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104-462: The report was named for James Franck , the head of the committee that produced it. The committee was appointed by Arthur Compton and met in secret, in all-night sessions in a highly secure environment. Largely written by Eugene Rabinowitch , the report spoke about the impossibility to keep the United States atomic discoveries secret indefinitely. It predicted a nuclear arms race , forcing

208-469: A Privatdozent at Göttingen. In 1919 and 1920, Max Born became displeased about the large number of objections against Einstein's relativity, and gave speeches in the winter of 1919 in support of Einstein. Born received pay for his relativity speeches which helped with expenses through the year of rapid inflation. The speeches in German language became a book published in 1920 of which Einstein received

312-699: A British subject on 31 August 1939, one day before the Second World War broke out in Europe. Born remained at Edinburgh until he reached the retirement age of 70 in 1952. He retired to Bad Pyrmont , in West Germany , in 1954. In October, he received word that he was being awarded the Nobel Prize. His fellow physicists had never stopped nominating him. Franck and Fermi had nominated him in 1947 and 1948 for his work on crystal lattices, and over

416-835: A Silesian family of industrialists. She died when Max was four years old, on 29 August 1886. Max had a sister, Käthe, who was born in 1884, and a half-brother, Wolfgang, from his father's second marriage, to Bertha Lipstein. Wolfgang later became Professor of Art History at the City College of New York . Initially educated at the König-Wilhelm- Gymnasium in Breslau, Born entered the University of Breslau in 1901. The German university system allowed students to move easily from one university to another, so he spent summer semesters at Heidelberg University in 1902 and

520-554: A concert Franck met Ingrid Josephson, a Swedish pianist. They were married in a Swedish ceremony in Gothenburg on 23 December 1907. They had two daughters, Dagmar (Daggie), who was born in 1909, and Elisabeth (Lisa), who was born in 1912. To pursue an academic career in Germany, having a doctorate was not enough; one needed a venia legendi , or habilitation. This could be achieved with either another major thesis or by producing

624-614: A family of rabbis. Franck attended primary school in Hamburg. Starting in 1891 he attended the Wilhelm-Gymnasium , which was then a boys-only school. Hamburg had no university then, so prospective students had to attend one of the 22 universities elsewhere in Germany. Intending to study law and economics, Franck entered the University of Heidelberg in 1901, as it had a renowned law school. He attended lectures on law, but

728-690: A frequent visitor to Born's home. Within days of the armistice in November 1918, Planck had the Army release Born. A chance meeting with Fritz Haber that month led to discussion of the manner in which an ionic compound is formed when a metal reacts with a halogen , which is today known as the Born–Haber cycle . Even before Born had taken up the chair in Berlin, von Laue had changed his mind, and decided that he wanted it after all. He arranged with Born and

832-466: A higher energy level with 4.9 eV more energy. This means that the electron is more loosely bound to the mercury atom. There were no intermediate levels or possibilities. In a second paper presented in May 1914, Franck and Hertz reported on the light emission by the mercury atoms that had absorbed energy from collisions. They showed that the wavelength of this ultraviolet light corresponded exactly to

936-534: A meeting of the Göttingen Mathematics Society. He did not get far before he was publicly challenged by Klein and Max Abraham , who rejected relativity, forcing him to terminate the lecture. However, Hilbert and Runge were interested in Born's work, and, after some discussion with Born, they became convinced of the veracity of his results and persuaded him to give the lecture again. This time he

1040-519: A pair of children from drowning in the Spree River . For his Doctor of Philosophy (Dir. Phil.) under Warburg's supervision, Warburg suggested that he study corona discharges . Franck found this topic too complex, so he changed the focus of his thesis . Entitled Über die Beweglichkeit der Ladungsträger der Spitzenentladung ("On the Mobility of Ions "), it would subsequently be published in

1144-471: A paper entitled Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen ("Quantum-Theoretical Re-interpretation of Kinematic and Mechanical Relations") to review, and submit for publication. In the paper, Heisenberg formulated quantum theory, avoiding the concrete, but unobservable, representations of electron orbits by using parameters such as transition probabilities for quantum jumps, which necessitated using two indexes corresponding to

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1248-473: A paper on electrodynamics in 1912, and Born had used them in his work on the lattices theory of crystals in 1921. While matrices were used in these cases, the algebra of matrices with their multiplication did not enter the picture as they did in the matrix formulation of quantum mechanics. With the help of his assistant and former student Pascual Jordan , Born began immediately to make a transcription and extension, and they submitted their results for publication;

1352-488: A popular science book, The Restless Universe , and a textbook, Atomic Physics , that soon became a standard text, going through seven editions. His family soon settled into life in England, with his daughters Irene and Gritli becoming engaged to Welshman Brinley (Bryn) Newton-John and Englishman Maurice Pryce respectively. Born's granddaughter Olivia Newton-John was the daughter of Irene. Born's position at Cambridge

