Rocky Katch

A History of German Physicists

Throughout history, Germany has been a powerhouse for scientific development in all

fields. Many renowned scientists with noteworthy accomplishments were born and raised in a

German speaking nation. Physics especially has seen an incredible contribution from German

scientists that have dramatically evolved the field and given the world great insight into the inner

workings of the natural world. Curiously, the 20th century sees a noticeable boom of German

physicists. Many of the names known by people both in and out of the field are those of 20th

century German physicists such as Einstein, Schrödinger, and Heisenberg.

As a student of astrophysics, it is through names like these that I was first introduced to

the field and found my curiosity piqued. These scientists went from familiar names to

inspirations as I learned of their discoveries and contributions to the field. Later, when I started

my German studies, I began to see a connection. The majority of the scientists I so looked up to,

were born and raised in the country I fell in love with.

In this paper I answer the question: “Who were the most noteworthy German physicists

and what did they contribute to the field of physics as a whole?”

The 16th and 17th Centuries

Johannes Kepler was Germany’s first scientist who made a significant and lasting impact

on the field of physics as a whole. Johannes was born on December 27th, 1571 in Weil der Stadt,

Germany, the first of Heinrich and Katharina Kepler’s seven children. Born shortly after the

Peace of Augsburg in 1555, Kepler found himself growing up in an unusual situation. This

agreement granted local leaders of Germany’s widely diverse regions the power to determine

whether Catholicism or Protestantism would be practiced in their domain. The Keplers, devout

1
 Rocky Katch

Protestants, lived in the imperial free city Weil der Stadt, in which the people were allowed to

practice their own religion freely, making the city a Catholic majority. However, Weil der Stadt

was located in the Protestant duchy of Wurttemberg, so Kepler found himself a Protestant living

in a city with a Catholic majority surrounded by a Protestant duchy.

Kepler’s Protestant upbringing set him up for a great education in the system provided by

the dukes for their subjects. He became much more educated than his Catholic neighbors,

becoming fluent in Latin, the main language of scholarly books and lectures of the time, whereas

others knew only German and were therefore at a disadvantage. At 17 years old, Kepler

completed his master’s degree in theology and was on his way to entering service in a church, his

greatest aspiration. But Kepler had another area of interest that fascinated him: math. Like

theology, math and astronomy “transcended one’s earthly experience in its quest for eternal

truths.” Kepler believed geometrical proofs to be the closest one can come to knowledge of their

mortal existence and he saw the image of God in the layout of the solar system.1

Following both his passions, Kepler reached his dream of church leadership and also

studied the inner workings of the universe. In works published in 1609 and 1619, Kepler

introduced his three laws of planetary motion, explaining the motion of planets around the Sun.

These laws became the foundation of astrophysics on which famous physicists such as Isaac

Newton built their research. Kepler’s laws are still used frequently today from calculating the

size of galaxies to mass of stars. For the field of physics, Johannes Kepler was an incredibly

important step that paved the way for the centuries of scientific developments soon to come.

The 19th Century

There is a noticeable gap in the development of physics in Germany from the early 17th

2
 Rocky Katch

century through the 18th century. Significant physical discoveries were still being made at this

time, in fact this is the period of renowned names such as Galileo Galilei and Sir Isaac Newton,

but for some reason German physics has a distinct lull. It takes off again at the beginning of the

19th century with noteworthy scientists such as Joseph von Fraunhofer, Georg Ohm, and

Christian Doppler.

Born March 6th, 1787 in Straubing, Germany, Joseph von Fraunhofer’s early life inspired

little confidence that he would one day be as successful as he became. At the age of 12 both of

his parents died, and, because he was too weak to work as a wood turner, he became an

apprentice glassmaker instead. His master-glassmaker, Philipp Anton Weichselberger, did not

allow Fraunhofer to attend school or read books on his days off, depriving him of an education.

