After some initial reservations, Laue was captivated by the novel concepts of space and time. In September 1905, Einstein reported on his recently published paper on the electrodynamics of moving bodies. During this period of close contact with Planck, he made outstanding contributions concerning the relation between thermodynamics and radiation, but the most important result of these early years was the beginning of his relationship with Albert Einstein. Laue became Planck's leading and favourite pupil, and the two formed a lifelong friendship. In the autumn of 1905 Planck offered Laue an assistantship at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Berlin. in July 1903 magna cum laude, but he was not yet satisfied with his knowledge, so he added two years of post-doctoral studies in Göttingen. Here he encountered Max Planck and began to work on a thesis concerning the application of the principle of conservation of energy in the case of interference phenomena with plane-parallel plates. After two years in Göttingen and a winter semester in Munich, he settled in Berlin in 1902 in order to obtain a degree. He thus decided that he wanted to become a theoretical physicist. In the following year, studying in Göttingen, he was especially influenced by Woldemar Voigt's course and by the reading of Gustav Kirchhoff's published lectures. This was a society for popularising science in whose premises in the Taubenstrasse in Berlin a great display of physical apparatus was to be found with full explanations and ready to be set in action by pressing a button.” His interest in mathematics and physics continued at the gymnasium, and he read, among others, von Helmholtz's just published Vorträge und Reden.ĭuring the winter 1898-1899, Laue began studying mathematics, physics, and chemistry in Strasbourg, and his enthusiasm for physics continued to increase. After having found out, she saw to it that I went to the 'Urania' frequently. For several days I went about in deep thought and was good for nothing, so that my mother enquired anxiously what was wrong with me. He himself wrote in an autobiographical essay: “The impression made upon me by this first encounter with physics was enormous. His interest in physics arose already at the age of 12 or 13, when by chance he heard someone talking about the electrolytic deposition of copper from a solution of copper sulphate. Max Laue was born on 9 October 1879 in Pfaffendorf and following his father, a civil official of the German military administration, he attended classical schools in different cities. X-ray spectroscopy, a second spin-off of Laue's discovery, centrally contributed to the development of atomic theory.Īn Enthusiastic Supporter of Einstein's Relativity Two years later, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics, Henry Bragg and his son Lawrence Bragg had already pioneered the new technique of X-ray crystallography, which revolutionised our understanding of the solid state and became an invaluable tool for the ever-expanding field shared by physics, chemistry, crystallography, geology and biology. His best-known contribution, the discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals in 1912, was promptly recognised as fundamental for elucidating the nature of both X-rays and crystals. Like Max Planck and Arnold Sommerfeld, Max von Laue defined the period of transition from classical physics to quantum physics.
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