Wolfgang Finkelnburg
Wolfgang Karl Ernst Finkelnburg ( born June 5, 1905 in Bonn, † November 7, 1967 in Erlangen, Germany ) was a German experimental physicist.
Life
Wolfgang Finkelnburg, son of university professor Rudolf Finkelnburg and his wife Margot Zitelmann, grandson of the physician Carl Maria Finkelnburg, studied physics and mathematics from 1924 at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and the University of Bonn. In 1928 he earned his doctorate under Heinrich cones with a thesis on the spectrum of the hydrogen molecule. He was his assistant from 1928. 1931 he became an assistant at the Technical University of Karlsruhe, where he habilitated at the theorist Walter Weizel and he became a lecturer in 1932. 1933-1934 he worked as a Rockefeller Fellow at Robert Millikan at Caltech. In 1936 he became associate professor at the TH Darmstadt and from 1942 to 1945 Associate Professor and Director of the Physics Institute of the University of Strasbourg, where he among other things, to dealt with militarily important research on carbon electrode arcs in Flakscheinwerfern.
Finkelnburg was since 1937 a member of the Nazi Party and joined the NSD collar on. Since 1938 he was a representative of the TH Darmstadt lecturers Bund leader, where he acted as though opponents demanded by Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark "German physics ". So he organized in 1940 the "Munich Colloquy " (according to the Augsburg religious talks ). In it He wanted to provide backing for the challenged by representatives of the German Physics modern theoretical physics ( quantum mechanics, special relativity ) in the classroom. The discussions between philosophers of science of Hugo Dingler circle and physicists who invited Finkelnburg (Hans Kopfermann, Otto Scherzer, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Otto Heckmann, Georg Joos ), took place on November 15, 1940 held in Munich's medical center, and were in November 1942 continued in Seefeld in Tirol. They were for Finkelnburg and physicist colleagues standing behind him (including industrial physicists and experimenters, for the use of quantum mechanics was a matter of course, but also the Heisenberg school) successfully. Carl Ramsauer, the president of the German Physical Society, made him his deputy in 1941 (together with Georg Joos ). 1942 Finkelnburg became a full professor in Strasbourg.
After he could find in Germany no suitable job, he was from 1946 to 1952 visiting professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC In addition, he worked in the Engineer Research and Development Laboratories in nearby Fort Belvoir U.S. Army. In 1952 he returned to Germany and became General Manager in the Corporate Research and Development of Siemens AG in Erlangen and department heads in their local research laboratories. From 1955 he was head of the department for nuclear reactor development at Siemens. He was also an honorary professor at the University of Erlangen -Nuremberg. 1966 to 1967 he was president of the German Physical Society.
In addition to previously mentioned areas of applied physics ( such as reactor technology) to Finkelnburg dealt with high-temperature gas discharge ( plasma physics ), atomic and molecular physics, nuclear physics and spectroscopy. His "Introduction to atomic physics ," which also deals with nuclear physics, molecular physics, elementary particle physics and solid state physics introductory (ie the most common applications of quantum mechanics ), became widespread.
Wolfgang Finkelnburg was buried in the castle cemetery Bad Godesberg. He was verheirat with Eleonore Schülen since 1939.
Writings
- Continuous spectra. Springer, 1938.
- Introduction to atomic physics. Springer, 1948. 12th Edition 1967 ( English Structure of Matter. Academic Press 1964. )
- High-current carbon arc. Physics and technology of high-temperature arc discharge. Springer, 1948.
- Atomic Physics. McGraw -Hill, 1950.
- The physicist. Modern Industry, 1967.