Felix Auerbach

Felix Auerbach ( born November 12, 1856 in Breslau, † February 26, 1933 in Jena ) was a German physicist.

Life

Auerbach's father, Leopold Auerbach, was a respected doctor and professor of medicine at the University of Breslau. His mother was Arabella Auerbach, née Hess. From her he had noticed the talent and love for music that has accompanied him throughout his life. Felix was the eldest child of six siblings. The chemist Friedrich Auerbach (1870-1925) and the Wroclaw pianist Max Auerbach ( * 1872) were his younger brothers.

Felix Auerbach received his humanistic education from 1865 to 1873 on the Mary Magdalene School in his hometown. After graduation, he began at the age of 16 years with the study at the universities of Breslau, Heidelberg Gustav Robert Kirchhoff in and in Berlin with Hermann Helmholtz. With him, he received his doctorate in 1875. The title of his dissertation The nature of vocal sounds showed interest for the physics of music and acoustics. Since 1879 Felix Auerbach was the Physics Institute of the University of Wroclaw assistant to Oskar Emil Meyer and lecturer from 1880.

In 1883 he married Anna Silbergleit ( 1860-1933 ), which later became the Central German Women's Federation board and fought for women's suffrage. The marriage remained childless.

1889 took over Auerbach set up by Ernst Abbe Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Jena. As a Jew, he was initially denied a full professorship, until 1923 it was still decorated him. He became professor emeritus in 1927.

From 1906 to about 1914, he took over along with his sister Kathe Auerbach ( 1871-1940 ), the education of the children of his brother Max Auerbach, namely Klaus Günther and finally John and Cornelia Auerbach ( later the wife of Hanning Schröder ).

Auerbach was already in 1914 a patron of the Jena art scene and to companies perverse in his house, many artists, such as Erich Kuithan, Clara Harnack ( the widow of Otto Harnack ), Reinhard worry, Eberhard Grisebach and Botho Graef, the sponsor of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. In Jena, he also supported the progressive aspirations of the Jena Kunstverein and the Weimar Bauhaus. Walter Gropius built in 1925 for Felix Auerbach and his wife a house on a " building block in the large". The house Auerbach, as it is still called today, was restored in 1995. Until 1933, here is a cultural center for scientists and artists had been. Except Gropius were among the frequent guests and friends of the Auerbach and Max Bruch, Ida Dehmel and Richard Dehmel, Edvard Munch, Henry van de Velde and Julius Meier -Graefe. Early as 1906 Munch had painted a portrait of Felix Auerbach. Auerbach founded in 1893 in Jena, the first lawn tennis club. Was mainly due to him " the development of lawn tennis sport in Jena due ".

With Adolf Hitler, the anti-Semitic climate in Germany became unbearable for Felix and Anna Auerbach. After the seizure of power by the National Socialists, both took their own lives. In his farewell letter stated that he is now " left the earthly existence full of joy " " after almost 50 years, mutually blissful coexistence " in last night did.

Services

Felix Auerbach was a versatile scientist who never lost sight of the practical. At the University of Jena, he sat down one particularly for the teaching experimental physics. He dealt with the magnetism, which was also the topic of his habilitation thesis. And for the Venetian Academy of Sciences, he wrote a treatise on hydrodynamics. He explored the hardness of solid materials and developed in 1890 a device for absolute measurement of hardness.

Horst Bredekamp related in TIME that the art historian Ulrich Mueller wrote that the Jena Physics Professor Felix Auerbach " knew how to explain 1906 and 1921 Einstein's theory of relativity in two writings of the years and in particular impressed a number of artists, because he is having for decades a physics of arts employed. "Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, Gropius had brought as a teacher at the Bauhaus in Weimar, were two of these artists.

Together with the physicist Wilhelm Hort (1878-1938) Felix Auerbach began when he was seventy with the publication of the Handbook of physics and engineering mechanics (1927-1931, 7 vols ). In addition to his physical work was Auerbach's interest especially in mathematics. One of his classic writings here The fear of Mathematics and its overcoming (1925 ).

In his work The Law of population concentration Auerbach describes a law that is due to the wide distribution of city sizes, and is known as Zipfsches law today.

Publications (selection )

  • Studies on the nature of the vocal sound, in: Annals of Physics and Chemistry Ergänzungsbd. 8 (1877 ), pp. 177-225.
  • Determining the resonant tones of the oral cavity by percussion, in: Annals of Physics and Chemistry 3 (1878 ), pp. 152-157 (PDF - file; 372 kB)
  • Pitch of a tuning fork in an incompressible fluid, in: Annals of Physics and Chemistry 3 (1878 ), pp. 157-160 (PDF file, 372 kB)
  • The world mistress and her shadow. A lecture on energy and entropy. G. Fischer, Jena 1902
  • Acoustics ( = Encyclopedia of Physics 2 ), Leipzig o.J. (2nd edition 1909).
  • Ektropismus and the physical theory of life. Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1910
  • The basics of music. JA Barth, Leipzig, 1911.
  • The law of population concentration. in: Peter 's Geogr releases, 59, pp. 73-76, 1913
  • The graphical representation. Teubner, Leipzig 1914
  • The physics in the war. Gustav Fischer, Jena 1915
  • Remote writing and telephone message. Overcoming time and space by electricity. Ullsteinhaus, Berlin 1916
  • Ernst Abbe - His life, his work, his personality. Academic. Verlagsgesellschaft, Leipzig 1918
  • Dictionary of Physics. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and Leipzig 1920
  • Space and time, matter and energy, An Introduction to the Theory of Relativity, Leipzig: Dürr'sche bookstore 1921
  • Development History of Modern Physics: At the same time an overview of their facts, laws and theories. Julius Springer, Berlin 1923
  • The Zeiss works and the Carl Zeiss Foundation in Jena. Gustav Fischer, Jena 1925, 5th Edition
  • The methods of theoretical physics. Akad Verlagsges., Leipzig 1925
  • Vivid mathematics. A Popular Introduction to the show and mindset of the lower and higher mathematics. Ferdinand Hirt, Wroclaw 1929
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