1456-763: A position at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen . He needed a new collaborator, so he took on Hilde Levi , whose recent thesis had impressed him. His original intention was to continue his research into the fluorescence of vapours and liquids, but under Bohr's influence they began to take an interest in biological aspects of these reactions, particularly photosynthesis , the process by which plants use light to convert carbon dioxide and water into more organic compounds. Biological processes turned out to be far more complicated than simple reactions in atoms and molecules. He co-authored two papers with Levi on

1560-465: A practising Lutheran when he got married, as did Max's sister Käthe. Despite never practising his religion, Born refused to convert, and his wedding on 2 August 1913 was a garden ceremony. However, he was baptised as a Lutheran in March 1914 by the same pastor who had performed his wedding ceremony. Born regarded "religious professions and churches as a matter of no importance". His decision to be baptised

1664-420: A problem had aroused his interest he was completely captivated, indeed obsessed by it. Common sense and straight logic were his main tools, together with simple apparatus. His research followed an almost straight line, from his early studies of ion mobilities to his last work on photosynthesis; it was always the energy exchange between atoms or molecules that fascinated him. In addition to the Nobel Prize. Franck

1768-538: A specific quantity (4.9  electronvolts ) of its kinetic energy before flying away. A faster electron does not decelerate completely after a collision, but loses precisely the same amount of its kinetic energy. Slower electrons just bounce off mercury atoms without losing any significant speed or kinetic energy. These experimental results provided confirmation of Albert Einstein 's photoelectric effect and Planck's relation ( E = fh ) linking energy ( E ) and frequency ( f ) arising from quantisation of energy with

1872-458: A subject near and dear to Klein – which Klein had arranged to be the subject for the prestigious annual Philosophy Faculty Prize offered by the university. Entries could also qualify as doctoral dissertations. Born responded by turning down the offer, as applied mathematics was not his preferred area of study. Klein was greatly offended. Klein had the power to make or break academic careers, so Born felt compelled to atone by submitting an entry for

1976-433: A substantial body of published work. Franck chose the latter route. There were many unsolved problems in physics at the time, and by 1914 he had published 34 articles. He was the sole author of some, but generally preferred working in collaboration with Eva von Bahr , Lise Meitner , Robert Pohl , Peter Pringsheim  [ de ] , Robert W. Wood , Arthur Wehnelt or Wilhelm Westphal . His most fruitful collaboration

2080-778: A wide variety of related phenomena. For his work during this time period, Franck was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1929. This period came to an end when the Nazi Party won power in Germany in an election on 2 March 1933. The following month it enacted the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service , which provided for the retirement or dismissal of all Jewish civil servants, along with political opponents of

2184-520: Is a great uncle of British comedian Ben Elton . By the end of 1913, Born had published 27 papers, including important work on relativity and the dynamics of crystal lattices (3 with Theodore von Karman ), which became a book. In 1914, he received a letter from Max Planck explaining that a new professor extraordinarius chair of theoretical physics had been created at the University of Berlin . The chair had been offered to Max von Laue , but he had turned it down. Born accepted. The First World War

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2288-455: Is no other Born to be found in Germany today." In negotiating for the position with the education ministry, Born arranged for another chair, of experimental physics, at Göttingen for his long-time friend and colleague James Franck . In 1919 Elisabeth Bormann joined the Institut für Theoretische Physik as his assistant. She developed the first atomic beams. Working with Born, Bormann was

2392-640: Is the root cause of all evil in the world. In retirement, he continued scientific work, and produced new editions of his books. In 1955 he became one of signatories to the Russell-Einstein Manifesto . He died at age 87 in hospital in Göttingen on 5 January 1970, and is buried in the Stadtfriedhof there, in the same cemetery as Walther Nernst , Wilhelm Weber , Max von Laue , Otto Hahn , Max Planck , and David Hilbert . He

2496-671: The Annalen der Physik . With his thesis completed, Franck had to perform his deferred military service. He was called up on 1 October 1906 and joined the 1st Telegraph Battalion. He suffered a minor horse riding accident in December and was discharged as unfit for duty. He took up an assistantship at the Physikalische Verein in Frankfurt in 1907, but did not enjoy it, and soon returned to Frederick William University. At

2600-794: The Franck Report . Finished on 11 June 1945, it recommended that the atomic bombs not be used on the Japanese cities without warning. In any event, the Interim Committee decided otherwise. Franck married Hertha Sponer in a civil ceremony on 29 June 1946, his first wife, Ingrid, having died in 1942. In his post-war research, he continued to tackle the problem of explaining the mechanism of photosynthesis. Meitner saw no break between his early and later work. She recalled that Franck enjoyed talking about his problems, not so much to explain them to others as to satisfy his own mind. Once

2704-899: The Frederick William University in Berlin, where he lectured and taught until 1918, having reached the position of professor extraordinarius . He served as a volunteer in the German Army during World War I . He was seriously injured in 1917 in a gas attack 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 professor ordinarius of experimental physics and Director of

