Fritz Laves
| Fritz Laves | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
27 February 1906 Hanover, Germany |
| Died | 12 August 1978 (aged 72) Laigueglia, Italy |
| Nationality | German |
| Fields | Crystallography |
| Alma mater | University of Zurich |
| Doctoral advisor | Paul Niggli |
| Known for | Laves phase, Laves tilings, Laves graph |
| Notable awards | Roebling Medal (1969) |
Fritz Henning Emil Paul Berndt Laves (27 February 1906 – 12 August 1978) was a German crystallographer who served as the president of the German Mineralogical Society from 1956 to 1958. He is the namesake of Laves phases and the Laves tilings; the Laves graph, a highly-symmetrical three-dimensional crystal structure that he studied, was named after him by H. S. M. Coxeter.
Laves was born in Hanover, the son of a judge and a descendant of architect Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves. He grew up in Göttingen, where his interests included piano music as well as collecting rocks and minerals. He began his university studies in geology in 1924 at the University of Innsbruck, and continued at the University of Göttingen before moving to ETH Zurich for doctoral studies under Paul Niggli.
In 1929 he took a faculty position under Victor Goldschmidt at Göttingen. He tried unsuccessfully to prevent Goldschmidt from being dismissed in 1933, and later had difficulty advancing through the German academic system under the Nazis because he was known as a protector of the Jews. His research at this time largely concerned metals and intermetallic materials. He was drafted into the German army in 1939, but returned to academia after the intervention of Paul Rosbaud, and instead worked on metallurgy for Hermann Goering during the war. In 1944 he moved to the University of Halle as director of the Mineralogical Department, and then after World War II he became an ordinary professor at the University of Marburg, where he worked on disordered materials and two-dimensional structures.
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