James Franck
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James Franck (August 26, 1882 – May 21, 1964),born in Hamburg, was a German-born physicist and Nobel laureate.
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[edit] Education and Career
Franck completed his Ph.D. in 1906 and received his venia legendi for physics in 1911, both at the University of Berlin, where he lectured and taught until 1918, having reached the position of extraordinarius professor. After World War I, in which he served and was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class, Franck became the Head of the Physics Division of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft for Physical Chemistry. In 1920, Franck became ordinarius professor of experimental physics and Director of the Second Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Göttingen. While at the university, he worked on quantum physics with Max Born, who was Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics. [1]
In 1925, Franck received the Nobel Prize in Physics, mostly for his work in 1912-1914 which included the Franck-Hertz experiment, an important confirmation of the Bohr model of the atom.
In 1933, after the Nazis came to power, he left his post in Germany and continued his research in the United States, first in Baltimore and then, after a year in Denmark, in Chicago. This is where he became involved in the Manhattan Project during World War II; he was Director of the Chemistry Division of the Metallurgical Laboratory [2] at the University of Chicago. [3] He was also the chairman of the Committee on Political and Social Problems regarding the atomic bomb; the committee consisted of himself and other scientists at the Met Lab, including Donald J. Hughes, J. J. Nickson, Eugene Rabinowitch, Glenn T. Seaborg, J. C. Stearns and Leo Szilard. The committee is most known for the compilation of the Franck Report, finished on June 11, 1945, which was a summary of the problems regarding the military application of the Atomic Bomb.
When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue and James Franck in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from stealing them. He placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. After the war, he returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The Nobel Society then recast the Nobel Prizes using the original gold.
[edit] Awards and Honors
- 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics The award was shared with Gustav Ludwig Hertz, and it was for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of electrons on atoms.
- 1951 Max Planck Meaille der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft [4]
- 1955 Rumford Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences - For his work on photosynthesis. [6]
- 1964 Elected as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London, for his contribution to the understanding of exchanges of energy in electron collisions, to the interpretation of molecular spectra, and to problems of photosynthesis. [7]
[edit] See also
[edit] Further information
- http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1925/franck-bio.html biography, on the Nobel website
- Annotated bibliography for James Franck from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
[edit] Notes
- ^ Nobel Prize Biography
- ^ The Metallurgical Laboratory – known as the Met Lab – was one of four main sites working on the Manhattan Project. The other three were Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Hanford Site.
- ^ Nobel Prize Biography
- ^ Nobel Prize Biography
- ^ Nobel Prize Biography
- ^ Nobel Prize Biography
- ^ Nobel Prize Biography
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