Walther Bothe
Encyclopedia
Walther Wilhelm Georg Bothe (8 January 1891 in Oranienburg
– 8 February 1957 in Heidelberg
) was a German
nuclear physicist, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954 with Max Born
.
In 1913, he joined the newly created Laboratory for Radioactivity at the Reich Physical and Technical Institute (PTR), where he remained until 1930, the latter few years as the director of the laboratory. He served in the military during World War I from 1914, and he was a prisoner of war of the Russians, returning to Germany in 1920. Upon his return to the laboratory, he developed and applied coincidence methods to the study of nuclear reactions, the Compton effect, cosmic rays, and the wave-particle duality of radiation, for which he would receive the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954.
In 1930 he became a full professor and director of the physics department at the University of Giessen. In 1932, he became director of the Physical and Radiological Institute at the University of Heidelberg. He was driven out of this position by elements of the deutsche Physik
movement. To preclude his emigration from Germany, he was appointed director of the Physics Institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research (KWImF) in Heidelberg. There, he built the first operational cyclotron in Germany. Furthermore, he became a principal in the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club, which was started in 1939 under the supervision of the Army Ordnance Office.
In 1946, in addition to his directorship of the Physics Institute at the KWImf, he was reinstated as a professor at the University of Heidelberg. From 1956 to 1957, he was a member of the Nuclear Physics Working Group in Germany.
In the year after Bothe's death, his Physics Institute at the KWImF was elevated to the status of a new institute under the Max Planck Society and it then became the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics. Its main building was later named Bothe laboratory.
). In 1913, he was Max Planck's
teaching assistant. He was awarded his doctorate, in 1914, under Planck.
), where he stayed until 1930. Hans Geiger had been appointed director of the new Laboratory for Radioactivity there in 1912. At the PTR, Both was an assistant to Geiger from 1913 to 1920, a scientific member of Geiger's staff from 1920 to 1927, and from 1927 to 1930 he succeeded Geiger as director of the Laboratory for Radioactivity.
In May 1914, Bothe volunteered for service in the German cavalry. He was takenn prisoner by the Russians and incarcerated in Russia for five years. While there, he learned the Russian language and worked on theoretical physics problems related to his doctoral studies. He returned to Germany in 1920, with a Russian bride.
Upon his return from Russia, Bothe continued his employment at the PTR under Hans Geiger in the Laboratory for Radioactivity there. In 1924, Bothe published on his coincidence method. Then and in the following years, he applied this method to the experimental study of the nuclear reactions, the Compton effect, and the wave-particle duality of light. Bothe's coincidence method and his applications of it earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics
in 1954.
In 1925, while still at the PTR, Bothe became a Privatdozent
at the University of Berlin, which means that he had completed his Habilitation
, and, in 1929, he became an ausserordentlicher Professor (extraordinarius professor) there.
In 1927, Bothe began the study of the transmutation of light elements through bombardment with alpha particles. From a joint investigation with H. Fränz and Heinz Pose
in 1928, Bothe and Fränz correlated reaction products of nuclear interactions to nuclear energy levels.
In 1929, in collaboration with Werner Kolhörster
and Bruno Rossi
who were guests in Bothe's laboratory at the PTR, Bothe began the study of cosmic rays. The study of cosmic radiation would be conducted by Bothe for the rest of his life.
In 1930, he became an ordentlicher Professor (ordinarius professor) and director of the physics department at the Justus Liebig-Universität Gießen
. That year, working with Herbert Becker, Bothe bombarded beryllium
, boron
, and lithium
with alpha particles from polonium
and observed a new form of penetrating radiation. In 1932, James Chadwick
identified this radiation as the neutron
.
as Director of the Physikalische und Radiologische Institut (Physical and Radiological Institute) at the University of Heidelberg. It was then that Rudolf Fleischmann
became a teaching assistant to Bothe. When Adolf Hitler
became Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, the concept of Deutsche Physik
took on more favor as well as fervor; it was anti-Semitic and anti-theoretical physics, especially modern physics, including quantum mechanics
and both atomic and nuclear physics. As applied in the university environment, political factors took priority over the historically applied concept of scholarly ability, even though its two most prominent supporters were the Nobel Laureates in Physics
Philipp Lenard
and Johannes Stark
. Supporters of Deutsche Physik launched vicious attacks against leading theoretical physicists. While Lenard was retired from the University of Heidelberg, he still had significant influence there. In 1934, Lenard had managed to get Bothe relieved of his directorship of the Physical and Radiological Institute at the University of Heidelberg, whereupon Bothe was able to become the Director of the Institut für Physik (Institute for Physics) of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für medizinische Forschung (KWImF, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research; today, the Max-Planck Institut für medizinische Forschung
), in Heidelberg
, replacing Karl W. Hauser, who had recently died. Ludolf von Krehl
, Director of the KWImF, and Max Planck
, President of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft (KWG, Kaiser Wilhelm Society, today the Max Planck Society
), had offered the directorship to Bothe to ward off the possibility of his emigration. Bothe held the directorship of the Institute for Physics at the KWImF until his death in 1957. While at the KWImF, Bothe held an honorary professorship at the University of Heidelberg, which he held until 1946. Fleischmann
went with Bothe and worked with him there until 1941. To his staff, Bothe recruited scientists including Wolfgang Gentner
(1936–1945), Heinz Maier-Leibnitz
(1936 - ?) - who had done his doctorate with the Nobel Laureate James Franck
and was highly recommend by Robert Pohl
and Georg Joos
, and Arnold Flammersfeld
(1939–1941). Also included on his staff were Peter Jensen and Erwin Fünfer.
In 1938, Bothe and Gentner published on the energy dependence of the nuclear photo-effect. This was the first clear evidence that nuclear absorption spectra are accumulative and continuous, an effect known as the dipolar giant nuclear resonance. This was explained theoretically a decade later by physicists J. Hans D. Jensen
, Helmut Steinwedel, Peter Jensen, Michael Goldhaber, and Edward Teller
.
