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Gustav Ludwig Hertz

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"Gustav Hertz" redirects here. For his grandfather, see Gustav Ferdinand Hertz.

Gustav Hertz
Hertz in 1925
Born(1887-07-22)22 July 1887
Hamburg, German Empire
Died30 October 1975(1975-10-30) (aged 88)
East Berlin, East Germany
EducationJohanneum Gymnasium
Alma materUniversity of Berlin (Dr. phil.)
Known forFranck–Hertz experiment
Spouses
Ellen Dihlmann
​
​
(m. 1919; died 1941)​
Charlotte Jollasse
​
(m. 1943)​
Children2, including Carl
Relatives
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsAtomic physics
Institutions
ThesisÜber das ultrarote Adsorptionsspektrum der Kohlensäure in seiner Abhängigkeit von Druck und Partialdruck (1911)
Doctoral advisorHeinrich Rubens
Doctoral students
Other notable students

Gustav Ludwig Hertz (German: [ˈɡʊstaf ˈluːtvɪç hɛʁts] ⓘ; 22 July 1887 – 30 October 1975)[3] was a German experimental physicist who shared the 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics with James Franck "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom".

Biography

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Education and career

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Gustav Ludwig Hertz was born on 22 July 1887 in Hamburg, Germany, the son of Gustav Theodor Hertz, a lawyer, and Auguste Arning.[3] He attended the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums before studying at the universities of Göttingen (1906–1907), Munich (1907–1908), and Berlin (1908–1911). He received his Ph.D. in 1911 under Heinrich Rubens.[4][5]

In 1913, Hertz was appointed Research Assistant at the Physics Institute of the University of Berlin. The following year, Hertz, along with James Franck, performed an experiment on inelastic electron collisions in gases.[6] In 1925, Hertz and Franck were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their experiment.[7]

From 1914, Hertz served in the military during World War I. In 1915, he joined Fritz Haber's unit that would introduce poisonous chlorine gas as a weapon.[8] He was seriously wounded that year. In 1917, he returned to the University of Berlin as a Privatdozent. In 1920, he became a research physicist at the Philips Incandescent Lamp Factory in Eindhoven.[3] In 1925, he was appointed Director of the Physics Institute at the University of Halle. In 1928, he became Director of the Physics Institute at Technische Hochschule Berlin (THB – now Technische Universität Berlin). While there, he developed an isotope separation technique via gaseous diffusion.

Since Hertz was an officer during World War I, he was temporarily protected from Nazi policies and the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, but eventually the policies and laws became more stringent, and at the end of 1934 he was forced to resign from his position at THB, as he was classified as a "second degree part-Jew" (his grandfather, Gustav Ferdinand Hertz, had been Jewish as a child, before his whole family had converted to Lutheranism in 1834).[9] The same year, he became Director of Research Laboratory II at Siemens. While there, he continued his work on atomic physics and ultrasound, but he eventually discontinued his work on isotope separation. He stayed at Siemens until 1945 when he departed to the Soviet Union.[5][3][10]

Soviet Union

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"Pact to defect"

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Hertz was concerned for his safety and, like his fellow Nobel laureate James Franck, was looking to move to the US or any other place outside Germany. So he made a pact with three colleagues: Manfred von Ardenne, director of his private laboratory Forschungslaboratorium für Elektronenphysik, Peter Adolf Thiessen, ordinarius professor at the University of Berlin and Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Berlin-Dahlem, and Max Volmer, ordinarius professor and Director of the Physical Chemistry Institute at THB.[11] The pact was a pledge that whoever first made contact with the Soviets would speak for the rest. The objectives of their pact were threefold: (1) prevent plunder of their institutes, (2) continue their work with minimal interruption, and (3) protect themselves from prosecution for any political acts of the past.[12] Before the end of World War II, Thiessen, a member of the Nazi Party, had Communist contacts.[13]

