Gustav Mie

Gustav Adolf Feodor Wilhelm Ludwig Mie ( born September 29, 1868 in Rostock, † February 13, 1957 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German physicist.

Life

Mie was born on September 29, 1868 as the son of a merchant in Rostock.

From 1886 on, he studied at the University of Rostock mathematics and physics. In addition to these subjects, he attended lectures in chemistry, zoology, geology, mineralogy, astronomy, and logic and metaphysics. 1888/1889, he continued his studies at the University of Heidelberg. For the summer semester 1889 he returned to Rostock. He received his doctorate in 1891 in Heidelberg in mathematics.

He habilitated in the summer of 1897 at the Technical University of Karlsruhe in Theoretical Physics. In 1902 he was appointed Associate Professor and in 1905 as a successor to Walter King full professor of theoretical physics at the University of Greifswald, which he chaired in 1916 as rector. In 1917 he became professor of experimental physics at the University of Halle. In 1924, he then took up an appointment as director of the Physics Institute at the Albert- Ludwigs- University of Freiburg, where he worked until his retirement in 1935 and died on 13 February 1957.

In Freiburg during the Nazi dictatorship Mie was a member of the university opposition of the so-called "Freiburger circles" and one of the participants of the original " Freiburger Council".

Scientific work

In Mies Greifswald years falls his work to calculate the scattering of an electromagnetic wave in a homogeneous dielectric sphere, which he published in 1908 under the title Contributions to the optics of turbid media, especially colloidal metal solutions in the annals of physics. With the so-called Mie scattering his name is today. As early as 1903 he led to the description of the attractive and repulsive forces are not chemically bonded atoms a the Mie potential, from which the much more well-known Lennard -Jones potential is a special case.

He provided further significant contributions to electromagnetism and general relativity. He also dealt with units and finally developed in 1910 was named after him Mie unit system.

In the years 1912/13, Mie developed his theory of matter in which he, inter alia, from a so-called world function, which also contains the field variables, using the Lagrangian formalism Maxwell's electrodynamics herleitete. His goal was to make the world function set up so that the matter could be even calculated as solution of the variational equations themselves. He also tried to include the gravity with and was such a competitor of Einstein and Hilbert, in the pursuit of an expanded theory of gravitation. This approach was later the model for work of David Hilbert, Max Born and Leopold Infeld.

Honors

After Mie today an impact crater on Mars is named, a lecture hall of the Martin -Luther- University Halle- Wittenberg and also a building of the Albert- Ludwigs- University of Freiburg bear his name. 1919 Mie was appointed a member of the Leopoldina.

Writings

  • For fundamental theorem about the existence of integrals of partial differential equations. Teubner, Dresden 1892 ( Dissertation, University of Heidelberg, August 3, 1891).
  • Design of a general theory of energy transfer. In: Proceedings of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Mathematics and Natural Sciences Class, Division 2, October 1898, pp. 1113-1182 ( Habilitation thesis, University of Karlsruhe, 1898; digitized ).
  • Molecules, atoms, cosmic ether. Teubner, Leipzig, 1904.
  • Contributions to the optics of turbid media, especially colloidal metal solutions. In: Annals of Physics. Fourth episode, Volume 25, 1908, Issue 3, pp. 377-445, doi: 10.1002/andp.19083300302.
  • Textbook of electricity and magnetism: An Experimental Physics of the universal ether for physicists, chemists and electrical engineers. Enke, Stuttgart 1910; Third, revised edition 1948.
  • Foundations of a theory of matter. In: Annals of Physics Vol 37, 1912, pp. 511-534, doi: 10.1002/andp.19123420306; Vol 39, 1912, pp. 1-40, doi: 10.1002/andp.19123441102; Vol 40, 1913, pp. 1-66, doi: 10.1002/andp.19133450102.
  • Comments on Einstein's theory of gravitation. In: Physical review. Vol 15, 1914, pp. 115-122, 169-176.
  • The intellectual structure of physics ( = Studies of apologetic seminar. Issue 38). Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1934.
  • The divine order in nature: three essays ( = The Christian Germany 1933-1945 H. 9. ). Furrow, Tübingen 1946.
  • The foundations of mechanics. Enke, Stuttgart 1950.
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