Also in 1938, Maier-Leibniz built a Wilson cloud chamber
. Images from the cloud chamber were used by Bothe, Gentner, and Maier-Leibniz to publish, in 1940, the Atlas of Typical Cloud Chamber Images, which became a standard reference for identifying scattered particles.
had led them to consider building a cyclotron
. By November, a report had already been sent to the President of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft (KWG, Kaiser Wilhelm Society; today, the Max Planck Society
), and Bothe began securing funds from the Helmholtz-Gesellschaft (Helmholtz Society; today, the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres), the Badischen Kultusministerium (Baden Ministry of Culture), I.G. Farben
, the KWG, and various other research oriented agencies. Initial promises led to ordering a magnet from Siemens
in September 1938, however, further financing then became problematic. In these times, Gentner continued his research on the nuclear photoeffect, with the aid of the van de Graaf generator, which had been upgraded to produce energies just under 1 MeV. When his line of research was completed with the 7Li (p, gamma) and the 11B (p, gamma) reactions, and on the nuclear isomer 80Br, Gentner devoted his full effort to the building of the planned cyclotron.
In order to facilitate the construction of the cyclotron, at the end of 1938 and into 1939, with the help of a fellowship from the Helmholtz-Gesellschaft, Gentner was sent to Radiation Laboratory of the University of California (today, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
) in Berkeley, California. As a result of the visit, Gentner formed a cooperative relationship with Emilio G. Segrè
and Donald Cooksey
.
After the armistice between France and Germany in the summer of 1940, Bothe and Gentner received orders to inspect the cyclotron Frédéric Joliot-Curie
had built in Paris. While it had been built, it was not yet operational. In September 1940, Gentner received orders to form a group to put the cyclotron into operation. Hermann Dänzer from the University of Frankfurt participated in this effort. While in Paris, Gentner was able to free both Frédéric Joliot-Curie and Paul Langevin
, who had been arrested and detained. At the end of the winter of 1941/1942, the cyclotron was operational with a 7-MeV beam of deuterons. Uranium
and thorium
were irradiated with the beam, and the byproducts were sent to Otto Hahn
at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Chemie (KWIC, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, today, the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry
), in Berlin. In mid-1942, Gentner's successor in Paris, was Wolfgang Riezler from Bonn
.
It was during 1941 that Bothe had acquired all the necessary funding to complete construction of the cyclotron. The magnet was delivered in March 1943, and the first beam of deuteron was emitted in December. The inauguration ceremony for the cyclotron was held on 2 June 1944. While there had been other cyclotrons under construction, Bothe's was the first operational cyclotron in Germany.
, also known as the Uranverein (Uranium Club), began in the spring of 1939 under the auspices of the Reichsforschungsrat
(RFR, Reich Research Council) of the Reichserziehungsministerium
(REM, Reich Ministry of Education). By 1 September, the Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) squeezed out the RFR and took over the effort. Under the control of the HWA, the Uranverein had its first meeting on 16 September. The meeting was organized by Kurt Diebner
, advisor to the HWA, and held in Berlin. The invitees included Walther Bothe, Siegfried Flügge
, Hans Geiger, Otto Hahn
, Paul Harteck
, Gerhard Hoffmann
, Josef Mattauch
, and Georg Stetter
. A second meeting was held soon thereafter and included Klaus Clusius
, Robert Döpel
, Werner Heisenberg
, and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker
. With Bothe being one of the principals, Wolfgang Gentner
, Arnold Flammersfeld
, Rudolf Fleischmann
, Erwin Fünfer, and Peter Jensen were soon drawn into work for the Uranverein. Their research was published in the Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte
(Research Reports in Nuclear Physics); see below the section Internal Reports. For the Uranverein, Bothe, and up to 6 members from his staff by 1942, worked on the experimental determination of atomic constants, the energy distribution of fission fragments, and nuclear cross sections. Bothe's experimental results on the absorption of neutrons in graphite were central in the German decision to favor heavy water
as a neutron moderator
.
By late 1941 it was apparent that the nuclear energy project would not make a decisive contribution to ending the war effort in the near term. HWA control of the Uranverein was relinquished to the RFR in July 1942. The nuclear energy project thereafter maintained its kriegswichtig (important for the war) designation and funding continued from the military. However, the German nuclear power project was then broken down into the following main areas: uranium
and heavy water
production, uranium isotope separation, and the Uranmaschine (uranium machine, i.e., nuclear reactor). Also, the project was then essentially split up between nine institutes, where the directors dominated the research and set their own research agendas. Bothe's Institut für Physik was one of the nine institutes. The other eight institutes or facilities were: the Institute for Physical Chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the HWA Versuchsstelle (testing station) in Gottow, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Chemie, the Physical Chemistry Department of the University of Hamburg
, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Physik, the Second Experimental Physics Institute at the Georg-August University of Göttingen, the Auergesellschaft
, and the II. Physikalisches Institut at the University of Vienna
.
At the end of World War II, the Allies had seized the cyclotron at Heidelberg. In 1949, its control was returned to Bothe.
During 1956 and 1957, Bothe was a member of the Arbeitskreis Kernphysik (Nuclear Physics Working Group) of the Fachkommission II "Forschung und Nachwuchs" (Commission II "Research and Growth") of the Deutschen Atomkommission (DAtK, German Atomic Energy Commission). Other members of the Nuclear Physics Working Group in both 1956 and 1957 were: Werner Heisenberg
(chairman), Hans Kopfermann
(vice-chairman), Fritz Bopp, Wolfgang Gentner
, Otto Haxel
, Willibald Jentschke
, Heinz Maier-Liebnitz, Josef Mattauch
, Wolfgang Riezler, Wilhelm Walcher
, and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker
. Wolfgang Paul
was also a member of the group during 1957.
At the end of 1957, Gentner was in negotiations with Otto Hahn
, President of the Max-Planck Gesellschaft (MPG, Max Planck Society
, successor of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft
), and with the Senate of the MPG to establish a new institute under their auspices. Essentially, Walther Bothe's Institut für Physik at the Max-Planck Institut für medizinische Forschung, in Heidelberg
, was to be spun off to become a full fledged institute of the MPG. The decision to proceed was made in May 1958. Gentner was named the director of the Max-Planck Institut für Kernphysik (MPIK, Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics) on 1 October, and he also received the position as an ordentlicher Professor (ordinarius professor) at the University of Heidelberg. Bothe had not lived to see the final establishment of the MPIK, as he had died in February of that year.
Bothe was a German patriot who did not give excuses for his work with the Uranverein. However, Bothe's impatience with National Socialists policies in Germany brought him under suspicion and investigation by the Gestapo
.
Bothe was an accomplished painter and musician; he played the piano.
(Research Reports in Nuclear Physics), an internal publication of the German Uranverein
. The reports were classified Top Secret, they had very limited distribution, and the authors were not allowed to keep copies. The reports were confiscated under the Allied Operation Alsos
and sent to the United States Atomic Energy Commission
for evaluation. In 1971, the reports were declassified and returned to Germany. The reports are available at the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center and the American Institute of Physics
.
