Charlotte Houtermans born: Charlotte Riefenstahl (24 May 1899 in

Bielefeld Bielefeld () is a city in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe Region in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population of 341,755, it is also the most populous city in the administrative region (''Regierungsbezirk'') of Detmold and the ...

, Germany – 6 January 1993 in

Northfield Northfield may refer to: Places United Kingdom * Northfield, Aberdeen, Scotland * Northfield, Edinburgh, Scotland * Northfield, Birmingham, England * Northfield (Kettering BC Ward), Northamptonshire, England United States * Northfield, Connec ...

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

, United States ) was a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

Education

Riefenstahl began her studies at the Georg-August University of Göttingen in 1922, where her teachers included, among others, Max Born,

Richard Courant Richard Courant (January 8, 1888 – January 27, 1972) was a German American mathematician. He is best known by the general public for the book '' What is Mathematics?'', co-written with Herbert Robbins. His research focused on the areas of real ...

James Franck James Franck (; 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 i ...

, David Hilbert,

Emmy Noether Amalie Emmy NoetherEmmy is the '' Rufname'', the second of two official given names, intended for daily use. Cf. for example the résumé submitted by Noether to Erlangen University in 1907 (Erlangen University archive, ''Promotionsakt Emmy Noeth ...

Robert Pohl Robert Wichard Pohl (10 August 1884 – 5 June 1976) was a German physicist at the University of Göttingen. Nevill Francis Mott described him as the "father of solid state physics". See also: "Components of the solid state", Nevill Mott, New Sci ...

, and

Carl Runge Carl David Tolmé Runge (; 30 August 1856 – 3 January 1927) was a German mathematician, physicist, and spectroscopist. He was co-developer and co- eponym of the Runge–Kutta method (German pronunciation: ), in the field of what is today know ...

. She received her doctorate under

Gustav Heinrich Johann Apollon Tammann Gustav Heinrich Johann Apollon Tammann ( – 17 December 1938) was a prominent Baltic German chemist-physicist who made important contributions in the fields of glassy and solid solutions, heterogeneous equilibria, crystallization, and metallurg ...

in 1927, the same year as

Robert Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer (; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist. A professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is often ...

, under Born, and

Fritz Houtermans Friedrich Georg "Fritz" Houtermans (January 22, 1903 – March 1, 1966) was a Dutch-Austrian-German atomic and nuclear physicist and Communist born in Zoppot near Danzig, West Prussia to a Dutch father, who was a wealthy banker. He was brought up ...

, under Franck. She was courted by both Oppenheimer and Houtermans.Bird, 2005, 63 and 69.Charlotte Riefenstahl
– Nernst Memorial Website

Career

Riefenstahl taught and was a research assistant at

Vassar College Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely foll ...

, later at

Winthrop College Winthrop University is a public university in Rock Hill, South Carolina. It was founded in 1886 by David Bancroft Johnson, who served as the superintendent of Columbia, South Carolina, schools. He received a grant from Robert Charles Winthrop, ...

In 1930, Riefenstahl left Vassar and went back to Germany. During a physics conference at the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Rom ...

resort of

Batumi Batumi (; ka, ბათუმი ) is the second largest city of Georgia and the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara, located on the coast of the Black Sea in Georgia's southwest. It is situated in a subtropical zone at the foot of t ...

, Riefenstahl and Houtermans were married in August 1930, with

Wolfgang Pauli Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (; ; 25 April 1900 – 15 December 1958) was an Austrian theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of quantum physics. In 1945, after having been nominated by Albert Einstein, Pauli received the Nobel Prize in Physics ...

and

Rudolf Peierls Sir Rudolf Ernst Peierls, (; ; 5 June 1907 – 19 September 1995) was a German-born British physicist who played a major role in Tube Alloys, Britain's nuclear weapon programme, as well as the subsequent Manhattan Project, the combined Allie ...

as witnesses to the ceremony. (Three other references cite the year as being 1931.Houtermans Biography
– Wolfram) After

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

came to power in 1933, Charlotte Houtermans insisted that they leave Germany. They went to

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It i ...

, near

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

. Max von Laue was the last to send them off, as he entrusted Charlotte with messages for friends abroad. In 1935, Charlotte and Fritz left England for the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

, as Fritz accepted a job in Khar’kov. In 1937, he was arrested by the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...

and imprisoned. Charlotte managed to escape to Denmark and eventually went back to England and then on to the United States. From 1940 she taught at Wellesley College. Charlotte was the first and third wife to Fritz Houtermans in four marriages. They were divorced in 1943, due to a new law in Germany and enforced wartime separation. They were again married in August 1953, with Pauli again standing as a witness; the marriage ended after only a few months. They had two children during their first marriage, Giovanna and Jan.Khriplovich, 1992, 32.

Literature

* Monica Healea and Charlotte Houterman
''The Relative Secondary Electron Emission Due to He, Ne, and A Ions Bombarding a Hot Nickel Target''
''Phys. Rev.'' Volume 58, Number 7, 608–610 (1940). The authors are identified as being at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York. Houtermans is identified as a Research Assistant in Physics. The article was received 17 June 1940. * Monica Healea and Charlotte Houterman
''The Effect of Temperature on the Secondary Electron Emission from Nickel''
''Phys. Rev.'' Volume 60, Number 2, 154–154 (1941). The authors are identified as being at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York. The article was received 20 June 1941.

Books

Gregor Wentzel Gregor Wentzel (17 February 1898 – 12 August 1978) was a German physicist known for development of quantum mechanics. Wentzel, Hendrik Kramers, and Léon Brillouin developed the Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin approximation in 1926. In his early ...

, translated by Charlotte Houtermans and J. M. Jauch, with an Appendix by J. M. Jauch, ''Quantum Theory of Fields'' (Interscience, 1949) (Dover, 2003)

Bibliography

*Bird, Kai and Martin J. Sherwin ''American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer'' (Vintage, 2005) *Hentschel, Ann M. ''The Physical Tourist: Peripatetic Highlights in Bern'', ''Physics in Perspective'' Volume 7, Number 1, 107–129 (2005). The author is cited as being at the Wissenschaftstheorie und Wissenschaftsgeschichte, University of Bern, Uni-Tobler, Länggassstrasse 49a, CH-3012 Bern 9, Switzerland. *Hentschel, Klaus (editor) and Ann M. Hentschel (editorial assistant and translator) ''Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources'' (Birkhäuser, 1996) *Khriplovich, Iosif B. ''The Eventful Life of Fritz Houtermans'', ''Physics Today'' Volume 45, Issue 7, 29 – 37 (1992)
Landrock, Konrad
''Friedrich Georg Houtermans (1903–1966) – Ein bedeutender Physiker des 20. Jahrhunderts'', ''Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau'' Volume 56, Number 4, 187 – 199 (2003) *Powers, Thomas ''Heisenberg’s War: The Secret History of the German Bomb'' (Knopf, 1993)

References

External links

– Wolfram
Konrad Landrock
– ''Friedrich Georg Houtermans (1903–1966) – Ein bedeutender Physiker des 20. Jahrhunderts''

– Nernst Memorial Website

– Nernst Memorial Website. A picture of Charlotte Riefenstahl appears on this page; clicking on the picture calls up a larger version.

– Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften {{DEFAULTSORT:Riefenstahl, Charlotte 1899 births 20th-century German physicists 20th-century German women scientists German emigrants to the United States German women physicists Scientists from Bielefeld People from the Province of Westphalia University of Göttingen alumni Vassar College faculty Year of death missing