Soviet nuclear weapons program

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On 27 April 1945, Thiessen arrived at von Ardenne's institute in an armored vehicle with a major of the Soviet Army, who was also a leading Soviet chemist.[14] All four of the pact members were taken to the Soviet Union. Hertz was made head of Institute G, in Agudseri (Agudzery), about 10 km southeast of Sukhumi and a suburb of Gul'rips (Gulrip'shi).[14][15] Topics assigned to Gustav Hertz's Institute G included: (1) Separation of isotopes by diffusion in a flow of inert gases, for which Gustav Hertz was the leader, (2) Development of a condensation pump, for which Justus Mühlenpfordt was the leader, (3) Design and build a mass spectrometer for determining the isotopic composition of uranium, for which Werner Schütze was the leader, (4) Development of frameless (ceramic) diffusion partitions for filters, for which Reinhold Reichmann was the leader, and (5) Development of a theory of stability and control of a diffusion cascade, for which Heinz Barwich was the leader;[14][16]

Barwich had been deputy to Hertz at Siemens.[17] Other members of Institute G were Werner Hartmann and Karl-Franz Zühlke.[18] Manfred von Ardenne was made head of Institute A. Goals of von Ardenne's Institute A included: (1) Electromagnetic separation of isotopes, for which von Ardenne was the leader, (2) Techniques for manufacturing porous barriers for isotope separation, for which Peter Adolf Thiessen was the leader, and (3) Molecular techniques for separation of uranium isotopes, for which Max Steenbeck was the leader.

In his first meeting with Lavrentij Beria, von Ardenne was asked to participate in building the bomb, but von Ardenne quickly realized that participation would prohibit his repatriation to Germany, so he suggested isotope enrichment as an objective, which was agreed to.

Research in Sukhumi

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By the end of the 1940s, nearly 300 Germans were working at the institute, and they were not the total work force. Institute A was used as the basis for the Sukhumi Physical-Technical Institute in Sinop, a suburb of Sukhumi.[14][15] Volmer went to the Scientific Research Institute No. 9 (NII-9)[19] in Moscow; he was given a design bureau to work on the production of heavy water. In Institute A, Thiessen became leader for developing techniques for manufacturing porous barriers for isotope separation.[14]

In 1949, six German scientists, including Hertz, Thiessen, and Barwich were called in for consultation at Sverdlovsk-44, which was responsible for uranium enrichment. The plant, smaller than the American Oak Ridge gaseous diffusion plant, was getting only a little over half of the expected 90% or higher enrichment.[20]

In 1950, Hertz moved to Moscow. In 1951, he was awarded the Stalin Prize, second class, with Barwich.[14] The same year, Hertz and James Franck were jointly awarded the Max Planck Medal by the German Physical Society.[5]

Later life and death

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From 1954 until his retirement in 1961, Hertz was Director of the Physics Institute of the Karl Marx University in Leipzig (now the University of Leipzig). From 1955 to 1967, he was Chairman of the Physical Society of East Germany.

Hertz died on 30 October 1975 in Berlin at the age of 88.[7]

Family

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Hertz was a nephew of physicist Heinrich Hertz and a cousin of biologist Mathilde Hertz. In 1919, he married Ellen Dihlmann, who died in 1941. They had two sons, Carl and Johannes; both became physicists. He remarried in 1943 to Charlotte Jollasse.[3]

Scientific memberships

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Hertz was a Member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, a Corresponding Member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, an Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, a Member of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, and a Foreign Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.[3]

Publications

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  • Franck, J.; Hertz, G. (1914). "Über Zusammenstöße zwischen Elektronen und Molekülen des Quecksilberdampfes und die Ionisierungsspannung desselben". Verh. Dtsch. Phys. Ges. 16: 457–467.
  • Gustav Hertz Über das ultrarote Adsorptionsspektrum der Kohlensäure in seiner Abhängigkeit von Druck und Partialdruck. (Dissertation). (Vieweg Braunschweig, 1911)
  • Gustav Hertz (editor) Lehrbuch der Kernphysik I-III (Teubner, 1961–1966)
  • Gustav Hertz (editor) Grundlagen und Arbeitsmethoden der Kernphysik (Akademie Verlag, 1957)
  • Gustav Hertz Gustav Hertz in der Entwicklung der modernen Physik (Akademie Verlag, 1967)