Oranienburg
Oranienburg is a town in Brandenburg, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Oberhavel.- Geography :Oranienburg is a town located on the banks of the Havel river, 35 km north of the centre of Berlin.- Division of the town :...
– 8 February 1957 in Heidelberg
Heidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...
) was a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
nuclear physicist, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954 with Max Born
Max Born
Max Born was a German-born physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 30s...
.
In 1913, he joined the newly created Laboratory for Radioactivity at the Reich Physical and Technical Institute (PTR), where he remained until 1930, the latter few years as the director of the laboratory. He served in the military during World War I from 1914, and he was a prisoner of war of the Russians, returning to Germany in 1920. Upon his return to the laboratory, he developed and applied coincidence methods to the study of nuclear reactions, the Compton effect, cosmic rays, and the wave-particle duality of radiation, for which he would receive the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954.
In 1930 he became a full professor and director of the physics department at the University of Giessen. In 1932, he became director of the Physical and Radiological Institute at the University of Heidelberg. He was driven out of this position by elements of the deutsche Physik
Deutsche Physik
Deutsche Physik or Aryan Physics was a nationalist movement in the German physics community in the early 1930s against the work of Albert Einstein, labeled "Jewish Physics"...
movement. To preclude his emigration from Germany, he was appointed director of the Physics Institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research (KWImF) in Heidelberg. There, he built the first operational cyclotron in Germany. Furthermore, he became a principal in the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club, which was started in 1939 under the supervision of the Army Ordnance Office.
In 1946, in addition to his directorship of the Physics Institute at the KWImf, he was reinstated as a professor at the University of Heidelberg. From 1956 to 1957, he was a member of the Nuclear Physics Working Group in Germany.
In the year after Bothe's death, his Physics Institute at the KWImF was elevated to the status of a new institute under the Max Planck Society and it then became the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics. Its main building was later named Bothe laboratory.
Education
Bothe was born to Fredrich Bothe and Charlotte Hartung. From 1908 to 1912, Bothe studied at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (today, the Humboldt-Universität zu BerlinHumboldt University of Berlin
The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...
). In 1913, he was Max Planck's
Max Planck
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, ForMemRS, was a German physicist who actualized the quantum physics, initiating a revolution in natural science and philosophy. He is regarded as the founder of the quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.-Life and career:Planck came...
teaching assistant. He was awarded his doctorate, in 1914, under Planck.
Early years
In 1913, Bothe joined the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt (PTR, Reich Physical and Technical Institute; today, the Physikalisch-Technische BundesanstaltPhysikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt
The Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt is based in Braunschweig and Berlin. It is the national institute for natural and engineering sciences and the highest technical authority for metrology and physical safety engineering in Germany....
), where he stayed until 1930. Hans Geiger had been appointed director of the new Laboratory for Radioactivity there in 1912. At the PTR, Both was an assistant to Geiger from 1913 to 1920, a scientific member of Geiger's staff from 1920 to 1927, and from 1927 to 1930 he succeeded Geiger as director of the Laboratory for Radioactivity.
In May 1914, Bothe volunteered for service in the German cavalry. He was takenn prisoner by the Russians and incarcerated in Russia for five years. While there, he learned the Russian language and worked on theoretical physics problems related to his doctoral studies. He returned to Germany in 1920, with a Russian bride.
Upon his return from Russia, Bothe continued his employment at the PTR under Hans Geiger in the Laboratory for Radioactivity there. In 1924, Bothe published on his coincidence method. Then and in the following years, he applied this method to the experimental study of the nuclear reactions, the Compton effect, and the wave-particle duality of light. Bothe's coincidence method and his applications of it earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
in 1954.
In 1925, while still at the PTR, Bothe became a Privatdozent
Privatdozent
Privatdozent or Private lecturer is a title conferred in some European university systems, especially in German-speaking countries, for someone who pursues an academic career and holds all formal qualifications to become a tenured university professor...
at the University of Berlin, which means that he had completed his Habilitation
Habilitation
Habilitation is the highest academic qualification a scholar can achieve by his or her own pursuit in several European and Asian countries. Earned after obtaining a research doctorate, such as a PhD, habilitation requires the candidate to write a professorial thesis based on independent...
, and, in 1929, he became an ausserordentlicher Professor (extraordinarius professor) there.
In 1927, Bothe began the study of the transmutation of light elements through bombardment with alpha particles. From a joint investigation with H. Fränz and Heinz Pose
Heinz Pose
Rudolf Heinz Pose was a German nuclear physicist.He did pioneering work which contributed to the understanding nuclear energy levels. He worked on the German nuclear energy project Uranverein. After World War II, the Soviet Union sent him to establish and head Laboratory V in Obninsk...
in 1928, Bothe and Fränz correlated reaction products of nuclear interactions to nuclear energy levels.
In 1929, in collaboration with Werner Kolhörster
Werner Kolhörster
Werner Heinrich Gustav Kolhörster was a German physicist and a pioneer of research into cosmic rays.Kolhörster was born in Schwiebus , Province of Brandenburg...
and Bruno Rossi
Bruno Rossi
Bruno Benedetto Rossi was a leading Italian-American experimental physicist. He made major contributions to cosmic ray and particle physics from 1930 through the 1950s, and pioneered X-ray astronomy and space plasma physics in the 1960s.-Biography:Rossi was born in Venice, Italy...
who were guests in Bothe's laboratory at the PTR, Bothe began the study of cosmic rays. The study of cosmic radiation would be conducted by Bothe for the rest of his life.
In 1930, he became an ordentlicher Professor (ordinarius professor) and director of the physics department at the Justus Liebig-Universität Gießen
University of Giessen
The University of Giessen is officially called the Justus Liebig University Giessen after its most famous faculty member, Justus von Liebig, the founder of modern agricultural chemistry and inventor of artificial fertiliser.-History:The University of Gießen is among the oldest institutions of...
. That year, working with Herbert Becker, Bothe bombarded beryllium
Beryllium
Beryllium is the chemical element with the symbol Be and atomic number 4. It is a divalent element which occurs naturally only in combination with other elements in minerals. Notable gemstones which contain beryllium include beryl and chrysoberyl...
, boron
Boron
Boron is the chemical element with atomic number 5 and the chemical symbol B. Boron is a metalloid. Because boron is not produced by stellar nucleosynthesis, it is a low-abundance element in both the solar system and the Earth's crust. However, boron is concentrated on Earth by the...
