Wroclaw (Breslau) Nobel Prize Winners

Wroclaw (Breslau) Nobel Prize Winners Edward F. Pliński Wrocław University of Technology Wybrzeże Wyspiańskiego 27, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland tel.: +48 7...
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Wroclaw (Breslau) Nobel Prize Winners Edward F. Pliński Wrocław University of Technology Wybrzeże Wyspiańskiego 27, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland tel.: +48 71 320 25 05, fax: +48 71 320 31 89, e-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT The paper is an attempt at reconstructing the academic life in Wroclaw (Breslau) before the Second World War. Included are fourteen Nobel Prize Winners whose life was connected in different way with the city. The scientists are divided into three groups – born in Wroclaw (Breslau), studying in the city, and working at the Wroclaw (Breslau) University. Keywords: Nobel Prize, Wroclaw, Breslau, Wroclaw University

NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS WHO WERE BORN IN WROCLAW (BRESLAU) Fritz Haber: 9th December, 1868  29th January, 1934, Nobel Prize Winner in 1918 in Chemistry Fritz Haber was born in Wrocław (Breslau), in one of the oldest families of the town, as the son of Siegfried Haber, a merchant. He went to school at the St. Elizabeth classical school at Breslau. His research in physical chemistry eventually led to te Haber-Bosch process. In 1911 he was invited to become director of the Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry at the new Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft in Berlin, where academic scientists, government, and industry cooperated to promote original research. The Haber-Bosch process is generally credited with keeping Germany supplied with fertilizers and munitions during World War I, after the British naval blockade cut off supplies of nitrates from Chile. During the war Haber threw his energies and those of his institute into further support for the German side. He developed a new weapon—poison gas, the first example of which was chlorine gas— and supervised its initial deployment on the Western Front at Ypres, Belgium, in 1915. His promotion of this frightening weapon precipitated the suicide of his wife, who was herself a chemist, and many others condemned him for his wartime role. There was great consternation when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for 1918 for the synthesis of ammonia from its elements. When Hitler became Chancellor and Jewish academics were purged, Haber realized that the time had come when his strong patriotism and his service to his native land could not overcome the reality of his Jewish heritage. Because of his distinguished service to his country in World War I, his life was not actually threatened, but he realized that it was time to emigrate. It is known that he would have preferred to go to Switzerland, but no invitation was offered. He was offered a position at Cambridge; thus, he left Germany for good in 1933. He did not stay long in England, as ill health and the climate depressed him. On route to visit Switzerland, he died suddenly at Basle on January 30, 1935, at the age of 65. At the time of his death he was on his way to investigate a possible senior research position at Rehovot in Palestine (now Israel).

Friedrich Bergius,  11th October, 1884 -  1949, Nobel Prize Winner in 1931 in Chemistry Friedrich Bergius was born on October 11, 1884, in Goldschmieden near Wrocław (Breslau), Silesia. He belonged to an old respected family of scientists, theologians, civil servants, army officers, and business men. His grandfather was Professor of Economics in Wroclaw (Breslau) and his father owned a chemical factory in Goldschmieden. Bergius was educated in Wroclaw (Breslau) and whilst still at school took great interest in his father's factory where he was able to be acquainted with chemicotechnical processes. In 1903 he entered Wroclaw (Breslau) University to read chemistry under Ladenburg, Abegg and Herz; after doing one year's military service he proceeded to Leipzig University in 1905 and worked on absolute sulphuric acid as a solvent. This work was completed in Wroclaw (Breslau) under Abegg, and Bergius received his degree at Leipzig in 1907. A Begius’ student credit book (Wroclaw University In 1931 he shared the Nobel Prize with Carl Bosch for Museum) their contributions to the invention and development of chemical high-pressure methods. After the last war it was impossible for Bergius to find a field of work in Germany which would have done justice to his abilities. He emigrated to the Argentine, where death put an end to his eventful career in Buenos Aires in 1949. Max Born,  11th December, 1882 -  1970, Nobel Prize Winner in 1954 in Physics Nobel Laureate in Physics for his fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially for his statistical interpretation of the wavefunction Max Born was born in Wroclaw (Breslau) on the 11th December, 1882, to Professor Gustav Born, anatomist and embryologist, and his wife Margarete, née Kauffmann, who was a member of a Silesian family of industrialists. Max attended the König Wilhelm's Gymnasium in Wroclaw (Breslau) and continued his studies at the Universities of Breslau. Born shared (with Walter Bothe) the 1954 Nobel Prize for physics. He is buried in Göttingen, where his tombstone displays his fundamental equation of matrix mechanics: pq –qp = h/2i Professor Gustav Born (Max Born’s son) unveiled the plaque on the house, where