However, Joseph was unexpectedly brought into contact the with the Prince-Elector of Bavaria at

the time, Maximilian IV Joseph and was suddenly allowed the opportunity to attend school and

to learn the art of lens-making.2

Once an employed optician, Fraunhofer began developing new types of glass and

perfecting the manufacture of optical instruments such as telescopes, microscopes and

magnifying glasses. During his time as an optician, Fraunhofer experimented with lamps and

prisms to find a way to produce homogeneous light, and, in doing so, Fraunhofer invented the

spectroscope, an optical instrument that shows the electromagnetic spectrum of light. Looking at

a fire with his spectroscope, Fraunhofer saw it gave off a strong orange light on the spectrum and

became curious if the sun would give off the same color. Joseph then looked at the sun through

his spectroscope, but instead of observing one orange line as with the fire, he observed 574 dark

fixed lines. He then proceeded to observe other stars and noticed that their spectra differed from

both the sun and each other. Thus, Fraunhofer invented the study of stellar spectroscopy.

3
 Rocky Katch

Stellar spectroscopy is a practice in astronomy that allows scientists to determine the

chemical composition of stars. Though he didn’t know it at the time, the different color lines

that Fraunhofer observed were atomic absorption lines. These lines are specific to each element,

therefore one can tell what elements a star is composed of based on the lines it produces in a

spectroscope. Today, stellar spectroscopy is the primary method of determining the chemical

composition of stars. The science has even evolved to the point where scientists can also derive

the temperature, density, mass, luminosity, and relative motion of both stars and galaxies. Thus,

Fraunhofer, like Kepler, became a basis for modern astrophysics and, like Kepler, his discoveries

were so ground breaking and influential that they are still widely used today.

Georg Ohm

Georg Ohm was another noteworthy German physicist whose accomplishments date

around the same time as Fraunhofer’s, but helped develop a very different branch of physics.

When Ohm was born on March 16, 1789 in Erlangen, Germany, the science of electrical

measurements hardly existed. The small amount of scientists that did practice in this field were

in constant disagreement due to ill-defined expressions. “Until well into the 19th century there

was no branch of physics in which there were so many differences of opinion and uncertainties

as in those related to [electronics].” 3

Georg’s father gave his two sons a remarkable education in mathematics, physics,

chemistry and philosophy. Ohm went on to study mathematics, physics and philosophy at

University of Erlangen, and was granted a teaching position there immediately after graduating.

Ohm believed that one “should learn mathematics as if it were a free product of his own mind,

not as a finished product imposed from without,” and was thus very different from other

4
 Rocky Katch

mathematicians and physicists of the time.

In 1827, at the age of 38, Georg published the work which became his legacy, “Die

galvanische Kette, mathematisch bearbeitet.” This treatise was the first successful attempt to

accurately describe the relationships between resistance, current and potential difference; it also

includes the law which will later bear his name, Ohm’s Law, which states that the current

through a conductor is directly proportional to the voltage with resistance being the constant of

proportionality. Though this relationship seems almost obvious to physicists today, Ohm’s Law

was the most important scientific law of the early descriptions of the physics of electricity.

Despite this, Ohm’s findings were met with vicious attacks as they were based on experiment

and observation rather than philosophical speculation as was the norm at the time.

Christian Doppler

Christian Doppler was born on November 29th, 1803 in Salzburg, Austria. Like

Fraunhofer, Doppler was too weak to go into the craft expected of him, which was stonemasonry

in his case, so he instead entered a scholarly life, studying philosophy, mathematics and physics.

In 1842, Doppler published the paper that would immortalize him. In his paper, “Über das

farbige Licht der Doppelsterne,” Doppler theorized that just as sound from a moving source

varies for a stationary observer, so should light. He posited that the frequency or color of the

light waves from a star should be affected by the star’s velocity relative to Earth; this became

known as the Doppler effect.4,5

Though originally proposed with an astronomical basis, the Doppler effect was found to

be applicable to vast areas of science. Today it is used in radar, medical imaging, satellites and

many others.6 Its greatest use, however, continues to be in astronomy and astrophysics. The

5
 Rocky Katch

Doppler effect was used to confirm that the universe is expanding, it is used to detect exoplanets

and to measure the speed of stars and galaxies as well as being used to determine binary star

systems. Its implications are extremely wide, spanning many branches and fields, and, in all of

them, it continues to be an integral part of the science that has resulted in countless discoveries,

immortalizing Doppler’s name as one of the most influential scientists of all time.