2808-594: The Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933, Franck resigned his post in protest against the dismissal of fellow academics. He assisted Frederick Lindemann in helping dismissed Jewish scientists find work overseas, before he left Germany in November 1933. After a year at the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark , he moved to the United States, where he worked at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and then

2912-558: The Nazi Party came to power in Germany, and Born, who was Jewish , was suspended from his professorship at the University of Göttingen. He emigrated to the United Kingdom, where he took a job at St John's College, Cambridge , and wrote a popular science book, The Restless Universe , as well as Atomic Physics , which soon became a standard textbook. In October 1936, he became the Tait Professor of Natural Philosophy at

3016-481: The Nazi Party came to power in Germany. In May, Born became one of six Jewish professors at Göttingen who were suspended with pay; Franck had already resigned. In twelve years they had built Göttingen into one of the world's foremost centres for physics. Born began looking for a new job, writing to Maria Göppert-Mayer at Johns Hopkins University and Rudi Ladenburg at Princeton University . He accepted an offer from St John's College, Cambridge . At Cambridge, he wrote

3120-528: The Picardy sector of the Western Front . He became a deputy officer ( offizierstellvertreter ), and then a lieutenant ( leutnant ) in 1915. In early 1915 he was transferred to Fritz Haber 's new unit that would introduce clouds of chlorine gas as a weapon. With Otto Hahn he was responsible for locating sites for the attacks. He was awarded the Iron Cross , Second Class, on 30 March 1915, and

3224-459: The Planck constant ( h ). But they also provided evidence supporting the model of the atom that had been proposed the previous year by Niels Bohr . Its key feature was that an electron inside an atom occupies one of the atom's "quantum energy levels". Before a collision, an electron inside the mercury atom occupies its lowest available energy level. After the collision, the electron inside occupies

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3328-503: The Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1937, and of the Royal Society of London in March 1939. During 1939, he got as many of his remaining friends and relatives still in Germany as he could out of the country, including his sister Käthe, in-laws Kurt and Marga, and the daughters of his friend Heinrich Rausch von Traubenberg. Hedi ran a domestic bureau, placing young Jewish women in jobs. Born received his certificate of naturalisation as

3432-583: The Thomson model of the atom. Born settled in as a young academic at Göttingen as a Privatdozent . In Göttingen, Born stayed at a boarding house run by Sister Annie at Dahlmannstraße 17, known as El BoKaReBo. The name was derived from the first letters of the last names of its boarders: "El" for Ella Philipson (a medical student), "Bo" for Born and Hans Bolza (a physics student), "Ka" for Theodore von Kármán (a Privatdozent ), and "Re" for Albrecht Renner (another medical student). A frequent visitor to

3536-545: The Thomson model of the atom. A chance meeting with Fritz Haber in Berlin in 1918 led to discussion of how an ionic compound is formed when a metal reacts with a halogen , which is today known as the Born–Haber cycle . In World War I he was originally placed as a radio operator, but his specialist knowledge led to his being moved to research duties on sound ranging . In 1921 Born returned to Göttingen, where he arranged another chair for his long-time friend and colleague James Franck . Under Born, Göttingen became one of

3640-492: The University of Chicago , where his work on photosynthesis had attracted interest, in 1938. Franck's first paper there, co-authored with Edward Teller , was on photochemical processes in crystals. Hans Gaffron became his collaborator. They were joined by Pringsheim, who escaped from Belgium after the German invasion . Franck arranged a position for Pringsheim at his laboratory. Both his daughters and their families moved to

3744-691: The University of Chicago . During this period he became interested in photosynthesis . Franck participated in the Manhattan Project during World War II as Director of the Chemistry Division of the Metallurgical Laboratory . He was also the chairman of the Committee on Political and Social Problems regarding the atomic bomb, which is best known for the compilation of the Franck Report , which recommended that

3848-457: The University of Edinburgh , an offer that Born promptly accepted, assuming the chair in October 1936. In Edinburgh, Born promoted the teaching of mathematical physics . He had two German assistants, E. Walter Kellermann and Klaus Fuchs , and one Scottish assistant, Robert Schlapp , and together they continued to investigate the mysterious behaviour of electrons . Born became a Fellow of

3952-476: The University of Edinburgh , where, working with German-born assistants E. Walter Kellermann and Klaus Fuchs , he continued his research into physics. Born became a naturalised British subject on 31 August 1939, one day before World War II broke out in Europe. He remained in Edinburgh until 1952. He retired to Bad Pyrmont , in West Germany , and died in a hospital in Göttingen on 5 January 1970. Max Born

4056-541: The University of Zurich in 1903. Fellow students at Breslau, Otto Toeplitz and Ernst Hellinger , told Born about the University of Göttingen , and Born went there in April 1904. At Göttingen he found three renowned mathematicians: Felix Klein , David Hilbert and Hermann Minkowski . Very soon after his arrival, Born formed close ties to the latter two men. From the first class he took with Hilbert, Hilbert identified Born as having exceptional abilities and selected him as

