Walter Heitler

Walter Heinrich Heitler ( born January 2, 1904 in Karlsruhe, † November 15, 1981 in Zurich ) was a German physicist.

Walter Heitler studied from 1922 at the Technical University of Karlsruhe, the Humboldt University in Berlin and from 1924 at the Ludwig- Maximilians- University of Munich theoretical physics. Among his teachers in Munich was one among others, Arnold Sommerfeld. In 1926 he received his doctorate with Karl Ferdinand Herzfeld in Munich. The dissertation was published two contributions to the theory of concentrated solutions in the annals of physics under the title. From 1926 to 1927 he was at the institute as a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation for Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen with Niels Bohr and then at Erwin Schrödinger at the University of Zurich. Together with Fritz London he put 1927 in Zurich, a model for the covalent bond in the hydrogen molecule before, with the basis for the Valenzstrukturtheorie quantum chemistry was laid. This work also influenced the young Linus Pauling, who was working at the time as a Guggenheim fellow at Schrödinger. The quantum- mechanical description of chemical bonds has become a major area of ​​research awareness coupler.

After the seizure of power by the National Socialists emigrated Heitler, who was according to the criteria of the Nazis as a Jew, in 1933 to the United Kingdom. In the UK Heitler worked as a research assistant at the University of Bristol in Nevill Francis Mott. In 1934 he was involved with the also emigrated Hans Bethe in the development of the theory of braking of electrons ( bremsstrahlung, Bethe- Heitler formula) through matter. In the 1930s he published work on the quantum theory of radiation and cosmic rays. Following the military defeat of France in the western campaign in 1940 Heitler was interned on the Isle of Man for a few months as a supposedly " enemy alien ". In 1941 he became a professor at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. The site had been him, mediated by Erwin Schrödinger, who was now working there. In 1949 he was appointed professor at the University of Zurich.

Heitler was recorded in 1948 as a member ( "Fellow" ) to the Royal Society. He was awarded the Max Planck Medal of the German Physical Society in 1968. In 1977 he received the Golden Medal of the Humboldt Society.

Since 1960, he worked increasingly on philosophical and ethical problems of scientific research. In his publications, he was trying to make, using examples from mathematics, physics, biology and psychology, the sensual world of experience for the supernatural, spiritual or transcendent world transparent. In particular, in his book The Nature and the divine he turned to the possibility of a wide readership. From his Christian conviction ago it was him uncover a central concern relationships between the physical world experience and the metaphysical revelation world through texts from the Old and New Testament.

Writings

  • The quantum theory of radiation. Oxford University Press, London, 1949.
  • Elementary wave mechanics. With applications to quantum chemistry. 2nd edition. Vieweg, Braunschweig 1961.
  • Man and the natural scientific knowledge. Vieweg, Braunschweig, 1970, ISBN 3-528-07116-8.
  • Nature Philosophical forays. Vieweg, Braunschweig, 1970, ISBN 3-528-08284-4.
  • Science is Spiritual Science. The balance, Zurich 1972.
  • Truth and accuracy in the exact sciences Steiner, Wiesbaden 1972.
  • The nature and the divine. Velcro and Balmer, train 1974, ISBN 3-7206-9001-6.
  • Proofs of God? and other lectures. Velcro and Balmer, train 1977, ISBN 3-264-90100-3 ( ISBN formally wrong ).
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