Hermann Senftleben (April 8, 1890, in
Bremen
Bremen (Low German also: ''Breem'' or ''Bräm''), officially the City Municipality of Bremen (german: Stadtgemeinde Bremen, ), is the capital of the German state Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (''Freie Hansestadt Bremen''), a two-city-state consis ...
– 1975 in
Recklinghausen
Recklinghausen (; Westphalian: ''Riäkelhusen'') is the northernmost city in the Ruhr-Area and the capital of the Recklinghausen district. It borders the rural Münsterland and is characterized by large fields and farms in the north and indus ...
) was a German physicist and physical chemist.
Education and life
Senftleben was born in Bremen. After graduating from the König-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in
Breslau, Senftleben studied physics at the University of Breslau and received his doctorate with
Rudolf Ladenburg
Rudolf Walter Ladenburg (June 6, 1882 in Kiel – April 6, 1952 in Princeton, New Jersey) was a German atomic physicist. He emigrated from Germany as early as 1932 and became a Brackett Research Professor at Princeton University. When the wave of G ...
. The dissertation was about the glow of flames, which he attributed in part to light scattering from small particles in the flame. He was then an assistant in Breslau (with
Carl Hintze,
Arnold Eucken and
Otto Lummer) and Marburg (with Clemens Schaefer), where he
habilitated
Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...
in 1924 and became a
privatdozent
''Privatdozent'' (for men) or ''Privatdozentin'' (for women), abbreviated PD, P.D. or Priv.-Doz., is an academic title conferred at some European universities, especially in German-speaking countries, to someone who holds certain formal qualific ...
at
University of Marburg. From 1935 until his retirement in 1958 he was a full professor at the
University of Münster. He also conducted research there from 1946 to 1961 as an employee at the
Marl Chemical Park.
Stimulated by Eucken, he turned to physical chemistry in the 1930s. Among other things, he researched on the direct proof of the dissociation of molecules by collisions of the second kind, the course of the reaction in the production of hydrogen and the electron affinity of oxygen. In particular, however, he investigated the conduction of heat in gases.
The
Senftleben-Beenakker effects are named after him and
Jan Beenakker, the influence of electric and magnetic fields on the transport properties (thermal conductivity, viscosity) of molecular gases.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:sENFTLEBEN, hERMANN
1975 deaths
1890 births
Academic staff of the University of Münster
Physical chemists
University of Breslau alumni
Academic staff of the University of Marburg
People from Bremen (city)
German physicists
20th-century German physicists
Academic staff of the University of Breslau