Hans Heinrich Euler (b. 6 October 1909 in
Merano, d. 1941) was a German physicist. He received his PhD in 1935 at the
University of Leipzig under
Werner Heisenberg with a thesis ''Über die Streuung von Licht an Licht nach der Diracschen Theorie'' (On the scattering of light by light based on Dirac's theory).
Euler was the first physicist who was able to show that
Paul Dirac's introduction of the
positron
The positron or antielectron is the antiparticle or the antimatter counterpart of the electron. It has an electric charge of +1 '' e'', a spin of 1/2 (the same as the electron), and the same mass as an electron. When a positron collides ...
opens the possibility that
photons in electron-positron pair production scatter with each other and calculated the cross section for this process in his PhD thesis.
Based on the observations of
Helmuth Kulenkampff
Helmuth Kulenkampff (5 December 1895 – 12 June 1971) was a physicist notable for his studies of X-rays. He obtained his PhD in 1922 under Ernst Wagner at the University of Munich with a thesis entitled: ''Über das Kontinuierliche Röntgenspek ...
, Euler and Heisenberg were able to calculate an improved figure for
meson decay time. They also introduced the
Euler–Heisenberg Lagrangian that laid the basis for the quantitative treatment of
vacuum polarization.
Euler died in a reconnaissance flight over the
Sea of Azov
The Sea of Azov ( Crimean Tatar: ''Azaq deñizi''; russian: Азовское море, Azovskoye more; uk, Азовське море, Azovs'ke more) is a sea in Eastern Europe connected to the Black Sea by the narrow (about ) Strait of Kerch, ...
, during
World War II. He had joined the
Luftwaffe a few months earlier.
Publications by Hans Euler
* Hans Euler, "
Über die Streuung von Licht an Licht nach der Diracschen Theorie", ''
Annalen der Physik,'' Vol. 418, 1936, pp. 398–448.
* Hans Euler and Bernhard Kockel, "Über die Streuung von Licht an Licht nach der Diracschen Theorie", ''
Naturwissenschaften
''The Science of Nature'', formerly ''Naturwissenschaften'', is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Springer Science+Business Media covering all aspects of the natural sciences relating to questions of biological significance. I ...
,'' ''Vol. 23'', 1935, p. 246
* Werner Heisenberg and Hans Euler, "Folgerungen aus der Diracschen Theorie des Positrons", ''
Zeitschrift für Physik'', Vol. 98, 1936, pp. 714–732 [English translation
"Consequences of Dirac Theory of the Positron".
References
* Dieter Hoffmann, "Kriegsschicksale: Hans Euler," ''Physikalische Blätter,'' vol. 45, no. 9, 1989, pp. 382–383.
* Werner Heisenberg, "Physics and Beyond (World Perspectives)", 1971, pp. 176–179.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Euler, Hans Heinrich
1909 births
1941 deaths
20th-century German physicists
Luftwaffe personnel of World War II
German military personnel killed in World War II
People from Merano