Paul Scherrer
| Paul Hermann Scherrer | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | 3 February 1890 St.Gallen, Switzerland |
| Died |
25 September 1969 (aged 79) Zürich, Switzerland |
| Residence | Switzerland |
| Nationality | Swiss |
| Fields | Physicist |
| Institutions |
ETH Zürich University of Göttingen |
| Alma mater |
ETH Zürich University of Göttingen |
| Doctoral advisor | Peter Debye |
| Doctoral students |
Hans Frauenfelder Egon Bretscher Julius Adams Stratton Fritz Zwicky |
| Known for | Debye–Scherrer method |
| Notable awards | Marcel Benoist Prize (1943) |
Paul Hermann Scherrer (3 February 1890 – 25 September 1969) was a Swiss physicist. Born in St.Gallen, Switzerland, he studied at Göttingen, Germany, before becoming a lecturer there. Later, Scherrer became head of the Department of Physics at ETH Zürich.
Paul Scherrer was born in St.Gallen. In 1908, he enrolled at ETH Zürich, changing course from Botany to Mathematics and Physics after two semesters. In 1912, Scherrer spent one semester at Königsberg University, then undertook further studies at the University of Göttingen, graduating from there with a doctorate on the Faraday Effect in the hydrogen molecule. In 1916, while still working on his dissertation, he and his tutor, Peter Debye, developed the “Debye–Scherrer powder method”, a procedure using X-rays for the structural analysis of crystals. This made an important contribution to the development of the scattering techniques that are still used in the large facilities at the Paul Scherrer Institute to this day. Debye received the Nobel Prize for chemistry for this work in 1936.
He is perhaps best known for determining the inverse relationship between the width of an x-ray diffraction peak and the crystallite size. This work was published in 1918. P. Scherrer, “Bestimmung der Grösse und der inneren Struktur von Kolloidteilchen mittels Röntgenstrahlen,” Nachr. Ges. Wiss. Göttingen 26 (1918) pp 98–100.
ETH Zürich appointed Scherrer to the post of Professor of Experimental Physics in 1920, at the early age of 30. In 1925, he organised the first international conference of physicists to take place after the First World War. He became Principal of the Physical Institute at ETH in 1927 and focussed its direction on nuclear physics, a research branch that was still coming into being at that stage. The first cyclotron at ETH Zürich was built under his direction in 1940.
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