Ernst Carl Reinhold Brüche (28 March 1900 in

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...

– 8 February 1985 in

Mosbach Mosbach (; South Franconian: ''Mossbach'') is a town in the north of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is the seat of the Neckar-Odenwald district and has a population of approximately 25,000 distributed in six boroughs: Mosbach Town, Lohrbach, ...

) was a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also 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 ...

. From 1944 to 1972, he was the editor of the ''

Physikalische Blätter ' is the official journal of the . Before 2002 it was named '. History The ' was founded in 1943 by , who was also the editor from 1944 to 1972. At the start, it was issued by the . Starting in 1946, it became an official publication of the ...

'', a publication of the

Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft The German Physical Society (German: , DPG) is the oldest organisation of physicists. As of 2022, the DPG's worldwide membership is cited as 52,220, making it one of the largest national physics societies in the world. The DPG's membership peaked ...

Education

Brüche studied physics at the Danzig

Technische Hochschule A ''Technische Hochschule'' (, plural: ''Technische Hochschulen'', abbreviated ''TH'') is a type of university focusing on engineering sciences in Germany. Previously, it also existed in Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands (), and Finland (, ) ...

from 1919 to 1924. From 1920, he was a teaching assistant in the physics department. In 1926 he completed his doctorate under

Carl Ramsauer Carl Wilhelm Ramsauer (; 6 February 1879 – 24 December 1955) was a German physicist known for the discovery of the Ramsauer–Townsend effect. He pioneered the field of electron and proton collisions with gas molecules.Mehra, Volume 1, Part 2, ...

at the Danzig Technische Hochschule. He completed his

Habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excelle ...

in 1927.Hentschel, 1966, Appendix F; see the entry for Brüche.

Career

Until 1933, Brüche was an unpaid lecturer on experimental and technical physics at the Danzig Technische Hochschule, where he worked on the measurement of electron scattering cross-sections of molecular gases. From 1928 to 1945, he was head of the physics laboratories at the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (

AEG The initials AEG are used for or may refer to: Common meanings * AEG (German company) ; AEG) was a German producer of electrical equipment. It was established in 1883 by Emil Rathenau as the ''Deutsche Edison-Gesellschaft für angewandte El ...

) in

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, a borough of

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. At the AEG, he worked mostly on geometrical electron optics and developed an

electron microscope An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of electrons as a source of illumination. It uses electron optics that are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope to control the electron beam, for instance focusing it ...

. From 1946 to 1951, he was the head scientist of the Süddeutsches Laboratorium, in

. From 1948, he was the managing director of Physik-GmbH in Mosbach. After 1951, he was at the Physikalisches Laboratorium in Mosbach. From 1944 to 1972, Brüche was the founding editor of the

Awards

*1941 –

Leibniz Medal The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (), abbreviated BBAW, is the official academic society for the natural sciences and humanities for the States of Germany, German states of Berlin and Brandenburg. Housed in three locations ...

*1972 – First recipient of the Max Born-Medaille für Verantwortung in der Wissenschaft :de:Max Born-Medaille für Verantwortung in der Wissenschaft

Literature

*Ernst Brüche ''Freie Elektronen als Sonden des Baues von Molekeln'', ''Ergebnisse der exakten Naturwissenschaften'' 8 185-228 (1929) *Ernst Brüche ''Die Grundlagen der angewandten geometrischen Elektronenoptik'', ''Electrical Engineering (Archiv für Elektrotechnik)'' Volume 29, Number 2, 79-107 (1935). The author is cited as being at the Forschungs-institut der AEG, Berlin. The article was received on 12 August 1934. *Ernst Brüche ''Zum Entstehen des Elektronenmikroskops'', ''Physikalische Zeitschrift.'' 44 176-180 (1943) * Ernst Brüche ''Deutsche Physik und die Deutschen Physiker'', ''Neue Physikalische Blätter'' 2 232-236 (1946) *Ernst Brüche ''25 Jahre Elektronenmikroskop'', ''Physikalische Blätter'' 13 493-500 (1957)

Books

*Ernst Brüche ''Physiker-Anekdoten'' von Ernst Brüche (Physik-Verl., 1952) *Carl Ramsauer, Rudolf Kollath, und Ernst Brüche ''Wirkungsquerschnitt der Edelgase gegenüber langsamen Elektronen'' (Geest & Portig, 1954) * Theodor Pöschl, Carl Ramsauer, and Ernst Brüche ''Die Physik in Einzelberichten. H. 1. Mechanik'' (Barth, 1956) * Heinz Thiede, Carl Ramsauer, and Ernst Brüche ''Die Physik in Einzelberichten. H. 2. Praktische Akustik'' (Barth, 1957) *Helmut Moser, Helmut Moser, Carl Ramsauer, und Ernst Brüche ''Die Physik in Einzelberichten. H. 3. Wärmelehre?1. Mit Beitr von Helmut Moser.'' (Barth, 1957) *Ernst Brüche ''Aus dem Leben eines Physikers'' (Mosbach, Baden, 1971)

Bibliography

*Hentschel, Klaus, editor and Ann M. Hentschel, editorial assistant and Translator ''Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources'' (Birkhäuser, 1996) *Hentschel, Klaus with Ann M. Hentschel as translator ''The Mental Aftermath: The Mentality of German Physicists 1945 – 1949'' (Oxford, 2007) (To a significant extent, Hentschel draws from Brüche’s diary, which is among Ernst Brüche’s papers at the Landesmuseum für Technik in

Mannheim Mannheim (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: or ), officially the University City of Mannheim (), is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, second-largest city in Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart, the States of Ger ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bruche, Ernst 1900 births 1985 deaths 20th-century German physicists Officers Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany