Its the birthday of James Franck, who was born in 1882 in Hamburg. Franck studied physics at the University of Berlin, where he became a professor. On 24 April 1914 he and Gustav Hertz presented a paper to the German Physical Society that described the results of a two-year-long investigation: Electrons accelerated at increasing energies through mercury vapor lose energy in steps, as if the mercury atoms absorb the electrons energy in a series of discrete levels. Franck and Hertz shared the 1925 Nobel physics prize for their famous experiment. Franck served in the German army during World War I. Despite being gassed in 1917, he survived and was awarded the Iron Cross for bravery. In 1933 Germanys new Nazi government passed a law that forced him and other Jewish professors to resign. Franck emigrated to the US. Although he participated in the Manhattan Project, he also chaired a committee of physicists that recommended that the US not drop atomic bombs on Japan.
Posted on: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 13:33:28 +0000
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