, and lithium
Lithium
Lithium is a soft, silver-white metal that belongs to the alkali metal group of chemical elements. It is represented by the symbol Li, and it has the atomic number 3. Under standard conditions it is the lightest metal and the least dense solid element. Like all alkali metals, lithium is highly...
with alpha particles from polonium
Polonium
Polonium is a chemical element with the symbol Po and atomic number 84, discovered in 1898 by Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie. A rare and highly radioactive element, polonium is chemically similar to bismuth and tellurium, and it occurs in uranium ores. Polonium has been studied for...
and observed a new form of penetrating radiation. In 1932, James Chadwick
James Chadwick
Sir James Chadwick CH FRS was an English Nobel laureate in physics awarded for his discovery of the neutron....
identified this radiation as the neutron
Neutron
The neutron is a subatomic hadron particle which has the symbol or , no net electric charge and a mass slightly larger than that of a proton. With the exception of hydrogen, nuclei of atoms consist of protons and neutrons, which are therefore collectively referred to as nucleons. The number of...
.
Heidelberg
In 1932, Bothe had succeeded Philipp LenardPhilipp Lenard
Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard , known in Hungarian as Lénárd Fülöp Eduárd Antal, was a Hungarian - German physicist and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1905 for his research on cathode rays and the discovery of many of their properties...
as Director of the Physikalische und Radiologische Institut (Physical and Radiological Institute) at the University of Heidelberg. It was then that Rudolf Fleischmann
Rudolf Fleischmann
Rudolf Fleischmann was a German experimental nuclear physicist from Erlangen, Bavaria. He worked for Walther Bothe at the Physics Institute of the University of Heidelberg and then at the Institute for Physics of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research...
became a teaching assistant to Bothe. When Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
became Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, the concept of Deutsche Physik
Deutsche Physik
Deutsche Physik or Aryan Physics was a nationalist movement in the German physics community in the early 1930s against the work of Albert Einstein, labeled "Jewish Physics"...
took on more favor as well as fervor; it was anti-Semitic and anti-theoretical physics, especially modern physics, including quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...
and both atomic and nuclear physics. As applied in the university environment, political factors took priority over the historically applied concept of scholarly ability, even though its two most prominent supporters were the Nobel Laureates in Physics
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
Philipp Lenard
Philipp Lenard
Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard , known in Hungarian as Lénárd Fülöp Eduárd Antal, was a Hungarian - German physicist and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1905 for his research on cathode rays and the discovery of many of their properties...
and Johannes Stark
Johannes Stark
Johannes Stark was a German physicist, and Physics Nobel Prize laureate who was closely involved with the Deutsche Physik movement under the Nazi regime.-Early years:...
. Supporters of Deutsche Physik launched vicious attacks against leading theoretical physicists. While Lenard was retired from the University of Heidelberg, he still had significant influence there. In 1934, Lenard had managed to get Bothe relieved of his directorship of the Physical and Radiological Institute at the University of Heidelberg, whereupon Bothe was able to become the Director of the Institut für Physik (Institute for Physics) of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für medizinische Forschung (KWImF, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research; today, the Max-Planck Institut für medizinische Forschung
Max Planck Institute for Medical Research
The Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany, is a facility of the Max Planck Society for basic medical research. Since its foundation, six Nobel Prize laureates worked at the Institute: Otto Fritz Meyerhof , Richard Kuhn , Walther Bothe , André Michel Lwoff , Rudolf...
), in Heidelberg
Heidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...
, replacing Karl W. Hauser, who had recently died. Ludolf von Krehl
Ludolf von Krehl
Albrecht Ludolf von Krehl was a German internist and physiologist who was a native of Leipzig. He was the son of Orientalist Christoph Krehl...
, Director of the KWImF, and Max Planck
Max Planck
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, ForMemRS, was a German physicist who actualized the quantum physics, initiating a revolution in natural science and philosophy. He is regarded as the founder of the quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.-Life and career:Planck came...
, President of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft (KWG, Kaiser Wilhelm Society, today the Max Planck Society
Max Planck Society
The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes publicly funded by the federal and the 16 state governments of Germany....
), had offered the directorship to Bothe to ward off the possibility of his emigration. Bothe held the directorship of the Institute for Physics at the KWImF until his death in 1957. While at the KWImF, Bothe held an honorary professorship at the University of Heidelberg, which he held until 1946. Fleischmann
Rudolf Fleischmann
Rudolf Fleischmann was a German experimental nuclear physicist from Erlangen, Bavaria. He worked for Walther Bothe at the Physics Institute of the University of Heidelberg and then at the Institute for Physics of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research...
went with Bothe and worked with him there until 1941. To his staff, Bothe recruited scientists including Wolfgang Gentner
Wolfgang Gentner
Wolfgang Gentner was a German experimental nuclear physicist.Gentner received his doctorate in 1930 from the University of Frankfurt. From 1932 to 1935 he had a fellowship which allowed him to do postdoctoral research and study at Curie's Radium Institute at the University of Paris...
(1936–1945), Heinz Maier-Leibnitz
Heinz Maier-Leibnitz
Heinz Maier-Leibnitz was a German physicist. He made contributions to nuclear spectroscopy, coincidence measurement techniques, radioactive tracers for biochemistry and medicine, and neutron optics...
(1936 - ?) - who had done his doctorate with the Nobel Laureate James Franck
James Franck
James Franck was a German Jewish physicist and Nobel laureate.-Biography:Franck was born to Jacob Franck and Rebecca Nachum Drucker. Franck completed his Ph.D...
and was highly recommend by Robert Pohl
Robert Pohl
Robert Wichard Pohl was a German physicist.In 1938 Robert Pohl and Rudolf Hilsch, from the University of Göttingen, built the first functioning solid-state amplifier using salt as the semiconductor ....
and Georg Joos
Georg Joos
Georg Jakob Christof Joos was a German theoretical physicist. He wrote Lehrbuch der theoretischen Physik, first published in 1932 and one of the most influential theoretical physics textbooks of the 20th Century.-Education:Joos began his higher education in 1912 at the Technische Hochschule...
, and Arnold Flammersfeld
Arnold Flammersfeld
Arnold Rudolf Karl Flammersfeld was a German nuclear physicist who worked on the German nuclear energy project during World War II...
(1939–1941). Also included on his staff were Peter Jensen and Erwin Fünfer.
