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Göttingen Manifesto
The Göttingen Manifesto was a declaration of 18 leading nuclear scientists of West Germany (among them the Nobel laureates Otto Hahn, Max Born, Werner Heisenberg and Max von Laue) against arming the West German army with tactical nuclear weapons in the 1950s, the early part of the Cold War, as the West German government under chancellor Adenauer had suggested. Historical situation In the Second World War some of the signing scientists had been members of the Uranverein, a nuclear research project of the Nazi regime. The war ended with the nuclear destruction of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States. After World War II the Cold War began. In 1953 the hydrogen bomb was invented. A short time later both superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, had a so-called overkill potential. In the whole world and especially in the frontier states of the Cold War there was a great fear of nuclear war at that time. Germany was divided, and both German states were f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 October 1990. During the Cold War, the western portion of Germany and the associated territory of West Berlin were parts of the Western Bloc. West Germany was formed as a political entity during the Allied occupation of Germany after World War II, established from eleven states formed in the three Allied zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. The FRG's provisional capital was the city of Bonn, and the Cold War era country is retrospectively designated as the Bonn Republic. At the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided between the Western and Eastern blocs. Germany was divided into the two countries. Initially, West Germany claimed an exclusive mandate for all of Germany, representing itself as t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East Germany
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state was a part of the Eastern Bloc in the Cold War. Commonly described as a communist state, it described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state".Patrick Major, Jonathan Osmond, ''The Workers' and Peasants' State: Communism and Society in East Germany Under Ulbricht 1945–71'', Manchester University Press, 2002, Its territory was administered and occupied by Soviet forces following the end of World War II—the Soviet occupation zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it and West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR. Most scholars and academics describe the GDR as a totalitarian dictatorship. The GDR was establish ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Josef Mattauch
Josef Mattauch (21 November 1895 – 10 August 1976) was a nuclear physicist and chemist. He was known for the development of the Mattauch-Herzog double-focusing mass spectrometer, for his work on the investigation of isotopic abundances using mass spectrometry, and the determination of atomic weights. Much of his career was spent at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry (later the Max Planck Institute). He developed the Mattauch isobar rule ("Isobarenregel") in 1934. He correctly predicted that the last of the rare earth elements, element 61 (later named promethium), would not have stable isotopes. Early life Josef Heinrich Elisabeth Mattauch was born 21 November 1895 in Ostrau, Moravia. Mattauch was educated at the University of Vienna, where he worked with Felix Ehrenhaft. Ehrenhaft believed he had discovered a "sub-electron", smaller than anything measured by Robert Andrews Millikan. Mattauch's results, however, were in agreement with Millikan and not Ehrenhaft. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heinz Maier-Leibnitz
Heinz Maier-Leibnitz (28 March 1911, in Esslingen am Neckar – 16 December 2000, in Allensbach) was a German physicist. He made contributions to nuclear spectroscopy, coincidence measurement techniques, radioactive tracers for biochemistry and medicine, and neutron optics. He was an influential educator and an advisor to the Federal Republic of Germany on nuclear programs. During World War II, Maier-Leibnitz worked at the Institute of Physics of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research, in Heidelberg. After the war, he spent a year working in North America, after which he returned to the Institute of Physics. In 1952, he assumed the Chair for Technical Physics and directorship of the Laboratory for Technical Physics at the . He became a leader in establishing and building centers which used nuclear reactors as neutron sources for research. The first was the , which was the seed for the entire Garching research campus of the . The second was the German-French project to co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans Kopfermann
Hans Kopfermann (26 April 1895, in Breckenheim near Wiesbaden – 28 January 1963, in Heidelberg) was a German atomic and nuclear physicist. He devoted his entire career to spectroscopic investigations, and he did pioneering work in measuring nuclear spin. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club. Education Kopfermann began his studies at the and the (today, the ). After World War I, he continued his studies at the Georg-August University of Göttingen under James Franck. He received his doctorate there in 1925. Career After receipt of his doctorate, Kopferman went to work with Rudolf Ladenburg, who was a staff scientist at the ''Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie'' (Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry; today, the ), in Berlin-Dahlem. Kopfermann investigated dispersion and stimulated emission. In 1931, he began the study of the hyperfine structur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otto Haxel
Otto Haxel (2 April 1909, in Neu-Ulm – 26 February 1998, in Heidelberg) was a German nuclear physicist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project. After the war, he was on the staff of the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Göttingen. From 1950 to 1974, he was an ordinarius professor of physics at the University of Heidelberg, where he fostered the use of nuclear physics in environmental physics; this led to the founding of the Institute of Environmental Physics in 1975. During 1956 and 1957, he was a member of the Nuclear Physics Working Group of the German Atomic Energy Commission. From 1970 to 1975, he was the Scientific and Technical Managing Director of the Karlsruhe Research Center. Haxel was a signatory of the Manifesto of the Göttingen Eighteen. Education From 1927 to 1933, Haxel studied at the ''Technische Hochschule München'' (today, the Technische Universität München) and the '' Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen''. He received hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walther Gerlach
