Erich Regener

Rudolph Erich Regener Alexander ( born November 12, 1881 in Schleusenau in Bromberg, West Prussia, † February 27, 1955 in Stuttgart ) was a German physicist.

Life

Erich Regener studied from 1900 to 1905 at the University of Berlin physics. He was a pupil of Heinrich Rubens and attended lectures at Paul Drude, Hans Heinrich Landolt and Max Planck. In 1905 he received his doctorate with a excited by Emil Warburg work on the influence of short-wave radiation on the oxygen-ozone balance in the atmosphere and remained as a lecturer at the University of Berlin. With the determination of the elementary electric charge by counting alpha particles using a scintillation method developed by him he was habilitated in 1909. In the next 15 years he continued to be interested with the Subelektronenhypothese that seemed supported by experiments Felix Ehrenhaft. Finally, however, he ruled out the existence of smaller loads than the elementary charge.

Regener was appointed in 1914 as the successor to Richard Börnsteins to the chair of physics at the Agricultural College in Berlin. In World War I it was used as " field x- mechanic ". In 1920 he became a full professor at the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart. From the second half of the 1920s Regener dealt extensively with that of Victor Hess discovered cosmic rays in 1912, then called penetrating cosmic radiation. To this end, he sank automatically registering ionization chambers in Lake Constance or let them on the balloon to an altitude of 24 km ascend into the stratosphere.

1929 doctorate Hans Hellmann at Regener with a thesis on the ozone decay. Regener itself drew on his own early work and began studies on the altitude dependence of the ozone layer. With his son, the physicist Victor H. Regener (1913-2006), he developed a Registrierspektrographen. By unmanned balloon ascents with this instrument to 30 km altitude, they measured 1934, the UV spectrum of the sun in two spectral ranges and certain from the vertical distribution of ozone in the atmosphere. In another balloon ascents examined Regener in the following years, the oxygen and water vapor content in the stratosphere.

In the autumn of 1937 Regener was treated on the basis of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service in the waiting state and deprived of his office as a university professor and director of the Institute of Physics of the Technical University of Stuttgart. His wife Gertrud, née Clear, had Jewish ancestors, and Regener was the Nazis politically unpopular. Supported by the Ministry of Aviation, he then founded on 1 January 1938 in Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance, the private Research Centre for Physics of the Stratosphere, which was incorporated on 30 May 1938 in the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. After the destruction of the Institute in an Allied air raid in 1944 sat Regener his research in a temporary in Weißenau near Ravensburg continued, emerged from the 1952 Max Planck Institute for Physics of the Stratosphere. This institute is one of the two roots of today's Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research.

Regener's research into the stratosphere for the rocket scientist Wernher von Braun of interest. In order to calculate the trajectory of the missile, you need accurate data. In a joint project with the Army Research Center at Peenemünde developed Regener new instruments should be transported to an altitude of 50 km with an A4 rocket. There should be the " Regener - Tonne" instrument called capsule blasted off and return to Earth on a parachute. But until the war's end, there was only one successful test flight with a dummy of Regener -Tonne.

From 1945 to 1951 Regener was again active in his chair in Stuttgart. In 1948, he was Vice President of the Max Planck Society.

Regener was since 1934 a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and since 1955 a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

Works

• About the chemical action of short-wave radiation on gaseous bodies, PhD thesis, Friedrich -Wilhelms -Universität zu Berlin, August 12, 1905
• About cathode, X-rays and radium rays, speech, marr in Royal d. Agricultural College in Berlin on January 26, 1915 in Berlin.; Vienna: Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1915
• On the cause of which simulate the existence of a Subelektrons in the experiments of Mr. F. Ehrenhaft, Berlin 1920 ( meeting report d Preuss. Academy of Sciences. Phys. - Math. Kl 1920)
• Recordings of ultraviolet Sonnenspektums in the stratosphere and vertical distribution of ozone, ( with VH Regener ), Phys. Z., 35, 788-793, 1934
• About Balloons with a large rate of climb, thermographs of low inertia, Quarzbarographen and the condensation and sublimation of water vapor at low temperatures, Munich; Berlin: Oldenbourg, 1941 (Writings d Dt Academy d aviation research 37. )
• Structure and composition of the stratosphere, Munich; Berlin: Oldenbourg, 1941 ( writings of the German Academy of Aeronautical Research 46)
• Optical interference at thin, condensed at 190 ° C ice, 1954