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen

On November 8th, 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen first discovered x-rays whilst

experimenting with cathode rays, inspired by the work of Heinrich Hertz. He was passing a

current through a tube covered with a shield when he noticed a peculiar black line had appeared

on a sheet of barium platinocyanide paper he had lying nearby. Wilhelm knew this effect could

only be caused by the passage of light, but the shield surrounding his tube was “impervious to all

light known, even that of the electric arc.” 7 Thus he discovered a new type of light, a ray on a

section of the electromagnetic spectrum that had not yet been breeched. He found that these rays

had remarkable penetrative power and could move through all the materials he tested them on

with no effect to the objects. From this Röntgen concluded that these mystery rays would have

the same effect on flesh, and thus, testing his theory out on his wife’s hand, Wilhelm took the

first radiographic image; this was the first time a human saw their own skeletal structure.

Röntgen did not talk to anyone about his experiments regarding this strange new

phenomenon. Other than a passing comment of “I have found something interesting, but I do not

know whether or not my observations are correct,”7 Wilhelm continued to experiment

completely alone until he was able to fully understand what he was seeing. On December 28th,

1985 he finally submitted a preliminary report of his findings, titled “Über eine neue Art von

6
 Rocky Katch

Strahlen” to the President of the Physical Medical Society of Würzburg. He called these rays x-

rays using x as the mathematical designation for something unknown, but they soon came to bear

his name in many languages, becoming known as Röntgen Rays.

The impact of Röntgen’s findings in the medical field are familiar to most, as x-ray

imaging is still today the primary way of examining one’s skeleton for injuries, but Röntgen

Rays have a much wider impact than just medicine. For example, they are what’s used in airport

security to search for suspicious objects in a traveler’s luggage. They were the basis for the

technique, fiber diffraction, which was used by Rosalind Franklin to discover the double helical

structure of DNA. They have been utilized in both art and hair removal, from tomography to

spectroscopy. In the field of astrophysics, x-rays became invaluable when astronomers realized

that in taking images of celestial objects with this type of light that has a shorter wavelength and

higher energy, they could see things they had never seen before. It was suddenly realized that

many things in space emit x-rays. Neutron stars, binary star systems, supernova remnants,

comets, galaxies and even black holes emit this type of radiation and are therefore visible

through x-ray telescopes and x-ray images. Suddenly a much bigger universe was opened up, as

Röntgen Rays highlighted new characteristics and interactions of deep space objects that never

could have been seen with just visible light.8

The impact of Röntgen’s discovery is both deep and wide, becoming one of the most

used techniques in many different fields and studies. It is no surprise then that in the year 1901,

Wilhelm Röntgen won the very first Nobel Prize in Physics “in recognition of the extraordinary

services he has rendered by the discovery of the remarkable rays subsequently named after him.”

And, since Röntgen refused to put patents on his discovery, the entire world was able to learn

and benefit from his observations, changing not just physics, but science as a whole.

7
 Rocky Katch

The 20th Century

Karl Ernst Ludwig Marx Planck was born on April 23rd, 1858 in Kiel, Germany. At the

age of nine, Max Planck and his family moved to Munich where he learned about astronomy,

mechanics, and mathematics at the Ludwig Maximilians gymnasium, awakening Planck’s

interest in physics. By 1892, Max was a full professor of physics at the University of Berlin after

having completed all his schooling, during which he was told that there is nothing new to be

discovered in physics.

As a theoretical physicist, Planck focused his research on the intangible, from blackbody

radiation to the electromagnetic spectrum. In his workings with light, Max deduced that the

energy of photons could only take on specific values which were always integer multiples of a

certain constant; this constant became known as the Planck constant. In other words, Planck

discovered that light and other waves are emitted in discrete packets of energy that he called

quanta, from the Latin word for quantity. Thus, Max Planck became the initial founder of

quantum theory, the study of the microscopic world of atoms, an entire new field of physics that

revolutionized the way we see and understand the sub-atomic world. For this he was awarded

the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.

Planck’s life rapidly declines with the start of World War II. A hater of the Nazi regime,

Planck secretly allowed a number of Jewish scientists to continue working in institutes of the

Kaiser Wilhelm Society, resulting in slander by the “Deutsche Physic” movement. When his

term as president ended, the Prussian Academy of Sciences was taken over by the Nazi party. In

1944, Planck’s home in Berlin was destroyed by an air raid and he and his family fled to the

countryside. In 1945, Planck’s son Erwin was hanged after being implicated in the attempt to

kill Hitler in 1944. After this, Planck moved to Göttingen, where he died two years later.9

8
 Rocky Katch

Karl Schwarzschild

Though Karl Schwarzschild only lived for 42 years, that was more than enough time for

him to make several long lasting contributions to the field of physics. As a gymnasium student,

Karl was a child prodigy. By the age of sixteen he had built a telescope and published a paper on

celestial mechanics regarding the orbits of binary stars. By 1896, Schwarzschild had completed

his Ph.D. and began working in the Kuffner Observatory in Vienna, Austria. He gained the

position of director of the Astrophysical Observatory in Potsdam in 1909, which was, at the time,

the most prestigious position available for an astronomer in Germany.

Though he was 40 years old at the outbreak of World War I, Schwarzschild joined the

Germany army and served on both the western and eastern fronts, rising to the rank of lieutenant.

Tragically, during his service in Russia in 1915, Schwarzschild contracted pemphigus, a rare and

painful skin disease that would be the cause of his death a year later. During that year, however,

Karl Schwarzschild still managed to write the papers that would be his legacy. In his two papers

on general relativity, Schwarzschild gave the first exact solution to Albert Einstein’s field

equations, which later became known as the Schwarzschild metric. In this solution he identified

the Schwarzschild radius, a radius for any given mass that, if that mass could be compressed to

fit into said radius, no force could stop it from collapsing into a gravitational singularity,

otherwise known as a black hole. Ironically, Schwarzschild, like the majority of scientists at the

time, did not believe in the physical reality of black holes and therefore believed his theoretical

solution to be meaningless despite the fact that the Schwarzschild radius is now an universally

accepted concept that is integral to the understanding of black holes.10

9
 Rocky Katch

Albert Einstein

By far the most famous name in physics, Albert Einstein’s story and accomplishments are

familiar to many, even those outside of physics and science in general. Born March 14th, 1879 in

Ulm, Germany, Albert was a very quiet child, preferring to listen and observer rather than waste

his time with talking. He was so quiet, in fact, that his mother worried he was mentally disabled

and slow of learning. Albert hated school from the very beginning, expecting it to be a place

where knowledge and ideas were shared and discussed freely, he instead found it to be a place of

forced memorization and learning solely to pass a test. Because of this, he did not excel, and

though he eventually received a teaching degree, he was not able to find a job easily.11

Despite this, Albert Einstein was brilliant. In the year 1905, he published five papers,

three of which were completely groundbreaking. One was based off of the work of Max Planck,

using his ideas to describe what he called the photoelectric effect. This theory stated that when

light shines on metal, the electrons in that metal are energized, leading to them escaping, earning

him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. His last paper of 1905 is by far his most famous one, his

theory of special relativity. This revolutionary paper posited that time, weight, and mass are not

constant; when moving at high speeds all of these things are compressed. He concluded that

only the speed of light is constant, a statement supported by his famous equation E=mc2.