4160-455: The atomic bombs not be used on the Japanese cities without warning. James Franck was born in Hamburg , Germany, on 26 August 1882, into a Jewish family, the second child and first son of Jacob Franck, a banker, and his wife Rebecca née Nachum Drucker. He had an older sister, Paula, and a younger brother, Robert Bernard. His father was a devout and religious man, while his mother came from

4264-436: The wave function ". Born entered the University of Göttingen in 1904, where he met the three renowned mathematicians Felix Klein , David Hilbert , and Hermann Minkowski . He wrote his PhD thesis on the subject of the stability of elastic wires and tapes, winning the university's Philosophy Faculty Prize. In 1905, he began researching special relativity with Minkowski, and subsequently wrote his habilitation thesis on

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4368-615: The "new weapon" be made before the eyes of representatives of all of the United Nations , on a barren island or desert , or to try to keep the existence of the nuclear bomb secret for as long as possible. In the first case, the international community would be warned of the dangers and encouraged to develop an effective international control on such weapons. In the latter case, the United States would gain several years time to further develop their nuclear armament before other countries would start their own production. The Franck Report

4472-494: The 1933 Prize "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory". On 25 November 1933, Born received a letter from Heisenberg in which he said he had been delayed in writing due to a "bad conscience" that he alone had received the Prize "for work done in Göttingen in collaboration—you, Jordan and I." Heisenberg went on to say that Born and Jordan's contribution to quantum mechanics cannot be changed by "a wrong decision from

4576-432: The 4.9 eV of energy that the flying electron had lost. The relationship of energy and wavelength had also been predicted by Bohr. Franck and Hertz completed their last paper together in December 1918. In it, they reconciled the discrepancies between their results and Bohr's theory, which they now acknowledged. In his Nobel lecture, Franck admitted that it was "completely incomprehensible that we had failed to recognise

4680-597: The Chemistry Division, Franck was also the chairman of the Metallurgical Laboratory's Committee on Political and Social Problems regarding the atomic bomb, which consisted of himself and Donald J. Hughes , J. J. Nickson , Eugene Rabinowitch , Glenn T. Seaborg , J. C. Stearns and Leó Szilárd . In 1945, Franck warned Henry A. Wallace of their fears that "mankind has learned to unleash atomic power without being ethically and politically prepared to use it wisely." The committee compiled what became known as

4784-507: The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies about special relativity . Born was intrigued, and began researching the subject. He was devastated to discover that Minkowski was also researching special relativity along the same lines, but when he wrote to Minkowski about his results, Minkowski asked him to return to Göttingen and do his habilitation there. Born accepted. Toeplitz helped Born brush up on his matrix algebra so he could work with

4888-503: The Franck Report is available at these online locations: James Franck James Franck ( German pronunciation: [ˈdʒɛɪ̯ms ˈfʁaŋk] ; 26 August 1882 – 21 May 1964) was a German physicist who won the 1925 Nobel Prize for Physics with Gustav Hertz "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom". He completed his doctorate in 1906 and his habilitation in 1911 at

4992-618: The Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold medal, along with that of Max von Laue in aqua regia to prevent the Germans from taking 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 Prize medals. In 1935, Franck moved to

5096-480: The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute examined atomic electrons in their excited state, results that would later prove important in the development of the laser . They coined the term " metastable " for atoms spending an extended time in a state other than that of least energy . When Niels Bohr visited Berlin in 1920, Meitner and Franck arranged for him to come to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute to talk with

5200-460: The Minkowski household for Sunday dinners. In addition, while performing his duties as scribe and assistant, Born often saw Minkowski at Hilbert's house. Born's relationship with Klein was more problematic. Born attended a seminar conducted by Klein and professors of applied mathematics , Carl Runge and Ludwig Prandtl , on the subject of elasticity . Although not particularly interested in

5304-646: The Second Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Göttingen . While there he worked on quantum physics with Max Born , who was Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics. His work included the Franck–Hertz experiment , an important confirmation of the Bohr model of the atom . He promoted the careers of women in physics, notably Lise Meitner , Hertha Sponer and Hilde Levi . After

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5408-472: The Second Institute for Experimental Physics, a fully tenured professor ordinarius . He was allowed two assistants, so he brought Hertha Sponer with him from Berlin to fill one of the positions. Pohl, a gifted teacher, headed the First Institute, and handled the lectures. Franck refurbished the laboratory with the latest equipment using funds from his own pocket. Under Born and Franck, Göttingen

5512-468: The United States to develop nuclear armaments at such a pace that no other nation would think of attacking first from fear of overwhelming retaliation. This prediction turned out to be accurate, as the nuclear arms race and the concept of mutual assured destruction became a major factor in the Cold War . The report recommended that the nuclear bomb not be used, and proposed that either a demonstration of