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b "Gustav Ludwig Hertz - Physics Tree". academictree.org. Retrieved 27 August 2025.
  2. ^ "Gustav Hertz - The Mathematics Genealogy Project". genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu. Retrieved 1 June 2025.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Hertz – Nobel Biography.
  4. ^ Gustav Hertz Über das ultrarote Adsorptionsspektrum der Kohlensäure in seiner Abhängigkeit von Druck und Partialdruck. (Dissertation). (Vieweg Braunschweig, 1911)
  5. ^ a b c Mehra and Rechenberg, 2001, 197.
  6. ^ Franck, J.; Hertz, G. (1914). "Über Zusammenstöße zwischen Elektronen und Molekülen des Quecksilberdampfes und die Ionisierungsspannung desselben". Verh. Dtsch. Phys. Ges. 16: 457–467.
  7. ^ a b Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see entry for Hertz.
  8. ^ Van der Kloot, W. (2004). "April 1918: Five Future Nobel prize-winners inaugurate weapons of mass destruction and the academic-industrial-military complex". Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 58 (2): 149–160. doi:10.1098/rsnr.2004.0053. S2CID 145243958.
  9. ^ Wolff, Stefan L. (4 January 2008). "Juden wider Willen – Wie es den Nachkommen des Physikers Heinrich Hertz im NS-Wissenschaftsbetrieb erging". Jüdische Allgemeine.
  10. ^ Hentschel, 1996, 23 and Appendix F – see entry for Hertz.
  11. ^ sachen.de Archived 25 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine – Zur Ehrung von Manfred von Ardenne.
  12. ^ Heinemann-Grüder, 2002, 44.
  13. ^ Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Thiessen.
  14. ^ a b c d e f Oleynikov, 2000, pp 5, 10–13, 18, 21
  15. ^ a b Naimark, 1995, 213.
  16. ^ Kruglov, 2002, 131.
  17. ^ Naimark, 1995, 209.
  18. ^ Maddrell, 2006, 179–180.
  19. ^ Today, NII-9 is the Bochvar All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Inorganic Materials, Bochvar VNIINM. See Oleynikov, 2000, 4.
  20. ^ Holloway, 1994, 191–192.

Further reading

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  • Albrecht, Ulrich, Andreas Heinemann-Grüder, and Arend Wellmann Die Spezialisten: Deutsche Naturwissenschaftler und Techniker in der Sowjetunion nach 1945 (Dietz, 1992, 2001) ISBN 3-320-01788-8
  • Barwich, Heinz and Elfi Barwich Das rote Atom (Fischer-TB.-Vlg., 1984)
  • Beneke, Klaus Die Kolloidwissenschaftler Peter Adolf Thiessen, Gerhart Jander, Robert Havemann, Hans Witzmann und ihre Zeit (Knof, 2000)
  • Heinemann-Grüder, Andreas Die sowjetische Atombombe (Westfaelisches Dampfboot, 1992)
  • Heinemann-Grüder, Andreas Keinerlei Untergang: German Armaments Engineers during the Second World War and in the Service of the Victorious Powers in Monika Renneberg and Mark Walker (editors) Science, Technology and National Socialism 30–50 (Cambridge, 2002 paperback edition) ISBN 0-521-52860-7
  • Hentschel, Klaus (editor) and Ann M. Hentschel (editorial assistant and translator) Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Birkhäuser, 1996) ISBN 0-8176-5312-0
  • Holloway, David Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy 1939–1956 (Yale, 1994) ISBN 0-300-06056-4
  • Kruglov, Arkadii The History of the Soviet Atomic Industry (Taylor and Francis, 2002)
  • Maddrell, Paul "Spying on Science: Western Intelligence in Divided Germany 1945–1961" (Oxford, 2006) ISBN 0-19-926750-2
  • Mehra, Jagdish, and Helmut Rechenberg The Historical Development of Quantum Theory. Volume 1 Part 1 The Quantum Theory of Planck, Einstein, Bohr and Sommerfeld 1900–1925: Its Foundation and the Rise of Its Difficulties. (Springer, 2001) ISBN 0-387-95174-1
  • Naimark, Norman M. The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Belknap, 1995)
  • Oleynikov, Pavel V. 2000. German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic Project. The Nonproliferation Review Volume 7, Number 2, 1 – 30 The author has been a group leader at the Institute of Technical Physics of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center in Snezhinsk (Chelyabinsk-70).
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  •  Media related to Gustav Hertz at Wikimedia Commons
  • Gustav Hertz on Nobelprize.org Edit this at Wikidata
  • SIPT – Sukhumi Institute of Physics and Technology, on the website are published the photographs of the German nuclear physicists who had been working for the Soviet nuclear program
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