Carl Hermann
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German professor of crystallography Carl Hermann (1898 June 17–1961 September 12) was an inventor (with Charles-Victor Mauguin) of an international standard notation for crystallographic groups.
Born in the north German port town of Wesermünde to parents both of long-time ministerial families, he got his doctorate from Göttingen in 1923, as a pupil of Max Born and a fellow student with Werner Heisenberg. With Paul P. Ewald at Stuttgart he nurtured the growing field of crystallography, especially the study of space groups, and began what was later to become Structure Reports, a reference series giving every known crystal structure determination.
When the Nazi Party rose to power, he refused their political restrictions on academic positions, leaving to take a position as a physicist with industrial dye firm I.G. Farbenwerke at Ludwigshafen, where he continued his crystallographic research and studied symmetry in higher-dimensional spaces. During the war that followed, he and his wife Eva helped many Jews hide and escape persecution and death, for which he himself spent much time in prison and was sentenced to death. As he was an eminent scientist with influential friends, the sentence was never carried out, and he survived.
After the war, he lectured briefly at Darmstadt Polytechnic. Then, in 1947, he accepted a newly formed chair in crystallography at the University of Marburg, where he became director of the Crystallographic Institute and remained until his death.
An active Quaker, and having a gift for languages, he devoted much time to promoting international understanding.
In August 1994, the German Crystallographic Society (DGK) established the Carl Hermann Medal, its highest distinction, for outstanding contributions to the science of crystallography.
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