5616-550: The United States, and he was also able to bring out his elderly mother and aunt. He became a naturalised United States citizen on 21 July 1941, so he was not an enemy alien when the United States declared war on Germany on 11 December 1941. His daughters still were, though, so they were restricted from travelling, and could not take care of their mother when she fell ill and died on 10 January 1942, although they were permitted to attend her funeral. In February 1942, Arthur H. Compton established its Metallurgical Laboratory at

5720-539: The United States, where he had accepted a professorship at Johns Hopkins University. The laboratory there was poorly equipped compared to the one in Göttingen, but he received $ 10,000 for equipment from the Rockefeller Foundation . A more intractable problem was that the university had no money to hire skilled staff. Franck was concerned about his family members remaining in Germany, and needed money to help them emigrate. He therefore accepted an offer from

5824-477: The University of Chicago. As part of the Manhattan Project , its mission was to build nuclear reactors to create plutonium that would be used in atomic bombs . The Metallurgical Laboratory's Chemistry Division was initially headed by Frank Spedding , but he preferred hands on work to administration. Compton then turned to Franck, with some trepidation owing to his German background. Compton later wrote: How Franck welcomed an invitation to join our project! It

5928-602: The University of Göttingen's Institute for Theoretical Physics included Enrico Fermi , Werner Heisenberg, Gerhard Herzberg , Friedrich Hund, Pascual Jordan, Wolfgang Pauli, Léon Rosenfeld , Edward Teller , and Eugene Wigner . Walter Heitler became an assistant to Born in 1928, and completed his habilitation under him in 1929. Born not only recognised talent to work with him, but he "let his superstars stretch past him; to those less gifted, he patiently handed out respectable but doable assignments." Delbrück, and Goeppert-Mayer went on to be awarded Nobel Prizes. In January 1933,

6032-463: The atomic bomb, met on June 21 to reexamine its earlier conclusions. However, this committee reaffirmed that there was no alternative to the use of the bomb and on August 6 and 9, the Americans dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki . The Report was declassified and released to the public in early 1946, but Manhattan Project officials required the censorship of some passages. The text of

6136-466: The boarding house was Paul Peter Ewald , a doctoral student of Arnold Sommerfeld on loan to Hilbert at Göttingen as a special assistant for physics. Richard Courant , a mathematician and Privatdozent , called these people the "in group". In 1912, Born met Hedwig (Hedi) Ehrenberg, the daughter of a Leipzig University law professor, and a friend of Carl Runge's daughter Iris . She was of Jewish background on her father's side, although he had become

6240-469: The candidate how to conduct original research, while still staying within the limits of the candidate's ability, the laboratory's equipment and the institute's budget. Under his direction, research was carried out into the structure of atoms and molecules. In his own research, Franck developed what became known as the Franck–Condon principle , a rule in spectroscopy and quantum chemistry that explains

6344-640: The city of Hamburg awarded him the Hanseatic Cross on 11 January 1916. While in hospital with pleurisy , he co-wrote yet another scientific paper with Hertz, and he was appointed an assistant professor in his absence by Frederick William University on 19 September 1916. Sent to the Russian front , he came down with dysentery . He returned to Berlin, where he joined Hertz, Westphal, Hans Geiger , Otto Hahn and others at Haber's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry , working on

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6448-629: The development of gas masks . He was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class, on 23 February 1918. He was discharged from the Army on 25 November 1918, soon after the war ended. With the war over, Haber's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute now returned to research, and Haber offered Franck a job. His new post came with more pay, but was not a tenured position. It did however allow Franck to pursue his research as he wished. Working with new, younger collaborators such as Walter Grotrian , Paul Knipping, Thea Krüger, Fritz Reiche and Hertha Sponer , his first papers at

6552-540: The faculties concerned for them to exchange jobs. In April 1919, Born became professor ordinarius and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics on the science faculty at the University of Frankfurt am Main . While there, he was approached by the University of Göttingen, which was looking for a replacement for Peter Debye as Director of the Physical Institute. "Theoretical physics," Einstein advised him, "will flourish wherever you happen to be; there

6656-417: The first to measure the free path of atoms in gases and the size of molecules. For the 12 years Born and Franck were at the University of Göttingen (1921 to 1933), Born had a collaborator with shared views on basic scientific concepts—a benefit for teaching and research. Born's collaborative approach with experimental physicists was similar to that of Arnold Sommerfeld at the University of Munich , who

6760-399: The four-dimensional Minkowski space matrices used in the latter's project to reconcile relativity with electrodynamics . Born and Minkowski got along well, and their work made good progress, but Minkowski died suddenly of appendicitis on 12 January 1909. The mathematics students had Born speak on their behalf at the funeral. A few weeks later, Born attempted to present their results at

6864-631: The fundamental significance of Bohr's theory, so much so, that we never even mentioned it once". On 10 December 1926, Franck and Hertz were awarded the 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom.". Franck enlisted in the German Army soon after the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. In December he was sent to