Walther Gerlach (1 August 1889 – 10 August 1979) was a German physicist who co-discovered, through laboratory experiment, spin quantization in a magnetic field, the Stern–Gerlach effect. The experiment was conceived by Otto Stern in 1921 and first successfully conducted by Gerlach in early 1922. Education Gerlach was born in Biebrich, Hessen-Nassau, German Empire, as son of Dr. med. Valentin Gerlach and his wife Marie Niederhaeuser. He studied at the University of Tübingen from 1908, and received his doctorate in 1912, under Friedrich Paschen. The subject of his dissertation was on the measurement of radiation. After obtaining his doctorate, he continued on as an assistant to Paschen, which he had been since 1911. Gerlach completed his Habilitation at Tübingen in 1916, while serving during World War I.Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Walter Gerlach. Career From 1915 to 1918, during the war, Gerlach did service with the German Army. He worked on w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rudolf Fleischmann
Rudolf Fleischmann (1 May 1903 – 3 February 2002) was a German experimental nuclear physicist from Erlangen, Bavaria. He worked for Walther Bothe at the Physics Institute of the University of Heidelberg and then at the Institute for Physics of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research. Through his association with Bothe, he became involved in the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club; one of Fleischmann’s areas of interest was isotope separation techniques. In 1941 he was appointed associate professor of experimental physics at the newly established Reichsuniversität Straßburg, in France. Late in 1944, he was arrested under the American Operation Alsos and sent to the United States. After he returned to Germany 1946, he became Director of the State Physical Institute at the University of Hamburg and developed it as a center of nuclear research. In 1953, he took a position at the University of Erlangen and achieved ''emeritus'' status in 196 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fritz Bopp
Friedrich Arnold "Fritz" Bopp (27 December 1909 – 14 November 1987) was a German theoretical physicist who contributed to nuclear physics and quantum field theory. He worked at the '' Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Physik'' and with the ''Uranverein''. He was a professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and a President of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. He signed the Göttingen Manifesto. Education From 1929 to 1934, Bopp studied physics at the Goethe University Frankfurt and the University of Göttingen. He completed his Diplom thesis in 1933 under the mathematician Hermann Weyl. In 1934, he became an ''Assistant'' (Assistant) at Göttingen. In 1937, Bopp completed his doctorate on the subject of Compton scattering under the physicist Fritz Sauter. From 1936 to 1941, he was a teaching assistant at Breslau University. In 1941, Bopp completed his ''Habilitationsschrift'' under Erwin Fues on the subject of a consistent field theory of the electron.Hentsc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albert Schweitzer
Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer (; 14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was an Alsatian-German/French polymath. He was a theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician. A Lutheran minister, Schweitzer challenged both the secular view of Jesus as depicted by the historical-critical method current at this time, as well as the traditional Christian view. His contributions to the interpretation of Pauline Christianity concern the role of Paul's mysticism of "being in Christ" as primary and the doctrine of justification by faith as secondary. He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for his philosophy of "Reverence for Life", becoming the eighth Frenchman to be awarded that prize. His philosophy was expressed in many ways, but most famously in founding and sustaining the Hôpital Albert Schweitzer in Lambaréné, French Equatorial Africa (now Gabon). As a music scholar and organist, he studied the music of German composer Johann Sebasti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Göttingen Eighteen
The Göttingen Eighteen () was a group of eighteen leading nuclear researchers of the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany who wrote the Göttingen Manifesto on 12 April 1957, opposing Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Defense Secretary Franz-Josef Strauß's move to arm the West German army, the Bundeswehr, with tactical nuclear weapons. The eighteen atomic scientists were: Fritz Bopp, Max Born, Rudolf Fleischmann, Walther Gerlach, Otto Hahn, Otto Haxel, Werner Heisenberg, Hans Kopfermann, Max von Laue, Heinz Maier-Leibnitz, Josef Mattauch, Friedrich Adolf Paneth, Wolfgang Paul, , Fritz Straßmann, Wilhelm Walcher, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and Karl Wirtz. These eighteen people were leading researchers and members of public institutions for research on nuclear energy and technology in West Germany in that time. The group's name was chosen because many of the signatories were connected with the university town of Göttingen, and as a reference to the 19th century Gö ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Friedrich Von Weizsäcker
Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker (; 28 June 1912 – 28 April 2007) was a German physicist and philosopher. He was the longest-living member of the team which performed nuclear research in Germany during the Second World War, under Werner Heisenberg's leadership. There is ongoing debate as to whether or not he and the other members of the team actively and willingly pursued the development of a nuclear bomb for Germany during this time. A member of the prominent Weizsäcker family, he was son of the diplomat Ernst von Weizsäcker, elder brother of the former German President Richard von Weizsäcker, father of the physicist and environmental researcher Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker and father-in-law of the former General Secretary of the World Council of Churches Konrad Raiser. Weizsäcker made important theoretical discoveries regarding energy production in stars from nuclear fusion processes. He also did influential theoretical work on planetary formation in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
