Paul Scherrer

Paul Scherrer ( born February 3, 1890 in St. Gallen, † September 25, 1969 in Zurich ) was a Swiss physicist.

Life and work

Paul Scherrer studied two semesters of Botany at the ETH Zurich, but then switched to physics and mathematics. In 1912 he continued his studies in Königsberg, then he went to Göttingen. There he developed in 1916 in collaboration with Peter Debye an experimental method for structure determination of crystals using X-rays, the so-called until today Debye-Scherrer method. He received his Ph.D. under the direction Debye via the Faraday effect of the hydrogen molecule. In 1918 he received a lectureship in Göttingen in 1920 he became professor of experimental physics at ETH Zurich, in 1927, Head of Experimental Physics there. From the 1930s he turned increasingly to nuclear physics. After the Second World War he was in 1954 involved in the establishment of the research center CERN in Geneva and worked in various institutions and bodies for the dissemination of nuclear energy in Switzerland: In 1946, he became president of the newly established Study Commission for Atomic Energy SKA, which aimed at the implementation of a Swiss nuclear weapons program. From 1958 he was president of the Swiss Commission for Nuclear Sciences. In 1960 he became Professor Emeritus. In 1969 he died. Paul Scherrer was buried in the cemetery Fluntern. His daughter is the Classical archaeologist Ines Jucker.

He worked mainly in the areas of X-ray and cosmic radiation, magnetism, and nuclear physics.

Honors

According to him, the Debye- Scherrer method, the Scherrer equation and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) for basic research in the natural sciences and engineering is named.