions with atoms. It occurs due to elastic scattering, when there is no change in the energy of the electrons. ...
* Electric glow discharge * Franck–Hertz experiment * Plasma window *
Vacuum tube A vacuum tube, electron tube, thermionic valve (British usage), or tube (North America) is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric voltage, potential difference has been applied. It ...
*
Scattering In physics, scattering is a wide range of physical processes where moving particles or radiation of some form, such as light or sound, are forced to deviate from a straight trajectory by localized non-uniformities (including particles and radiat ...
* Russian Alsos


References


Further reading

* Albrecht, Ulrich, Andreas Heinemann-Grüder, and Arend Wellmann ''Die Spezialisten: Deutsche Naturwissenschaftler und Techniker in der Sowjetunion nach 1945'' (Dietz, 1992, 2001) * Barwich, Heinz and Elfi Barwich ''Das rote Atom'' (Fischer-TB.-Vlg., 1984) * Beneke, Klaus ''Die Kolloidwissenschaftler Peter Adolf Thiessen, Gerhart Jander, Robert Havemann, Hans Witzmann und ihre Zeit'' (Knof, 2000) * Heinemann-Grüder, Andreas ''Die sowjetische Atombombe'' (Westfaelisches Dampfboot, 1992) * Heinemann-Grüder, Andreas ''Keinerlei Untergang: German Armaments Engineers during the Second World War and in the Service of the Victorious Powers'' in Monika Renneberg and Mark Walker (editors) ''Science, Technology and National Socialism'' 30–50 (Cambridge, 2002 paperback edition) * Hentschel, Klaus (editor) and Ann M. Hentschel (editorial assistant and translator) ''Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources'' (Birkhäuser, 1996) * Holloway, David ''Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy 1939–1956'' (Yale, 1994) * Kruglov, Arkadii ''The History of the Soviet Atomic Industry'' (Taylor and Francis, 2002) * Maddrell, Paul "Spying on Science: Western Intelligence in Divided Germany 1945–1961" (Oxford, 2006) * Mehra, Jagdish, and Helmut Rechenberg ''The Historical Development of Quantum Theory. Volume 1 Part 1 The Quantum Theory of Planck, Einstein, Bohr and Sommerfeld 1900–1925: Its Foundation and the Rise of Its Difficulties''. (Springer, 2001) * Naimark, Norman M. ''The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949'' (Belknap, 1995) * Oleynikov, Pavel V. 2000.
''German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic Project''
''The Nonproliferation Review'' Volume 7, Number 2, 1 – 30 The author has been a group leader at the Institute of Technical Physics of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center in Snezhinsk (Chelyabinsk-70).


External links

* *
SIPT
– Sukhumi Institute of Physics and Technology, on the website are published the photographs of the German nuclear physicists who had been working for the Soviet nuclear program {{DEFAULTSORT:Hertz, Gustav Ludwig 1887 births 1975 deaths People educated at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums University of Göttingen alumni Humboldt University of Berlin alumni Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni 20th-century German physicists German physicists Nobel laureates in Physics German Nobel laureates Jewish Nobel laureates Siemens people German experimental physicists German people of Jewish descent Scientists from Berlin Scientists from Hamburg German quantum physicists Academic staff of Leipzig University Nuclear weapons program of the Soviet Union people Academic staff of Technische Universität Berlin East German scientists German expatriates in the Soviet Union Foreign members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Winners of the Max Planck Medal Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin Burials at the Ohlsdorf Cemetery