Despite its legacy, Einstein’s theory of special relativity had many problems, and he

knew it. Gravity was one of the main offenders. Despite being a universal phenomenon, the

effects of which are easily observed, gravity remained a mystery to everyone and messed up all

natural laws. With this in mind, in 1915, Einstein wrote his theory of general relativity, a

postulate that gave a physical presence to space-time itself. He hypothesized that space-time acts

like a net of sorts or a stretchy piece of fabric. When massive objects are placed on it, they sink;

10
 Rocky Katch

the more massive the object, the steeper the slope of the dent it makes. This is how he described

gravity, the slope and change of space-time itself. The math was so complex and the idea so

absurd that few accepted it, yet even today we are still proving its legitimacy. In September of

2015, scientists made the first direct observation of a gravitational wave, a phenomenon

predicted by Einstein in his theory of general relativity 100 years earlier.

By the time of the World Wars, Einstein’s major contributions were behind him. He

hated war and actively spoke against both the First World War and Hitler’s rise to power.

Because of this, his Jewish status, and his papers that the Nazi party found in conflict with what

they considered pure physics, Einstein fled to California in the early 1930’s before Hitler’s

became chancellor. In 1939 he sent a letter to President Roosevelt, warning him that Germany

could attempt to create an atomic weapon to be used on the US during the Second World War,

leading to the creation of the Manhattan Project, in which Einstein remained uninvolved.12

Erwin Schrödinger

Erwin Schrödinger is another name that many have heard due to the popularity of the

Schrödinger’s cat paradox; however, this is not his most important contribution to the world of

physics. Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger was born on August 12th, 1887 in Vienna,

Austria. He graduated from the University of Vienna in 1910 and began working there the

following year. From 1914 to 1918 Schrödinger served as a officer in the Austrian fortress

artillery in the First World War, and by 1921 he had worked in the physics departments of the

universities of Stuttgart, Breslau, and Zürich.

In 1926, Schrödinger published the four papers that became the central achievement of

his career. All of these papers dealt with the study of quantum mechanics, but only one of them,

11
 Rocky Katch

the derivation of the Schrödinger equation, became universally celebrated as one of the most

important achievements of the century, reinvigorating the revolution of quantum mechanics

started by Planck two decades before. Schrödinger’s equation is the fundamental equation for

describing quantum mechanical behavior. It takes into account the wave nature of particles and

therefore allows us to solve for the wave function of a physical system and see how it evolves

over time. With this equation, we can see where a single particle is or at what velocity it’s

traveling, giving us a physical description of invisible things.

Further interpretations of Schrödinger’s equation gave rise to his renowned paradox that

illustrated the problem with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics by applying it

to everyday objects. This paradox takes the form of a cat sealed in a box with a radioactive

particle that may decay, thus killing the cat, or may not decay, thus keeping it alive. Following

the rules of quantum mechanics, while the cat is in the sealed box it is in a quantum

superposition, simultaneously both dead and alive. The act of measuring, of opening the box to

see if the cat lived, causes the wave function to collapse and forces it to choose a state. So if you

leave the cat in the box it is both dead and alive, but by opening the box you could be killing the

cat. Obviously, this is absurd, as is Schrödinger’s point. He was pointing out the obvious flaw

in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics by applying it to the macroscopic.

In 1933, when Hitler came to power, Schrödinger left Germany and moved to Austria as

a protest against the anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime. When Austria was unified into Greater

Germany in 1939, Schrödinger was fired from his university position due to his known

opposition to Nazism. He was ordered not to leave the country, but he managed to escape with

his wife to Italy, successfully avoiding having to live in Nazi Germany during WWII.13

12
 Rocky Katch

Werner Heisenberg

Werner Karl Heisenberg was introduced to quantum physics during his time studying

physics and mathematics in university, after which he conducted research with Niels Bohr, one

of the most famous quantum physicists at the time. During his time with Bohr, in 1925, at the

age of 24, Heisenberg developed the first complete correct definition of quantum mechanics with

his matrix mechanics formulation. It was in 1927, still during his time with Bohr, that Werner

developed his namesake, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, for which he originally used the

word “Ungenauigkeit.” This principle expands on Schrödinger’s wave function by showing it is

impossible to know the exact speed and location of a particle at the same time, only one can be

known with complete certainty at one time.