In 1938, Bothe and Gentner published on the energy dependence of the nuclear photo-effect. This was the first clear evidence that nuclear absorption spectra are accumulative and continuous, an effect known as the dipolar giant nuclear resonance. This was explained theoretically a decade later by physicists J. Hans D. Jensen
J. Hans D. Jensen
Johannes Hans Daniel Jensen was a German nuclear physicist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, known as the Uranium Club, in which he made contributions to the separation of uranium isotopes. After the war Jensen was a professor at the University of Heidelberg...
, Helmut Steinwedel, Peter Jensen, Michael Goldhaber, and Edward Teller
Edward Teller
Edward Teller was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist, known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb," even though he did not care for the title. Teller made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy , and surface physics...
.
Also in 1938, Maier-Leibniz built a Wilson cloud chamber
Cloud chamber
The cloud chamber, also known as the Wilson chamber, is a particle detector used for detecting ionizing radiation. In its most basic form, a cloud chamber is a sealed environment containing a supersaturated vapor of water or alcohol. When a charged particle interacts with the mixture, it ionizes it...
. Images from the cloud chamber were used by Bothe, Gentner, and Maier-Leibniz to publish, in 1940, the Atlas of Typical Cloud Chamber Images, which became a standard reference for identifying scattered particles.
1st German Cyclotron
By the end of 1937, the rapid successes Bothe and Gentner had with the building and research uses of a Van de Graaf generatorVan de Graaf
van de Graaf is a surname, and may refer to:*J. A. van de Graaf, see Canons of page construction*Robert J. Van de Graaff , American physicist*Volkert van der Graaf , assassin of Dutch politician Pim FortuynVan de Graaf may also refer to:...
had led them to consider building a cyclotron
Cyclotron
In technology, a cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator. In physics, the cyclotron frequency or gyrofrequency is the frequency of a charged particle moving perpendicularly to the direction of a uniform magnetic field, i.e. a magnetic field of constant magnitude and direction...
. By November, a report had already been sent to the President of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft (KWG, Kaiser Wilhelm Society; today, the Max Planck Society
Max Planck Society
The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes publicly funded by the federal and the 16 state governments of Germany....
), and Bothe began securing funds from the Helmholtz-Gesellschaft (Helmholtz Society; today, the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres), the Badischen Kultusministerium (Baden Ministry of Culture), I.G. Farben
IG Farben
I.G. Farbenindustrie AG was a German chemical industry conglomerate. Its name is taken from Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG . The company was formed in 1925 from a number of major companies that had been working together closely since World War I...
, the KWG, and various other research oriented agencies. Initial promises led to ordering a magnet from Siemens
Siemens AG
Siemens AG is a German multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Munich, Germany. It is the largest Europe-based electronics and electrical engineering company....
in September 1938, however, further financing then became problematic. In these times, Gentner continued his research on the nuclear photoeffect, with the aid of the van de Graaf generator, which had been upgraded to produce energies just under 1 MeV. When his line of research was completed with the 7Li (p, gamma) and the 11B (p, gamma) reactions, and on the nuclear isomer 80Br, Gentner devoted his full effort to the building of the planned cyclotron.
In order to facilitate the construction of the cyclotron, at the end of 1938 and into 1939, with the help of a fellowship from the Helmholtz-Gesellschaft, Gentner was sent to Radiation Laboratory of the University of California (today, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory conducting unclassified scientific research. It is located on the grounds of the University of California, Berkeley, in the Berkeley Hills above the central campus...
) in Berkeley, California. As a result of the visit, Gentner formed a cooperative relationship with Emilio G. Segrè
Emilio G. Segrè
Emilio Gino Segrè was an Italian-born, naturalized American, physicist and Nobel laureate in physics, who with Owen Chamberlain, discovered antiprotons, a sub-atomic antiparticle.-Biography:...
and Donald Cooksey
Donald Cooksey
Donald Cooksey , was a son of George Cooksey from Birmingham, England and Linda Dows from New York.After High School at the Thacher School in California, Donald Cooksey followed his brother Charlton Cooksey and attended Yale and where he too became a physicist specializing in designing and...
.
After the armistice between France and Germany in the summer of 1940, Bothe and Gentner received orders to inspect the cyclotron Frédéric Joliot-Curie
Frédéric Joliot-Curie
Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie , born Jean Frédéric Joliot, was a French physicist and Nobel laureate.-Early years:...
had built in Paris. While it had been built, it was not yet operational. In September 1940, Gentner received orders to form a group to put the cyclotron into operation. Hermann Dänzer from the University of Frankfurt participated in this effort. While in Paris, Gentner was able to free both Frédéric Joliot-Curie and Paul Langevin
Paul Langevin
Paul Langevin was a prominent French physicist who developed Langevin dynamics and the Langevin equation. He was one of the founders of the Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes, an antifascist organization created in the wake of the 6 February 1934 far right riots...
, who had been arrested and detained. At the end of the winter of 1941/1942, the cyclotron was operational with a 7-MeV beam of deuterons. Uranium
Uranium
Uranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table, with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons...
and thorium
Thorium
Thorium is a natural radioactive chemical element with the symbol Th and atomic number 90. It was discovered in 1828 and named after Thor, the Norse god of thunder....
were irradiated with the beam, and the byproducts were sent to Otto Hahn
Otto Hahn
Otto Hahn FRS was a German chemist and Nobel laureate, a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He is regarded as "the father of nuclear chemistry". Hahn was a courageous opposer of Jewish persecution by the Nazis and after World War II he became a passionate campaigner...
at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Chemie (KWIC, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, today, the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry
Max Planck Institute for Chemistry
The Max Planck Institute for Chemistry is a scientific research institute under the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.Basic research in chemistry and related subjects is carried out at the four departments of the institute. The departments are independently led by their Directors.-The departments:The...
), in Berlin. In mid-1942, Gentner's successor in Paris, was Wolfgang Riezler from Bonn
Bonn
Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....
.
It was during 1941 that Bothe had acquired all the necessary funding to complete construction of the cyclotron. The magnet was delivered in March 1943, and the first beam of deuteron was emitted in December. The inauguration ceremony for the cyclotron was held on 2 June 1944. While there had been other cyclotrons under construction, Bothe's was the first operational cyclotron in Germany.
Uranium Club
The German nuclear energy projectGerman nuclear energy project
The German nuclear energy project, , was an attempted clandestine scientific effort led by Germany to develop and produce the atomic weapons during the events involving the World War II...
, also known as the Uranverein (Uranium Club), began in the spring of 1939 under the auspices of the Reichsforschungsrat
Reichsforschungsrat
The Reichsforschungsrat was created in Germany in 1937 under the Education Ministry for the purpose of centralized planning of all basic and applied research, with the exception of aeronautical research...