6968-465: The government. As a veteran of the First World War, Franck was exempt, but he submitted his resignation anyway on 17 April 1933. He once commented that science was his God and nature was his religion. He did not require his daughters to attend religious instruction classes at school, and even let them have a decorated tree at Christmas; but he was proud of his Jewish heritage all the same. He

7072-399: The imagination which should not be admissible in any field of science. On the other hand, any assertion of probability is either right or wrong from the standpoint of the theory on which it is based. This loosening of thinking ( Lockerung des Denkens ) seems to me to be the greatest blessing which modern science has given to us. For the belief in a single truth and in being the possessor thereof

7176-417: The initial and final states. When Born read the paper, he recognized the formulation as one which could be transcribed and extended to the systematic language of matrices, which he had learned from his study under Jakob Rosanes at Breslau University . Up until this time, matrices were seldom used by physicists; they were considered to belong to the realm of pure mathematics . Gustav Mie had used them in

7280-453: The intensity of vibronic transitions , simultaneous changes in electronic and vibrational energy levels of a molecule due to the absorption or emission of a photon of the appropriate energy. The principle states that during an electronic transition , a change from one vibrational energy level to another will be more likely to happen if the two vibrational wave functions overlap more significantly. The principle has since been applied to

7384-597: The jurist Rudolf von Jhering ). Born was survived by his wife Hedi and their children Irene, Gritli and Gustav . Singer and actress Olivia Newton-John was a daughter of Irene (1914–2003), while Gustav is the father of musician and academic Georgina Born and actor Max Born ( Fellini Satyricon ) who are thus also Max's grandchildren. His great-grandchildren include songwriter Brett Goldsmith , singer Tottie Goldsmith , racing car driver Emerson Newton-John , and singer Chloe Rose Lattanzi . Born helped his nephew, architect, Otto Königsberger (1908–1999) obtain commission in

7488-575: The lecture scribe, whose function was to write up the class notes for the students' mathematics reading room at the University of Göttingen. Being class scribe put Born into regular, invaluable contact with Hilbert. Hilbert became Born's mentor after selecting him to be the first to hold the unpaid, semi-official position of assistant. Born's introduction to Minkowski came through Born's stepmother, Bertha, as she knew Minkowski from dancing classes in Königsberg . The introduction netted Born invitations to

7592-530: The now-standard interpretation of the probability density function for ψ*ψ in the Schrödinger equation , which he published in July 1926. In a letter to Born on 4 December 1926, Einstein made his famous remark regarding quantum mechanics: Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to

7696-606: The outside." In 1954, Heisenberg wrote an article honouring Planck for his insight in 1900, in which he credited Born and Jordan for the final mathematical formulation of matrix mechanics and Heisenberg went on to stress how great their contributions were to quantum mechanics, which were not "adequately acknowledged in the public eye." Those who received their PhD degrees under Born at Göttingen included Max Delbrück , Siegfried Flügge , Friedrich Hund , Pascual Jordan , Maria Goeppert-Mayer , Lothar Wolfgang Nordheim , Robert Oppenheimer , and Victor Weisskopf . Born's assistants at

7800-433: The paper was received for publication just 60 days after Heisenberg's paper. A follow-on paper was submitted for publication before the end of the year by all three authors. The result was a surprising formulation: where p and q were matrices for location and momentum , and I is the identity matrix . The left hand side of the equation is not zero because matrix multiplication is not commutative . This formulation

7904-459: The prize. A month later, he passed his oral examination and was awarded his PhD in mathematics magna cum laude . On graduation, Born was obliged to perform his military service, which he had deferred while a student. He found himself drafted into the German army , and posted to the 2nd Guards Dragoons "Empress Alexandra of Russia", which was stationed in Berlin . His service was brief, as he

8008-436: The prize. Because Klein refused to supervise him, Born arranged for Carl Runge to be his supervisor. Woldemar Voigt and Karl Schwarzschild became his other examiners. Starting from his paper, Born developed the equations for the stability conditions. As he became more interested in the topic, he had an apparatus constructed that could test his predictions experimentally. On 13 June 1906, the rector announced that Born had won

8112-476: The proofs before publication. A third edition was published in 1922 and an English translation was published in 1924. Born represented light speed as a function of curvature, "the velocity of light is much greater for some directions of the light ray than its ordinary value c, and other bodies can also attain much greater velocities. " In 1925, Born and Heisenberg formulated the matrix mechanics representation of quantum mechanics . On 9 July, Heisenberg gave Born

8216-581: The same lines as Heisenberg. Soon, Wolfgang Pauli used the matrix method to calculate the energy values of the hydrogen atom and found that they agreed with the Bohr model . Another important contribution was made by Erwin Schrödinger , who looked at the problem using wave mechanics . This had a great deal of appeal to many at the time, as it offered the possibility of returning to deterministic classical physics. Born would have none of this, as it ran counter to facts determined by experiment. He formulated

