Karl Weissenberg (11 June 1893,

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

– 6 April 1976,

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...

) was an

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

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 caus ...

, notable for his contributions to

rheology Rheology (; ) is the study of the flow of matter, primarily in a fluid ( liquid or gas) state, but also as "soft solids" or solids under conditions in which they respond with plastic flow rather than deforming elastically in response to an appl ...

and

crystallography Crystallography is the experimental science of determining the arrangement of atoms in crystalline solids. Crystallography is a fundamental subject in the fields of materials science and solid-state physics (condensed matter physics). The wor ...

.H. B. Seebohm (1973) Biographical Notes on Karl Weissenberg

Biography

The

Weissenberg effect The Weissenberg effect is a phenomenon that occurs when a spinning rod is inserted into a solution of elastic liquid. Instead of being thrown outward, the solution is drawn towards the rod and rises up around it. This is a direct consequence of the ...

was named after him, as was the

Weissenberg number The Weissenberg number (Wi) is a dimensionless number used in the study of viscoelastic flows. It is named after Karl Weissenberg. The dimensionless number compares the elastic forces to the viscous forces. It can be variously defined, but it is u ...

. He invented a

Goniometer A goniometer is an instrument that either measures an angle or allows an object to be rotated to a precise angular position. The term goniometry derives from two Greek words, γωνία (''gōnía'') 'angle' and μέτρον (''métron'') 'me ...

to study

X-ray diffraction X-ray crystallography is the experimental science determining the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal, in which the crystalline structure causes a beam of incident X-rays to diffract into many specific directions. By measuring the angles ...

of crystals for which he received the Duddell Medal of the Institute of Physics in 1946, The European Society of Rheology offers a ''Weissenberg award'' in his honour. and the Weissenberg rheogoniometer, a type of rheometer.J. E. Roberts (1973) The Early Development of the Rheogoniometer
He was born on 11 June 1893 in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

and died in 1976 in the Netherlands. He studied at the Universities of Vienna, Berlin and Jena with

Mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

as his main subject. He published on the theories of

Symmetry groups In group theory, the symmetry group of a geometric object is the group of all transformations under which the object is invariant, endowed with the group operation of composition. Such a transformation is an invertible mapping of the ambient ...

and Tensor and Matrix algebra, then applied mathematics and experimentation to

and medical science.

Biography

References

Further reading