(RFR, Reich Research Council) of the Reichserziehungsministerium
Reichserziehungsministerium
The Reichserziehungsministerium was officially known as the Reichsministerium für Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung .-Background:...
(REM, Reich Ministry of Education). By 1 September, the Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) squeezed out the RFR and took over the effort. Under the control of the HWA, the Uranverein had its first meeting on 16 September. The meeting was organized by Kurt Diebner
Kurt Diebner
Kurt Diebner was a German nuclear physicist who is well known for directing and administrating the German nuclear energy project, a secretive program aiming to built weapon of mass destruction for the Nazi Germany during the course of World War II...
, advisor to the HWA, and held in Berlin. The invitees included Walther Bothe, Siegfried Flügge
Siegfried Flügge
Siegfried Flügge was a German theoretical physicist and made contributions to nuclear physics. He worked at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Chemie and worked in the German Uranverein...
, Hans Geiger, Otto Hahn
Otto Hahn
Otto Hahn FRS was a German chemist and Nobel laureate, a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He is regarded as "the father of nuclear chemistry". Hahn was a courageous opposer of Jewish persecution by the Nazis and after World War II he became a passionate campaigner...
, Paul Harteck
Paul Harteck
Paul Karl Maria Harteck was a German physical chemist. He was arrested by the allied British and American Armed Forces and incarcerated at Farm Hall for six months in 1945 under Operation Epsilon.-Education:Harteck studied chemistry at the University of Vienna and the Humboldt University of Berlin...
, Gerhard Hoffmann
Gerhard Hoffmann
Gerhard Hoffmann was a German nuclear physicist. During World War II, he contributed to the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club.-Education:...
, Josef Mattauch
Josef Mattauch
Josef Mattauch was a German physicist known for his work in the investigation of the isotopic abundances by mass spectrometry. He developed the Mattauch isobar rule in 1934.-Mattauch-Herzog geometry mass spectrometer:...
, and Georg Stetter
Georg Stetter
Georg Stetter was an Austrian-German nuclear physicist. Stetter was Director of the Second Physics Institute of the University of Vienna. He was a principal member of the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club. In the latter years of World War II, he was also the Director...
. A second meeting was held soon thereafter and included Klaus Clusius
Klaus Clusius
Klaus Clusius was a German physical chemist from Breslau , Silesia. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club; he worked on isotope separation techniques and heavy water production...
, Robert Döpel
Robert Döpel
Georg Robert Döpel was a German experimental nuclear physicist. He was a participant in a group known as the “first Uranverein,” which was spawned by a meeting conducted by the Reichserziehungsministerium, in April 1939, to discuss the potential of a sustained nuclear reaction...
, Werner Heisenberg
Werner Heisenberg
Werner Karl Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to quantum mechanics and is best known for asserting the uncertainty principle of quantum theory...
, and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker
Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker
Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker was a German physicist and philosopher. He was the longest-living member of the research team which performed nuclear research in Germany during the Second World War, under Werner Heisenberg's leadership...
. With Bothe being one of the principals, Wolfgang Gentner
Wolfgang Gentner
Wolfgang Gentner was a German experimental nuclear physicist.Gentner received his doctorate in 1930 from the University of Frankfurt. From 1932 to 1935 he had a fellowship which allowed him to do postdoctoral research and study at Curie's Radium Institute at the University of Paris...
, Arnold Flammersfeld
Arnold Flammersfeld
Arnold Rudolf Karl Flammersfeld was a German nuclear physicist who worked on the German nuclear energy project during World War II...
, Rudolf Fleischmann
Rudolf Fleischmann
Rudolf Fleischmann was a German experimental nuclear physicist from Erlangen, Bavaria. He worked for Walther Bothe at the Physics Institute of the University of Heidelberg and then at the Institute for Physics of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research...
, Erwin Fünfer, and Peter Jensen were soon drawn into work for the Uranverein. Their research was published in the Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte
Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte
Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte was an internal publication of the German Uranverein, which was initiated under the Heereswaffenamt in 1939; in 1942, supervision of the Uranverein was turned over to the Reichsforschungsrat under the Reichserziehungsministerium...
(Research Reports in Nuclear Physics); see below the section Internal Reports. For the Uranverein, Bothe, and up to 6 members from his staff by 1942, worked on the experimental determination of atomic constants, the energy distribution of fission fragments, and nuclear cross sections. Bothe's experimental results on the absorption of neutrons in graphite were central in the German decision to favor heavy water
Heavy water
Heavy water is water highly enriched in the hydrogen isotope deuterium; e.g., heavy water used in CANDU reactors is 99.75% enriched by hydrogen atom-fraction...
as a neutron moderator
Neutron moderator
In nuclear engineering, a neutron moderator is a medium that reduces the speed of fast neutrons, thereby turning them into thermal neutrons capable of sustaining a nuclear chain reaction involving uranium-235....
.
By late 1941 it was apparent that the nuclear energy project would not make a decisive contribution to ending the war effort in the near term. HWA control of the Uranverein was relinquished to the RFR in July 1942. The nuclear energy project thereafter maintained its kriegswichtig (important for the war) designation and funding continued from the military. However, the German nuclear power project was then broken down into the following main areas: uranium
Uranium
Uranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table, with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons...
and heavy water
Heavy water
Heavy water is water highly enriched in the hydrogen isotope deuterium; e.g., heavy water used in CANDU reactors is 99.75% enriched by hydrogen atom-fraction...
production, uranium isotope separation, and the Uranmaschine (uranium machine, i.e., nuclear reactor). Also, the project was then essentially split up between nine institutes, where the directors dominated the research and set their own research agendas. Bothe's Institut für Physik was one of the nine institutes. The other eight institutes or facilities were: the Institute for Physical Chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the HWA Versuchsstelle (testing station) in Gottow, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Chemie, the Physical Chemistry Department of the University of Hamburg
University of Hamburg
The University of Hamburg is a university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by Wilhelm Stern and others. It grew out of the previous Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen and the Kolonialinstitut as well as the Akademisches Gymnasium. There are around 38,000 students as of the start of...
, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Physik, the Second Experimental Physics Institute at the Georg-August University of Göttingen, the Auergesellschaft
Auergesellschaft
The industrial firm Auergesellschaft was founded in 1892 with headquarters in Berlin. Up to the end of World War II, Auergesellschaft had research activities in the areas of gas mantles, luminescence, rare earths, radioactivity, and uranium and thorium compounds. In 1934, the corporation was...