8320-520: The secret of the 'old one'. I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing at dice. This quotation is often paraphrased as ' God does not play dice '. In 1928, Einstein nominated Heisenberg, Born, and Jordan for the Nobel Prize in Physics , but Heisenberg alone won the 1932 Prize "for the creation of quantum mechanics, the application of which has led to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen", while Schrödinger and Dirac shared

8424-407: The subject, Born was obliged to present a paper. He presented one in which, taking the simple case of a curved wire with both ends fixed, he used Hilbert's calculus of variations to determine the configuration that would minimise potential energy and therefore be the most stable. Klein was impressed, and invited Born to submit a thesis on the subject of "Stability of Elastica in a Plane and Space" –

8528-585: The subject, which he would return to over the following years. Franck found a position at the Polytekniske Læreanstalt in Copenhagen for Arthur von Hippel, who was now his son in law, having married his daughter Dagmar. He decided to provide financial security for his children by dividing his Nobel Prize money between them. The gold medal itself was entrusted to Niels Bohr for safekeeping. When Germany invaded Denmark on 9 April 1940,

8632-813: The world's foremost centres for physics. In 1925 Born and Werner Heisenberg formulated the matrix mechanics representation of quantum mechanics. The following year, he formulated the now-standard interpretation of the probability density function for ψ*ψ in the Schrödinger equation , for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954. His influence extended far beyond his own research. Max Delbrück , Siegfried Flügge , Friedrich Hund , Pascual Jordan , Maria Goeppert-Mayer , Lothar Wolfgang Nordheim , Robert Oppenheimer , and Victor Weisskopf all received their PhD degrees under Born at Göttingen, and his assistants included Enrico Fermi , Werner Heisenberg , Gerhard Herzberg , Friedrich Hund, Wolfgang Pauli , Léon Rosenfeld , Edward Teller , and Eugene Wigner . In January 1933,

8736-554: The years, he had also been nominated for his work on solid state physics, quantum mechanics and other topics. In 1954, he received the prize for "fundamental research in Quantum Mechanics, especially in the statistical interpretation of the wave function" —something that he had worked on alone. In his Nobel lecture he reflected on the philosophical implications of his work: I believe that ideas such as absolute certitude, absolute exactness, final truth, etc. are figments of

8840-575: The younger staff without the presence of the bonzen ("bigwigs"). In 1920, the University of Göttingen offered Max Born its chair of theoretical physics, which had recently been vacated by Peter Debye . Göttingen was an important centre for mathematics, thanks to David Hilbert , Felix Klein , Hermann Minkowski and Carl Runge , but not so much for physics. This would change. As part of his price for coming to Göttingen, Born wanted Franck to head experimental physics there. On 15 November 1920, Franck became Professor of Experimental Physics and Director of

8944-414: Was a German-British physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics . He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 1930s. Born was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics for his "fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially in the statistical interpretation of

9048-500: Was a vote of confidence that far exceeded his hopes, and it gave him a chance to do his part for the cause of freedom. "It's not the German people I'm fighting", he explained. "It's the Nazis. They have a stranglehold over Germany. The German people are helpless until we can break the strength of their Nazi masters." The chemists welcomed Franck as an elder scientific statesman whose guidance they were glad to follow. In addition to heading

9152-449: Was again medically discharged after just six weeks' service. He then returned to Breslau, where he worked under the supervision of Otto Lummer and Ernst Pringsheim , hoping to do his habilitation in physics. A minor accident involving Born's black body experiment, a ruptured cooling water hose, and a flooded laboratory, led to Lummer telling him that he would never become a physicist. In 1905, Albert Einstein published his paper On

9256-746: Was also an International Member of the American Philosophical Society . He died suddenly from a heart attack while visiting Göttingen on 21 May 1964, and was buried in Chicago with his first wife. In 1967, the University of Chicago named the James Franck Institute after him. A lunar crater has also been named in his honour. His papers are in the University of Chicago Library. Max Born Max Born FRS FRSE ( German: [ˈmaks ˈbɔʁn] ; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970)

9360-834: Was awarded the Max Planck medal of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft in 1951 and the Rumford Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his work on photosynthesis in 1955. He became an honorary citizen of Göttingen in 1953, was elected a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1944, and elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1964 . He

9464-541: Was born on 11 December 1882 in Breslau (now Wrocław , Poland), which at the time of Born's birth was part of the Prussian Province of Silesia in the German Empire , to a family of Jewish descent. He was one of two children born to Gustav Born , an anatomist and embryologist , who was a professor of embryology at the University of Breslau , and his wife Margarethe (Gretchen) née Kauffmann, from

9568-555: Was discharged early after an asthma attack in January 1907. He then travelled to England, where he was admitted to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge , and studied physics for six months at the Cavendish Laboratory under J. J. Thomson , George Searle and Joseph Larmor . After Born returned to Germany, the Army re-inducted him, and he served with the elite 1st (Silesian) Life Cuirassiers "Great Elector" until he