The birthplace of Max Born in Wroclaw (Wolnosci Square 4)

his famous father was born (see the picture), during the XIV International Symposium On Gas Flow & Chemical Lasers and High Power Laser Conference in Wroclaw, on 26th August 2002. Reinhard Selten,  10th October, 1930, Nobel Prize Winner in 1994 in Economics (for his pioneering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games) Reinhard Selten writes in his autobiography: “I was born in Breslau on October 10th, 1930. At that time, Breslau, now called Wroclaw, belonged to Germany and only German was spoken there. After the second world war Breslau became Polish and the original German population was almost completely replaced by a Polish one. I have never visited Wroclaw after the war. Heavy fighting destroyed most of the town in which I grew up and most of the familiar places of my youth look different now. When I was born my father owned a business called a "reading circle"; folders containing an assortment of magazines were lent to customers for one week, then recollected and lent out again. The older the folder, the lower was the fee. This was a florishing branch of industry. My father had built up his business in spite of the fact that he became blind at young years and had only three years of school education. Already in the mid-thirties he had to sell his firm because of his Jewish origin. Jews were forbidden to run a business connected to the press. My father did not belong to any religous community and my mother was a protestant. Unlike several other relatives my father did not become a victim of the holocaust, since he died after a serious illness already in 1942 before the worst of the terror began. It was not easy for me to live as a half-Jewish boy under the Hitler regime. When I was 14 I had to leave high school and the opportunity to learn a trade was denied to me. The only career open to me was that of an unskilled worker. Fortunately it turned out that this did not matter much since after about half a year my mother, my brothers, my sister, and I left Breslau on one of the last trains before all outbound railway traffic stopped”. Paul Ehrlich,  14th March, 1854 -  1915, Nobel Prize Winner in 1908 in Medicine Paul Ehrlich was born on March 14, 1854 at Strehlen (Strzelin – now Poland), in Lower Silesia, Germany. He was the son of Ismar Ehrlich and his wife Rosa Weigert, whose nephew was the great bacteriologist Karl Weigert. Ehrlich was educated at the Gymnasium at Wroclaw (Breslau) and subsequently at the Universities of Breslau, Strassburg, Freiburg-im-Breisgau and Leipzig. In 1878 he obtained his doctorate of medicine by means of a dissertation on the theory and practice of staining animal tissues. In 1897 Ehrlich was appointed Public Health Officer at Frankfurt-am-Main and when, in 1899, the Royal Institute of Experimental Therapy was established at Frankfurt, Ehrlich became its Director At this time, the spirochaete that causes syphilis was discovered by Schaudinn and Hoffmann in Berlin, and Ehrlich decided to seek a drug that would be effective especially against this spirochaete. Among the arsenical drugs already tested for other purposes was one, the 606th of the series tested, which had been set aside in 1907 as being ineffective. But when Ehrlich's former colleague Kitasato sent a pupil of his, named Hata, to work at Ehrlich's Institute, Ehrlich, learning that Hata had succeeded in infecting rabbits with syphilis, asked him to test this discarded drug on these rabbits. Hata did so and found that it was very effective. When hundreds of experiments had repeatedly proved its efficacy against syphilis, Ehrlich announced it under the name «Salvarsan» (1909-1910) dihydroxydiaminoarsenobenzenedihydrochloride The indefatigable industry shown by Ehrlich throughout his life, his kindness and modesty, his lifelong habit of eating little and smoking incessantly 25 strong cigars a day, a box of which he frequently carried under one arm, his invariable insistence on the repeated proof by many experiments of the results he published. In Frankfurt the street in which his Institute was situated was named Paul Ehrlichstrasse after him, but later, when the Jewish persecution began, this name was removed because Ehrlich was a Jew. After the Second World War, however, when his birth-place, Strehlen, came under the jurisdiction of the Polish authorities, they renamed it Ehrlichstadt, in honour of its great son.

Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann,  November 15, 1862 –  June 6, 1946, Nobel Laureate in 1912 in Literature (primarily in recognition of his fruitful, varied and outstanding production in the realm of dramatic art). Gerhart Hauptmann was born in Bad Obersalzbrunn (now Szczawno Zdrój – close to Wrocław), a fashionable resort in Eastern Germany. His father was Robert Hauptmann, a hotel owner, and mother Marie (Straehler) Hauptmann. After failing at the gymnasium in Wrocław (Breslau), Gerhart was sent to his uncle's estate. There he became aware of the Pietism and learned to know the peasants with whom he worked. Hauptmann had started to draw already in his childhood, and he entered the art academy in Wrocław (Breslau), intending to become a sculptor. At the age of twenty he moved to Jena, where he studied history at the university of Jena. His early naturalistic plays are still frequently performed. Hauptmann's bestknown works include The Weavers (1893), a humanist drama of a rebellion against the mechanisms of the Industrial Revolution, and Hannele (1884), about the conflict between reality and fantasy. Hauptman writes: “Hungry for culture, I resumed to Breslau where I spent a second, happier period. I attended the art academy, did sculpturing, learned what youth, hope, and beauty are, the value of friends, masters, and teachers.” Otto Stern,  17th February, 1888 –  17th August, 1969, Nobel Prize Winner in 1943 in Physics (in recognition of his contribution to the development of the molecular beam method and for his discovery of the magnetic moment of protons)

Otto Stern was born in Sorau, Upper Silesia, Germany (now Żory, Poland), on February 17, 1888. His grandfather was Abraham Stern, a rich Jewish merchant and the owner of a mill in Żory. In 1892 he moved A document from Wroclaw University Museum with his parents to Wrocław (Breslau), where he attended high school. He began to study physical chemistry in 1906, receiving his Ph.D. degree from the University of Wrocław (Breslau) in 1912. In the same year he joined Einstein at the University of Prague and later followed him to the University of Zurich, where he became Privatdocent of Physical Chemistry at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in 1913. In 1914 he went to the University of Frankfurt am Main as Privatdocent of Theoretical Physics,

remaining there until 1921, except for a period of military service. From 1921 to 1922 he was Associate Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Rostock, becoming, in 1923, Professor of Physical Chemistry and Director of the laboratory at the University of Hamburg, where he remained until 1933. When Hitler assumed power he left for the United States at the invitation of the Pittsburgh Carnegie Institute of Technology, where he remained until 1945, then becoming professor emeritus. After 1919, his attention was directed more to experimental physics. His development and application of the molecular beam method proved to be a powerful tool for investigating the properties of molecules, atoms and atomic nuclei. He collaborated with Gerlach to work on the deflection of atoms by the action of magnetic fields on their magnetic moment, then went on to measure the magnetic moments of sub-atomic particles, including the proton. His work on the production of interference by rays of hydrogen and helium was a striking demonstration of the wave nature of atoms and molecules. Otto Stern died on August 17, 1969 and was buried in a Berkley cemetery. Hans Georg Dehmelt,  9th September, 1922, Nobel Prize Winner in 1989 in Physics (for the development of the ion trap technique) German-born American physicist who shared one-half of the Nobel Prize for Physics with the German physicist Wolfgang Paul. Dehmelt received his share of the prize for his development of the ion trap technique (the Penning trap). Born 9 September 1922 in Görlitz (now Zgorzelec, Poland), Germany. Dehmelt writes in his autobiography: “Having received a notice from the draft board, I found it wise to volunteer for the anti-aircraft artillery and a motorized unit. I was not able to serve as a radio man but was assigned to a gun crew and never rose above the rank of senior private. Sent to relieve the German armies at Stalingrad, my battery was extremely lucky to escape the encirclement. A few months later I was even more lucky to be ordered back to Germany to study physics under an army program at the Universität Breslau (Wroclaw) in 1943. After one year of study, I was sent to the Western Front and captured in the Battle of the Bulge. I spent a year in an American prisoner of war camp in France and was released early in 1946. Supporting myself with the repair and barter of prewar radios, I took up my study of physics again at the Universität Göttingen”. After the war he continued his education at Göttingen, gaining his PhD there in 1950. He went to America in 1952 as a postdoctoral student at Duke University, North Carolina, and remained there until 1955. He then moved to the University of Washington, Seattle, where he was appointed professor of physics in 1961, the same year he became a naturalized American citizen. Dehmelt says when he heard that he'd won the Nobel Prize: “Because the prize money was taxed as `gambler's winnings,' I spent it in the appropriate fashion." Philipp Eduard Anton Lenard,  7th June, 1862 -  20th May1947, Nobel Prize Winner in 1905 in Physics (for his work on cathode rays) Philipp Lenard was born in Pressburg, Hungary (now Bratislava, Slovakia) German physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1905 for his research on cathode rays and the discovery of many of their properties. His results had important implications for the development of electronics and nuclear physics. After serving as a lecturer and as an assistant to Heinrich Hertz at the University of Bonn in 1893, Lenard was professor of physics successively at the universities of Wrocław (Breslau) (1894), Aachen (1895), Heidelberg (1896), and Kiel (1898). In 1907 he returned to the University of Heidelberg as professor of physics, where he stayed until his retirement in 1931.

Applying the discovery that cathode rays pass through thin leaves of metal, Lenard constructed (1898) a cathode-ray tube with an aluminum window through which the rays could pass into the open air. Using a phosphorescent screen, he showed that the rays decreased in number as the screen was drawn away from the tube and that they ceased at a distance. The experiments also demonstrated that the power of substances to absorb the rays depends on their density and not on their chemical nature and that absorption decreases with increasing A short CV written by Lenard (Wrocław UniversityMuseum) velocity of the rays. In similar experiments in 1899 he proved that cathode rays are created when light strikes metal surfaces; this phenomenon later became known as the photoelectric effect. Lenard's extensive research also included studies of ultraviolet light, the electrical conductivity of flames, and phosphorescence. He wrote a considerable number of books on cathode rays, relativity, and related subjects, including Über Kathodenstrahlen (1906; "On Cathode Rays") and Deutsche Physik, 4 vol. (1936-37; "German Physics"). An ardent supporter of Nazism, Lenard publicly denounced "Jewish" science, including Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. Phillip Lenard died in 1947 in Messelhausen, Germany. Till the end of the Second World War he took part in the German program of the atomic bomb. Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen,  1817 -  20th May1903, Nobel Prize Winner in 1902 in Literature (“the greatest living master of the art of historical writing, with special reference to his monumental work, ‘A history of Rome’”). Theodor Mommsen was born in Garding, Schleswig. He studied philology and jurisprudence at Kiel. From 1844 to 1847 he pursued archaeological studies in Italy and France. In 1848 he became a professor of law at Leipzig University. During the revolution of 1848 he edited a liberal newspaper, the Schleswig-Holsteinische Zeitung. In 1852 Mommsen was appointed professor of law at the University of Zurich. He was professor of law in Wrocław (Breslau), 1854-1858, and then he became professor of ancient history at Berlin until his death. Mommsen’s father was a Protestant minister, who encouraged his son to read German classics and such authors as Victor Hugo, Lord Byron, and William Shakespeare. In 1854 he married Marie Reimer, the daughter of a bookseller; they eventually had sixteen children. He served as a member of the Progressive party in the state parliament of Prussia from 1863 to 1866 and again from 1873 to 1879. After the unification of Germany, Mommsen sat in the German imperial parliament. Mommsen attacked on the anti-Semitism that he found among many of his colleagues. The conservative nationalist, scholar and journalist Heinrich von Treitschke published in 1879 a study on anti-Semitic movements and defended the natural rejection - inherent in the German national psyche - of foreign influences. Next year Mommsen with over 70 influential figures protested anti-Semitic agitation. Mommsen wrote that Jewish are Germans and racist hatred will come to an end sooner or later - not only religious tolerance will return to normal but there will be real respect for the distinctiveness of the Jewish culture.

