R. W. Pohl
| Robert Pohl | |
|---|---|
Robert Pohl, Göttingen 1923
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| Born | Robert Wichard Pohl 10 August 1884 Hamburg, German Empire |
| Died | 5 June 1976 (aged 91) Göttingen, West Germany |
| Nationality | German |
Robert Wichard Pohl (10 August 1884 – 5 June 1976) was a German physicist.
Robert Wichard Pohl was born in Hamburg as the son of the naval engineer Eugen Robert Pohl and his wife Martha. She was the daughter of Wichard Lange, founder of the private 'Dr. Wichard Lange School', and granddaughter of Wilhelm Middendorff, who founded the first German kindergarten, together with Friedrich Fröbel.
After completing the Dr. Wichard Lange school, Pohl entered the 'Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums' in 1895 and obtained his Abitur from it. In the summer semester of 1903, he enrolled for studies of natural science at the University of Heidelberg. There, he met James Franck, who up until Franck's death in 1964 remained a close friend. In the winter semester of 1903, Pohl transferred to the University of Berlin, where he majored in physics. Beginning in the summer semester of 1904, he had already begun scientific work in the Physics Institute with Emil Warburg on the topic which became his doctoral thesis. His first publication dates from this period, motivated by Bernhard Walter of the Hamburg State Physical Laboratory, where Pohl worked during his vacations, in particular attempting to observe the diffraction of X-ray radiation.
In the summer of 1906, Pohl completed his doctorate (Dr. Phil.) and took an assistantship in Berlin, working as instructor in the physics teaching labs under the Institute's director, Heinrich Rubens. He published joint articles with James Franck on ionic mobility in gases and on the propagation velocity of X-rays. From 1909, he carried out research on the normal and the selective photoelectric effect in metals, and from 1910 he worked with Peter Pringsheim, on, among other things, the technically important problem of the fabrication of metal mirrors. In 1910, his monograph on the remote transmission of images appeared, and in 1912 he completed the Habilitation. In an addendum, his Habilitation thesis contains a discussion of von Laue's discovery of X-ray diffraction.
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