9672-418: Was entirely attributable to Born, who also established that all the elements not on the diagonal of the matrix were zero. Born considered that his paper with Jordan contained "the most important principles of quantum mechanics including its extension to electrodynamics ." The paper put Heisenberg's approach on a solid mathematical basis. Born was surprised to discover that Paul Dirac had been thinking along

9776-530: Was far more interested in those on science. While there, he met Max Born , who would become a lifelong friend. With Born's help, he was able to persuade his parents to allow him to switch to studying physics and chemistry. Franck attended mathematics lectures by Leo Königsberger and Georg Cantor , but Heidelberg was not strong on the physical sciences, so he decided to go to the Frederick William University in Berlin. At Berlin, Franck attended lectures by Max Planck and Emil Warburg . On 28 July 1904 he saved

9880-461: Was made partly in deference to his wife, and partly due to his desire to assimilate into German society. The marriage produced three children: two daughters, Irene, born in 1914, and Margarethe (Gritli), born in 1915, and a son, Gustav , born in 1921. Through marriage, Born is related to jurists Victor Ehrenberg , his father-in-law, and Rudolf von Jhering , his wife's maternal grandfather, as well as to philosopher and theologian Hans Ehrenberg , and

9984-596: Was not interrupted, and Voigt offered to sponsor Born's habilitation thesis. Born subsequently published his talk as an article on "The Theory of the Rigid Electron in the Kinematics of the Principle of Relativity" ( German : Die Theorie des starren Elektrons in der Kinematik des Relativitätsprinzips ), which introduced the concept of Born rigidity . On 23 October Born presented his habilitation lecture on

10088-491: Was now raging. Soon after arriving in Berlin in 1915, he enlisted in an Army signals unit. In October, he joined the Artillerie Prüfungskommission , the Army's Berlin-based artillery research and development organisation, under Rudolf Ladenburg , who had established a special unit dedicated to the new technology of sound ranging . In Berlin, Born formed a lifelong friendship with Einstein, who became

10192-463: Was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a world constitution . As a result, for the first time in human history, a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt a Constitution for the Federation of Earth . Born's wife Hedwig (Hedi) Martha Ehrenberg (1891–1972) was a daughter of the jurist Victor Ehrenberg and Elise von Jhering (a daughter of

10296-596: Was one of the world's great centres for physics between 1920 and 1933. Although they published only three papers together, Born and Franck discussed every one of their papers with each other. Gaining admittance to Franck's laboratory became highly competitive. His doctoral students included Hans Kopfermann , Arthur R. von Hippel , Wilhelm Hanle , Fritz Houtermans , Heinrich Kuhn , Werner Kroebel  [ de ] , Walter Lochte-Holtgreven and Heinz Maier-Leibnitz . In supervising doctoral candidates, Franck had to ensure that thesis topics were well-defined, and would teach

10400-846: Was only a temporary one, and his tenure at Göttingen was terminated in May 1935. He therefore accepted an offer from C. V. Raman to go to Bangalore in 1935. Born considered taking a permanent position there, but the Indian Institute of Science did not create an additional chair for him. In November 1935, the Born family had their German citizenship revoked, rendering them stateless . A few weeks later Göttingen cancelled Born's doctorate. Born considered an offer from Pyotr Kapitsa in Moscow, and started taking Russian lessons from Rudolf Peierls 's Russian-born wife Genia. But then Charles Galton Darwin asked Born if he would consider becoming his successor as Tait Professor of Natural Philosophy at

10504-527: Was ordinarius professor of theoretical physics and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics—also a prime mover in the development of quantum theory . Born and Sommerfeld collaborated with experimental physicists to test and advance their theories. In 1922, when lecturing in the United States at the University of Wisconsin–Madison , Sommerfeld sent his student Werner Heisenberg to be Born's assistant. Heisenberg returned to Göttingen in 1923, where he completed his habilitation under Born in 1924, and became

10608-465: Was signed by James Franck (Chairman), Donald J. Hughes , J. J. Nickson , Eugene Rabinowitch , Glenn T. Seaborg , J. C. Stearns , and Leó Szilárd . By an accident of history, we were among a very few who were aware of a new, world-threatening peril, and we felt obligated to express our views. Glenn T. Seaborg Franck took the report to Washington June 12, where the Interim Committee , appointed by President Truman to advise him on use of

10712-438: Was the first academic to resign in protest over the law. Newspapers around the world reported it, but no government or university protested. Franck assisted Frederick Lindemann in helping dismissed Jewish scientists find work overseas, before he left Germany in November 1933. After a brief visit to the United States, where he measured the absorption of light in heavy water with Wood at Johns Hopkins University , he took up

10816-400: Was with Gustav Hertz , with whom he wrote 19 articles. He received his habilitation on 20 May 1911. In 1914, Franck teamed up with Hertz to perform an experiment to investigate fluorescence . They designed a vacuum tube for studying energetic electrons that flew through a thin vapour of mercury atoms. They discovered that when an electron collided with a mercury atom it could lose only

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