Robert Koch,  11th December, 1843 -  May1910, Nobel Prize Winner in 1905 in Medicine (for his investigations and discoveries in relation to tuberculosis) Robert Koch was born on December 11, 1843, at Clausthal in the Upper Harz Mountains as a son of a mining engineer. In 1862 Koch went to the University of Göttingen to study medicine. After taking his M.D. degree in 1866, Koch went to Berlin for six months of chemical study and there came under the influence of Virchow. In 1867 he settled, after a period as Assistant in the General Hospital at Hamburg, in general practice, first at Langenhagen and soon after, in 1869, at Rackwitz, in the Province of Posen (Poznań - now Poland). Here he passed his District Medical Officer's Examination. In 1870 he volunteered for service in the Franco-Prussian war and from 1872 to 1880 he was District Medical Officer for Wollstein (now Wolsztyn, Poland), where he worked on anthrax. Anthrax was, at that time, prevalent among the farm animals in the Wollstein district. His laboratory was the 4-roomed flat that was his home, and his equipment, apart from the microscope given to him by his wife, he provided for himself. He shown that the disease can be transmitted by means of the blood of animals suffering from anthrax. The results of this painstaking work were demonstrated by Koch to Ferdinand Cohn, Professor of Botany at the University of Wrocław (Breslau), who called a meeting of his colleagues to witness this demonstration, among whom was Professor Cohnheim, Professor of Pathological Anatomy. Both Cohn and Cohnheim were deeply impressed by Koch's work and when Cohn, in 1876, published Koch's work in the botanical journal of Photographs of the anthrax bacillus taken by Koch during his which he was the editor, Koch immediately became work in Wollstein (now Wolsztyn, Poland) in 1876 famous. Some two years after his arrival in Berlin Koch discovered the tubercle bacillus. He was sent, in 1883, to Egypt as Leader of the German Cholera Commission, to investigate an outbreak of cholera in that country. Here he discovered the vibrio that causes cholera and brought back pure cultures of it to Germany. He also studied cholera in India. In 1885 Koch was appointed Professor of Hygiene in the University of Berlin and Director of the newly established Institute of Hygiene in the University there. In 1890 he was appointed Brigadier General (Generalarzt) Class I and Freeman of the City of Berlin. In 1891 he became an Honorary Professor of the Medical Faculty of Berlin and Director of the new Institute for Infectious Diseases. Eduard Buchner,  20th May, 1860 -  1917, Nobel Prize Winner in 1907 in Chemistry (for his biochemical researches and his discovery of cellfree fermentation) Eduard Buchner was born in Munich, the son of Dr. Ernst Buchner, Professor Extraordinary of Forensic Medicine and physician at the University, and Friederike née Martin. He matriculated at the Grammar School in his birth-place and after a short period of study at the Munich Polytechnic in the chemical laboratory, he started work in a preserve and canning factory, with which he later moved to Mombach on Mainz. The problems of chemistry had greatly attracted him at the Polytechnic and in 1884 he turned afresh to new studies in pure science, mainly in chemistry and in botany at the Botanic Institute, Munich. After one term in Erlangen in the laboratory of Otto Fischer, where meanwhile Curtius had been appointed director of the analytical department, he took his doctor's degree in the University of Munich in 1888. The following year saw his appointment as Assistant Lecturer in the organic laboratory of A. von Baeyer, and in 1891 Lecturer at the University.