, and the II. Physikalisches Institut at the University of Vienna
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...
.
Post WW II
From 1946, to 1957, in addition to his position at the KWImF, Both was an ordentlicher Professor (ordinarius professor) at the University of Heidelberg.At the end of World War II, the Allies had seized the cyclotron at Heidelberg. In 1949, its control was returned to Bothe.
During 1956 and 1957, Bothe was a member of the Arbeitskreis Kernphysik (Nuclear Physics Working Group) of the Fachkommission II "Forschung und Nachwuchs" (Commission II "Research and Growth") of the Deutschen Atomkommission (DAtK, German Atomic Energy Commission). Other members of the Nuclear Physics Working Group in both 1956 and 1957 were: Werner Heisenberg
Werner Heisenberg
Werner Karl Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to quantum mechanics and is best known for asserting the uncertainty principle of quantum theory...
(chairman), Hans Kopfermann
Hans Kopfermann
Hans Kopfermann was a German atomic and nuclear physicist. He devoted his entire career to spectroscopic investigations, and he did pioneering work in measuring nuclear spin...
(vice-chairman), Fritz Bopp, Wolfgang Gentner
Wolfgang Gentner
Wolfgang Gentner was a German experimental nuclear physicist.Gentner received his doctorate in 1930 from the University of Frankfurt. From 1932 to 1935 he had a fellowship which allowed him to do postdoctoral research and study at Curie's Radium Institute at the University of Paris...
, Otto Haxel
Otto Haxel
Otto Haxel was a German nuclear physicist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project. After the war, he was on the staff of the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Göttingen...
, Willibald Jentschke
Willibald Jentschke
Willibald Jentschke was an Austrian-German experimental nuclear physicist. During World War II, he made contributions to the German nuclear energy project. After World War II, he emigrated to the United States to work at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, in Ohio, for the Air Force Materiel Command...
, Heinz Maier-Liebnitz, Josef Mattauch
Josef Mattauch
Josef Mattauch was a German physicist known for his work in the investigation of the isotopic abundances by mass spectrometry. He developed the Mattauch isobar rule in 1934.-Mattauch-Herzog geometry mass spectrometer:...
, Wolfgang Riezler, Wilhelm Walcher
Wilhelm Walcher
Wilhelm Walcher was a German experimental physicist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club; he worked on mass spectrometers for isotope separation. After the war, he was director of the Institute of Physics at the University of Marburg...
, and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker
Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker
Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker was a German physicist and philosopher. He was the longest-living member of the research team which performed nuclear research in Germany during the Second World War, under Werner Heisenberg's leadership...
. Wolfgang Paul
Wolfgang Paul
Wolfgang Paul was a German physicist, who co-developed the non-magnetic quadrupole mass filter which laid the foundation for what we now call an ion trap...
was also a member of the group during 1957.
At the end of 1957, Gentner was in negotiations with Otto Hahn
Otto Hahn
Otto Hahn FRS was a German chemist and Nobel laureate, a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He is regarded as "the father of nuclear chemistry". Hahn was a courageous opposer of Jewish persecution by the Nazis and after World War II he became a passionate campaigner...
, President of the Max-Planck Gesellschaft (MPG, Max Planck Society
Max Planck Society
The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes publicly funded by the federal and the 16 state governments of Germany....
, successor of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
The Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science was a German scientific institution established in 1911. It was implicated in Nazi science, and after the Second World War was wound up and its functions replaced by the Max Planck Society...
), and with the Senate of the MPG to establish a new institute under their auspices. Essentially, Walther Bothe's Institut für Physik at the Max-Planck Institut für medizinische Forschung, in Heidelberg
Heidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...
, was to be spun off to become a full fledged institute of the MPG. The decision to proceed was made in May 1958. Gentner was named the director of the Max-Planck Institut für Kernphysik (MPIK, Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics) on 1 October, and he also received the position as an ordentlicher Professor (ordinarius professor) at the University of Heidelberg. Bothe had not lived to see the final establishment of the MPIK, as he had died in February of that year.
Bothe was a German patriot who did not give excuses for his work with the Uranverein. However, Bothe's impatience with National Socialists policies in Germany brought him under suspicion and investigation by the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
.
Personal
As a result of his incarceration in Russia during World War I as a prisoner of war, he met Barbara Below, whom he married in 1920. They had two children. She preceded him in death by some years.Bothe was an accomplished painter and musician; he played the piano.
Honors
Bothe was awarded a number of honors:- Member of the Academy of Sciences of Göttingen
- Member of the Academy of Sciences of Heidelberg
- Corresponding Member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences, Leipzig
- Grand Cross of the Order for Federal ServicesBundesverdienstkreuzThe Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany is the only general state decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has existed since 7 September 1951, and between 3,000 and 5,200 awards are given every year across all classes...
- 1952 – Knight of the Order of Merit for Sciences and the Arts
- 1953 – Max-Planck-MedailleMax Planck medalThe Max Planck medal is an award for extraordinary achievements in theoretical physics. It is awarded annually by the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft , the world's largest organization of physicists.-List of recipients:...
of the Deutsche Physikalische GesellschaftDeutsche Physikalische GesellschaftThe Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft is the world's largest organization of physicists. The DPG's worldwide membership is cited as 60,000, as of 2011...
- 1954 – Nobel Prize in PhysicsNobel Prize in PhysicsThe Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
"for the coincidence method and his discoveries made therewith". Bothe received half of the prize; the other half was awarded to Max BornMax BornMax Born was a German-born physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 30s...
.
Internal Reports
The following reports were published in Kernphysikalische ForschungsberichteKernphysikalische Forschungsberichte
Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte was an internal publication of the German Uranverein, which was initiated under the Heereswaffenamt in 1939; in 1942, supervision of the Uranverein was turned over to the Reichsforschungsrat under the Reichserziehungsministerium...
(Research Reports in Nuclear Physics), an internal publication of the German Uranverein
German nuclear energy project
The German nuclear energy project, , was an attempted clandestine scientific effort led by Germany to develop and produce the atomic weapons during the events involving the World War II...