Hitler’s rise to power and the spread of Nazism, gave rise to a movement called

“Deutsche Physik.” This movement was anti-Semitic and strongly against theoretical physics,

quantum mechanics and the theory of special relatively especially. Heisenberg found himself

being ostracized by this group, and, even worse, the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler himself,

who said Heisenberg should be made to disappear. Later, in 1942, Nazi administration asked

Heisenberg to direct Germany’s research toward developing nuclear weapons, but he refused.

Despite this, after the war, Werner was incarcerated along with nine other prominent German

scientists working in the nuclear field due to suspicion about working in the nuclear weapons

program.14

Conclusion

The part I found most fascinating during my exploration was learning about these

scientists’ lives. Their names have always been familiar to me, I could explain their most

13
 Rocky Katch

significant findings and recite their formulas, but that’s really all they’ve ever been, names to

whom I attributed some fascinating phenomena. This, of course, was enough for me to respect

and look up to them; their findings fascinated me and their discoveries are the foundation on

which my education is based. It was their work and their names that originally enraptured me

and convinced me to pursue higher education in this field, but I never realized how much more

they had to offer.

Their life stories are fascinating. They all came from such vastly different backgrounds,

grew up in different circumstances, came to love physics in such insanely different ways, and,

because of that, they each changed the world in their own way. I’ve always loved physics and

math for the way it connects everyone. Math is an international language, the universe is loved

by people from all walks of life. My research for this paper only further solidified this fact. A

physicist can come from anywhere, from any background, from any time. And anyone, no

matter their history, can change our understanding of the world forever.

The other thing I most enjoyed learning about was the way the world wars affected these

scientists. World War II especially has always fascinated me, so reading about how Planck,

Heisenberg, Einstein, and Schrödinger’s lives were affected by this and how they felt about and

reacted to the changing world was really interesting to me. Overall, I gained so much more

respect for these thinkers, a lot of which is now based outside of their scientific

accomplishments; but it also made me appreciate their contributions to physics even more. It’s

amazing to me that equations and phenomena discovered hundreds of years ago are still so

important in the field today. It emphasized to me the fluid, constantly changing, constantly

developing nature of science and how curiosity and questioning can change the world.

14
 Rocky Katch

Works Cited

1. Voelkel, James R. Johannes Kepler and the New Astronomy. New York: Oxford UP,
1999. Print.
2. Bullinger, Hans-Jorg. "Joseph Von Fraunhofer Researcher and Entrepreneur." Fraunhofer
Gesellschaft (2004): n. pag. Fraunhofer Gesellschaft Zur Forderung Der Angewandten
Forschung. Web.
3. James, I. M. "From Ohm to Helmholtz." Remarkable Physicists: From Galileo to
Yukawa. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 2004. 107-13. Print.
4. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Christian Doppler." Encyclopedia Britannica
Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, 24 Oct. 2003. Web. 29 Nov. 2016.
5. "Christian Doppler Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, 27 Nov. 2015.
Web. 29 Nov. 2016.
6. "The Doppler Effect." The Doppler Effect. The Physics Classroom, n.d. Web. 29 Nov.
2016. <http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/waves/Lesson-3/The-Doppler-Effect>.
7. Glasser, Otto, Jessie C. Tucker, and Margret Boveri. Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen and the
Early History of the Roentgen Rays. Springfield, IL: C.C. Thomas, 1934. Print.
8. https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1901/rontgen-facts.html
9. http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/scientists_planck.html
10. http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/scientists_schwarzschild.html
11. Cwiklik, Robert. Albert Einstein and the Theory of Relativity. New York: Barron's, 1987.
Print.
12. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bpeins.html
13. http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/scientists_schrodinger.html
14. http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/scientists_heisenberg.html

15