By means of a special monetary grant, it was possible for Buchner to establish a small laboratory for the chemistry of fermentation and to give lectures and perform experiments on chemical fermentations. In the autumn of 1893 Buchner’s his researches into the contents of the yeast cell were successfully recommenced in the Hygienic Institute in Munich.. On January 9, 1897, it was possible to send his first paper, Über alkoholische Gärung ohne Hefezellen (On alcoholic fermentation without yeast cells). In 1909 he was transferred to the University of Wrocław (Breslau) and from there, in 1911, to Wurzburg. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907 for his biochemical investigations and his discovery of non-cellular fermentation. Karl von Frisch,  20th November 1886-  1982, Nobel Prize Winner in 1973 in Medicine (with Konrad Z. Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen for their discoveries concerning "organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns”) Karl von Frisch was born in Vienna, the son of university professor Anton Ritter von Frisch and his wife Marie, née Exner. He studied at a grammar school and later at the University of Vienna in the Faculty of Medicine. After the first exams, He switched to the Faculty of Philosophy and studied Zoology in Munich and Vienna. He received his doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1910. In 1921 he went to the University of Rostock as Professor and Director at the Zoology Faculty; in 1923 he moved to Breslau and in 1925 he succeeded his former teacher Richard Hertwig in Munich. With support from the Rockefeller Foundation he oversaw the building of a new Zoological Institute. After the destruction of the latter during the Second World War, he went to Graz in 1946, but returned to Munich in 1950 after the Institute had been reopened. He has been a Professor Emeritus since 1958. For his pioneering work in comparative behavioral physiology, particularly his studies of the complex communication between insects, von Frisch was awarded the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. In his early work he showed that fish and honeybees can see colors, fish can hear, and bees can distinguish dozens of closely related floral scents. In 1923 he described as a simple language the round and waggle dances of honeybees. An important implication of von Frisch's work is that behavioral continuity exists between animal communication and human language. Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger,  12th August 1887-  4th January 1961, Nobel Prize Winner in 1933 in Physics Erwin Schrödinger was born in Vienna, the only child of Rudolf Schrödinger, who was married to a daughter of Alexander Bauer, his Professor of Chemistry at the Technical College of Vienna. Schrödinger's wide interests dated from his school years at the Gymnasium, where he not only had a liking for the scientific disciplines, but also appreciated the severe logic of ancient grammar and the beauty of German poetry. From 1906 to 1910 he was a student at the University of Vienna.. It was in these years that Schrödinger acquired a mastery of eigenvalue problems in the physics of continuous media, thus laying the foundation for his future great work. During the First World War he served as an artillery officer. In 1920 he took up an academic position as assistant to Max Wien, followed by positions at Stuttgart (extraordinary professor), Breslau (ordinary professor), and at the University of Zurich (replacing von Laue) where he settled for six years. His great discovery, Schrödinger's wave equation, was made at the end of this epoch-during the first half of 1926. It came as a result of his dissatisfaction with the quantum condition in Bohr's orbit theory and his belief that atomic spectra should really be determined by some kind of eigenvalue problem. For this work he shared with Dirac the Nobel Prize for 1933. After his retirement he returned to an honoured position in Vienna. He died after a long illness, survived by his faithful companion, Annemarie Bertel, whom he married in 1920.