Friedrich Carl Alwin Pockels (18 June 1865 – 29 August 1913) was a German physicist. He was born in Italy to Captain Theodore Pockels and Alwine Becker. He obtained a doctorate from the University of Göttingen in 1888, and from 1900 to 1913 he was professor of theoretical physics at the University of Heidelberg. In 1893 he discovered that a steady

electric field An electric field (sometimes E-field) is the physical field that surrounds electrically charged particles and exerts force on all other charged particles in the field, either attracting or repelling them. It also refers to the physical field fo ...

applied to certain birefringent materials causes the refractive index to vary, approximately in proportion to the strength of the field. The coefficient of proportionality is of the order of to . This phenomenon is now called the Pockels effect. His sister

Agnes Pockels Agnes Luise Wilhelmine Pockels (14 February 1862 – 21 November 1935) was a German chemist whose research was fundamental in establishing the modern discipline known as surface science, which describes the properties of liquid and solid surf ...

(1862–1935) was a pioneer in chemistry.

See also