Richard Becker

Richard Becker ( born December 3, 1887 in Hamburg, † March 16, 1955 in Bad Schwalbach ) was a German physicist.

Life

Richard Becker grew up in Hamburg, the son of businessman Conrad Becker and his wife Agnes, née Birch on. After graduation in 1906, he studied zoology and a doctorate in 1910 in Freiburg im Breisgau ( doctoral thesis on dipteran larvae in August Weismann ). Then it especially lectures by Arnold Sommerfeld enthusiastic so much that he studied physics. He graduated from the State Examination for Higher Magisterium.

After a short time as an assistant, among others, Fritz Haber at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, he went in 1913 in the explosives industry and later at the research laboratory of the light bulb manufacturer Osram. In 1922, Becker completed his habilitation at the University of Berlin under Max Planck, but not without difficulty, for the fundamental importance of his theory of the shock wave and detonation was not until about 20 years later due attention. In 1926 he was appointed as full professor at the newly established chair of theoretical physics at the Technical University of Berlin.

Probably after an intrigue of a colleague from the Armed Forces Technical School in Berlin Becker moved in 1936 to Göttingen, where he became Professor of Max Born, who had been sold as a Jew by the Nazis in their racial fanaticism of Germany. Due to the circumstances, it had needed great powers of persuasion to move Becker at the exchange. A year earlier, Becker was taken into account, together with Werner Heisenberg and Peter Debye of the technical representatives at the list proposal for the successor to Arnold Sommerfeld at the University of Munich. The former faculty body of the University, however, had opposed this vote under the influence of the Nazis and called with Wilhelm Müller a regime loyal representatives of the so-called German physics and thus the " worst possible successor " ( as Arnold Sommerfeld).

After the war, Becker sought in particular helping to restore contact with his colleagues and students emigrated abroad. In 1954 he became chairman of the German Physical Society. From 1952 to 1955 he was president of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen.

In research, Becker important results achieved not only to shock waves and detonation but also the plasticity of metals as well as to the theory of ferromagnetism and superconductivity. In particular, his theory of nucleation, together with Werner Döring, an essential and highly cited contribution to statistical physics.

Becker took pleasure in understanding physical processes of reason. If he had understood physical phenomena and mechanisms clearly and vividly, he rejoiced and went after other physical issues.

In addition to his many scientific contributions by Becker made ​​a name for himself as an outstanding teacher of theoretical physics. As in the research he sought in his lectures, lectures and academic conversations at the highest possible clarity and vividness and never stayed at a formal mathematical treatment available.

His textbooks on the theory of heat and the theory of electricity were decades in the study of physics very popular.

His pupils

As a professor in Berlin and Göttingen Becker lasting influence on theoretical physics not only in Germany; impetus given by him in the early stages of their scientific development, the later Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner (Nobel Prize 1963 ), Wolfgang Paul (Nobel Prize 1989), Hans Georg Dehmelt (Nobel Prize 1989) and Herbert Kroemer (Nobel Prize 2000). Other well-known physicists of the 20th century, such as Werner Döring, Walter Boas, Wilhelm Brenig, Burkhard Heim, Friedrich Georg Houtermans, Gustav Richter, Fred Kocks, Günther Leibfried, Günther Ludwig, Hans Ehrenberg, Rudolf Schulten and Georg Heinrich Thiessen were in the narrower or a broader sense a pupil of Richard Becker.

Selected Works

  • Theory of heat, Heidelberg, Springer 1985
  • Theory of electricity, 2 volumes Volume 1: Introduction to Maxwell's theory
  • Volume 2: Electron Theory

This two-volume book, the Abraham -Becker, was so successful that it was extended and modernized later than Becker- Sauter to a three -volume work:

  • Richard Becker, Fritz Sauter: theory of electricity, Stuttgart, Teubner 1973, 1970, 1969, ISBN 3-519-23006-2 Volume 1, Introduction to Maxwell's theory, electronic theory, relativity theory, 1973
  • Volume 2, Introduction to the quantum theory of atoms and radiation, 1970
  • Volume 3, electrodynamics of matter, 1969
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