. The reports were classified Top Secret, they had very limited distribution, and the authors were not allowed to keep copies. The reports were confiscated under the Allied Operation Alsos
Operation Alsos
Operation Alsos was an effort at the end of World War II by the Allies , branched off from the Manhattan Project, to investigate the German nuclear energy project, seize German nuclear resources, materials and personnel to further American research and to prevent their capture by the Soviets, and...
and sent to the United States Atomic Energy Commission
United States Atomic Energy Commission
The United States Atomic Energy Commission was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by Congress to foster and control the peace time development of atomic science and technology. President Harry S...
for evaluation. In 1971, the reports were declassified and returned to Germany. The reports are available at the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center and the American Institute of Physics
American Institute of Physics
The American Institute of Physics promotes science, the profession of physics, publishes physics journals, and produces publications for scientific and engineering societies. The AIP is made up of various member societies...
.
- Walther Bothe Die Diffusionsläge für thermische Neutronen in Kohle G12 (7 June 1940)
- Walther Bothe Die Abmessungen endlicher Uranmaschinen G-13 (28 June 1940)
- Walther Bothe Die Abmessungen von Maschinen mit rücksteuendem Mantel G-14 (17 July 1941)
- Walther Bothe and Wolfgang GentnerWolfgang GentnerWolfgang Gentner was a German experimental nuclear physicist.Gentner received his doctorate in 1930 from the University of Frankfurt. From 1932 to 1935 he had a fellowship which allowed him to do postdoctoral research and study at Curie's Radium Institute at the University of Paris...
Die Energie der Spaltungsneutronen aus Uran G-17 (9 May 1940)
- Walther Bothe Einige Eigenschaften des U und der Bremsstoffe. Zusammenfassender Bericht über die Arbeiten G-66 (28 March 1941)
- Walther Bothe and Arnold FlammersfeldArnold FlammersfeldArnold Rudolf Karl Flammersfeld was a German nuclear physicist who worked on the German nuclear energy project during World War II...
Die Wirkungsquerschnitte von 38 für thermische Neutronen aus Diffusionsmessungen G-67 (20 January 1941)
- Walther Bothe and Arnold Flammersfeld Resonanzeinfang an einer Uranoberfläche G-68 (8 March 1940)
- Walther Bothe and Arnold Flammersfeld Messungen an einem Gemisch von 38-Oxyd und –Wasser; der Vermehrungsfakto K unde der Resonanzeinfang w. G-69 (26 May 1941)
- Walther Bothe and Arnold Flammersfeld Die Neutronenvermehrung bei schnellen und langsamen Neutronen in 38 und die Diffusionslänge in 38 Metall und Wasser G-70 (11 July 1941)
- Walther Bothe and Peter Jensen Die Absorption thermischer Neutronen in Elektrographit G-71 (20 January 1941)
- Walther Bothe and Peter Jensen Resonanzeinfang an einer Uranoberfläche G-72 (12 May 1941)
- Walther Bothe and Arnold Flammersfeld Versuche mit einer Schichtenanordnung von Wasser und Präp 38 G-74 (28 April 1941)
- Walther Bothe and Erwin Fünfer Absorption thermischer Neutronen und die Vermehrung schneller Neutronen in Beryllium G-81 (10 October 1941)
- Walther Bothe Maschinen mit Ausnutzung der Spaltung durch schnelle Neutronen G-128 (7 December 1941)
- Walther Bothe Über Stahlenschutzwäne G-204 (29 June 1943)
- Walther Bothe Die Forschungsmittel der Kernphysik G-205 (5 May 1943)
- Walther Bothe and Erwin Fünfer Schichtenversuche mit Variation der U- und D2O-Dicken G-206 (6 December 1943)
- Fritz Bopp, Walther Bothe, Erich FischerErich FischerErich Horst Fischer was a German experimental physicist. He worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics and contributed to the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club...
, Erwin Fünfer, Werner HeisenbergWerner HeisenbergWerner Karl Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to quantum mechanics and is best known for asserting the uncertainty principle of quantum theory...
, O. Ritter, and Karl WirtzKarl WirtzKarl Eugen Julius Wirtz was a German nuclear physicist. He was arrested by the allied British and American Armed Forces and incarcerated at Farm Hall for six months in 1945 under Operation Epsilon.-Education:...
Bericht über einen Versuch mit 1.5 to D2O und U und 40 cm Kohlerückstreumantel (B7) G-300 (3 January 1945)
Selected literature by Bothe
- Walther Bothe and Hans Geiger Ein Weg zur experimentellen Nachprüfung der Theorie von Bohr, Kramers und Slater, Z. Phys. Volume 26, Number 1, 44 (1924)
- Walther Bothe Theoretische Betrachtungen über den Photoeffekt, Z. Phys. Volume 26, Number 1, 74-84 (1924)
- Walther Bothe and Hans Geiger Experimentelles zur Theorie von Bohr, Kramers un Slater, Die Naturwissenschaften Volume 13, 440-441 (1925)
- Walther Bothe and Hans Geiger Über das Wesen des Comptoneffekts: ein experimenteller Beitrag zur Theories der Strahlung, Z. Phys. Volume 32, Number 9, 639-663 (1925)
- W. Bothe and W. Gentner Herstellung neuer Isotope durch Kernphotoeffekt, Die NaturwissenschaftenDie NaturwissenschaftenNaturwissenschaften is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Springer on behalf of several learned societies.- History :...
Volume 25, Issue 8, 126-126 (1937). Received 9 February 1937. Institutional affiliation: Institut für Physik at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für medizinische Forschung.
- Walther Bothe The Coincidence Method, The Nobel Prize in Physics 1954, Nobelprize.org (1954)
Books by Bothe
- Walther Bothe Der Physiker und sein Werkzeug (Gruyter, 1944)
- Walther Bothe and Siegfried Flügge Kernphysik und kosmische Strahlen. T. 1 (Dieterich, 1948)
- Walther Bothe Der Streufehler bei der Ausmessung von Nebelkammerbahnen im Magnetfeld (Springer, 1948)
- Walther Bothe and Siegfried FlüggeSiegfried FlüggeSiegfried Flügge was a German theoretical physicist and made contributions to nuclear physics. He worked at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Chemie and worked in the German Uranverein...
(editors) Nuclear Physics and Cosmic Rays (FIAT Review of German Science 1939–1945, Volumes 13 and 14 (Klemm, 1948) ]
- Walther Bothe Theorie des Doppellinsen-b-Spektrometers (Springer, 1950)
- Walther Bothe Die Streuung von Elektronen in schrägen Folien (Springer, 1952)
- Walther Bothe and Siegfried Flügge Kernphysik und kosmische Strahlen. T. 2 (Dieterich, 1953)
- Karl H. Bauer and Walther Bothe Vom Atom zum Weltsystem (Kröner, 1954)