Gustav Ludwig Hertz was born in
Hamburg on July 22nd, 1887, the son of a lawyer, Dr. Gustav
Hertz, and his wife Auguste, née Arning. He attended
the Johanneum School in Hamburg before commencing his university
education at Göttingen in 1906; he subsequently studied at
the Universities of Munich and Berlin, graduating in 1911. He was
appointed Research Assistant at the Physics Institute of Berlin
University in 1913 but, with the onset of World War I, he was
mobilized in 1914 and severely wounded in action in 1915. Hertz
returned to Berlin as Privatdozent in 1917. From 1920 to 1925 he
worked in the physics laboratory of the Philips Incandescent Lamp
Factory at Eindhoven.
In 1925, he was elected Resident Professor and Director of the
Physics Institute of the University of Halle, and in 1928 he returned
to Berlin as Director of the Physics Institute in the
Charlottenburg Technological University. Hertz resigned from this
post for political reasons in 1935 to return to industry as
director of a research laboratory of the Siemens Company. From
1945 tot 1954 he worked as the head of a research laboratory in
the Soviet Union, when he was appointed Professor and Director of
the Physics Institute at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig. He was made
emeritus in 1961, and since then he has lived in retirement,
first in Leipzig and later in Berlin.
Hertz's early researches, for his thesis, involved studies on the
infrared absorption of carbon dioxide in relation to pressure and
partial pressure. Together with J. Franck he began his studies on
electron impact in 1913 and before his mobilization, he spent
much patient work on the study and measurement of ionization
potentials in various gases. He later demonstrated the
quantitative relations between the series of spectral lines and
the energy losses of electrons in collision with atoms
corresponding to the stationary energy states of the atoms. His
results were in perfect agreement with Bohr's theory of atomic structure, which
included the application of Planck's quantum theory.
On his return to Berlin in 1928, it was his first task to rebuild
the Physics Institute and re-establish the School, and he worked
tirelessly towards this end. There he was responsible for a
method of separating the isotopes of neon by means of a diffusion
cascade.
Hertz has published many papers, alone, with Franck, and with
Kloppers, on the quantitative exchange of energy between
electrons and atoms, and on the measurement of ionization
potentials. He also is the author of some papers concerning the
separation of isotopes.
Gustav Hertz is Member of the German Academy of Sciences in
Berlin, and Corresponding Member of the Göttingen Academy of
Sciences; he is also Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of
Sciences, Member of the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences, and
Foreign Member of the Academy of Sciences U.S.S.R. He is
recipient of the Max Planck Medal of the German Physical
Society.
Professor Hertz was married in 1919, with Ellen née
Dihlmann, who died in 1941. They had two sons, both physicists:
Dr. Hellmuth Hertz, Professor at the Technical College in Lund,
and Dr. Johannes Hertz, working at the Institute for Optics and
Spectroscopy of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin.
Since 1943, Professor Hertz is married with Charlotte,
née Jollasse.
From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1922-1941, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1965
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Gustav Hertz died on October 30, 1975.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1925