Carl Hermann

Carl Hermann ( born June 17, 1898 in Lehe ( Bremerhaven ), † September 12, 1961 in Marburg ) was a German physicist and professor of crystallography.

Life

Carl Hermann was born into a traditional family of pastors, which dates back to the Reformation. During his studies he was coined by the physicist Max Born, in which he received his doctorate in Göttingen in 1923, and by his student contact with Werner Heisenberg.

Then his assistant years followed in PP Ewald in Stuttgart from 1925 to 1935, where he met the Laue'sche discovery of X -ray interference in crystals. In 1931 he completed his habilitation in Stuttgart, where he also developed with C. Hermann- Mauguin Mauguin symbols for the description of the 32 crystal classes and 230 space groups, which today find in crystallography and related sciences worldwide use. With Paul Peter Ewald, he wrote the " Structure Report ", which has become a reference book of all investigated structures.

In 1929 he was one of the first two-sided surface ornaments on ( about the same time also being tackled by Leonhard Weber and Heinrich Heesch ).

With the establishment of the NSDAP he had to leave the college because he refused a political activity in their favor and also took off no corresponding commitment. Hermann went to IG Farben in Ludwigshafen, where he published a series of publications on the fine structure of crystalline matter with Brill, Grimm and Peters, containing various types and possibilities Chemical binding. Here he and his wife Eva Hermann were later arrested and sentenced to a long prison term because they protected countless Jewish citizens from deportation by helped them to escape. Only his reputation as a scientist and the intervention of his friends saved them from being sentenced to death.

With the end of the war was its liberation and rehabilitation. For a short time he worked as a lecturer at the TH Darmstadt and was appointed in 1947 at the Philipps University in Marburg to the new chair of Crystallography. There he directed further investigation series and also described symmetry facilities in rooms of all dimensions.

Because of its humanitarian and religious conviction, he fought for the peace movement and world peace. He participated in the work of the ecumenical Christian Peace Conference, the third meeting in 1960 was held in Prague.

The German Society for Crystallography gives the highest distinction, Carl -Hermann Medal.

1976 Hermann posthumously was awarded the Righteous Among the Nations, at the same time his wife was still alive.