Herbert Fröhlich

Herbert Fröhlich ( born December 9, 1905 in Rexingen; † 21 January 1991) was an English physicist of German origin and Jewish descent.

Life and work

Cheerful was born the son of Fanny Frida ( née Schwarz ) and Jakob Julius Fröhlich. The family moved in 1907 to Munich, where Herbert Fröhlich after the school was first briefly commercially active. From 1927 he studied physics and received his PhD in 1930 under Arnold Sommerfeld on the photoelectric effect in metals. This was followed by a lectureship at the University of Freiburg. Like many other contemporary Jewish scientists had Cheerful leave Germany and researched and taught - after being in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg, Russia) on the Joffe Institute at the invitation of Yakov Ilich Frenkel - in England at the University of Bristol (1935 - 1948) at Nevill Mott. In 1948 he was awarded on the recommendation of James Chadwick the first Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Liverpool, where he was also - among other institutions - even after his retirement in 1973 worked as a professor emeritus until 1991.

Cheerful turned to early quantum field theoretical methods in solid state physics and performed with his theory of an attractive interaction between electrons through exchange of phonons pioneering work. This is in analogy with the attraction between nucleons by pion exchange in the meson theory of nuclear forces, an area on the Merry had previously worked with Nicholas Kemmer and Walter Heitler. She was an important prerequisite for the explanation of superconductivity by Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer ( BCS theory ). In addition to numerous scientific publications authored with Herbert Fröhlich electron theory of metals (1936) and Theory of Dielectrics (1949 ) two textbooks that retained validity for a long time in theoretical physics. Later, he also dealt with applications of physics in biology, developed a theory of coherent excitations to explain the action of enzymes and theories to explain the brain functions.

In 1951 H. Fröhlich was appointed a member of the British Royal Society in 1972 awarded him the German Physical Society and the Max Planck Medal, the highest award in Germany award for scientists in theoretical physics.

Swell

City Archives Horb (ed.): In Hewn Stone - live tracks on the Rexingen Jewish cemetery. Stuttgart: Theiss, 1997

Writings

• Electron theory of metals, Repr [ d Ed by ] 1936, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York:. Springer, 1969.